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Just then, Paraguay and Bolivia renewed their brawl over the tropical swamp known as the Chaco. In the spirit of the hour both Senate and House hastily authorized President Roosevelt to place an embargo on shipments of arms to both sides in the minor squabble. The League of Nations joined the U. S. in this first attempt to discourage a war by refusing to sell lethal weapons to both combatants. The arms embargo did not stop the fighting.
Meanwhile the Nye committee pumped J. P. Morgan, Thomas Lament and their partners, trying to prove that they had helped to grease the skids that plunged the U. S. into war. There was no evidence that they had tried to. It could not even be proved that they had done so unwittingly. Whatever the Nye committee did or did not prove, the new Peace Passion of the U. S. had to have an outlet. Its outlet was the Neutrality Act of August 31, 1935.
Act I. This first general Neutrality act was hastily patched up and put into effect for six months until a permanent act could be written. Its chief provision was to place a mandatory embargo on the shipment to warring countries of "arms, ammunition and implements of war," (which were later defined by the President to include airplanes, various chemicals, armored vehicles but not cotton, oil, scrap iron, trucks, etc.). It also forbade U. S. citizens to travel on vessels of warring nations except at their own risk.
Behind all this were two American ideas. One was the simple humanitarian idea that U. S. hands should not be bloodied by making guns and bullets by which men anywhere were killed and maimed. The other was that the U. S. could be kept out of war if it did not become financially interested in selling arms, and its ships and citizens were made to keep away from the shooting.
A month following this Neutrality Act Italy invaded Ethiopia. There was no declaration of hostilities, but three days after fighting began, the President called it a war. He invoked the Act and solemnly warned U. S. citizens not to travel on either Italian or Ethiopian liners. No arms were shipped to either side.
In February 1936, the temporary neutrality law was extended with two major changes. Belligerents were denied the privilege of floating loans in the U. S. and exceptions were made for wars in Latin America. The Italians, undisturbed, destroyed the Ethiopians, and the U. S. was never sucked into the holocaust.
Then Spaniards went to war with one another, egged on by Italy and Germany. In January 1937 a special resolution was rushed to Congress to take care of this unforeseen situation, for the Neutrality Act had no provision covering Civil Wars. It was passed at the behest of the State Department which was anxious to support British and French "nonintervention" policy. One lone Representative, Bernard of Minnesota, voted against it.
Soon this addendum cut off most U. S. arms and ammunition, including airplane parts, from the Loyalists while Generalissimo Franco continued to get most of what he wanted from the Axis. So the Spanish war went on to its bitter end and the U. S. was not involved.