Big Michigander (See Cover)
The editor of the Grand Rapids, Mich. Herald dug a forefinger reflectively behind his ear, where his scholarly spectacles bit him, scratched a big house-match for his long denicotinized cigar, and turned back to his typewriter. It was November 1,1925; he was finishing his third book, The Trail of a Tradition. In it he had recorded his belief that, historically and logically, U. S. isolation from foreign affairs is not only an "unbroken highway from yesterday to now" but the "safer, surer way."
On the title page of his book Editor Arthur Hendrick Vandenberg set this phrase: "Nationalism — not 'Internationalism' — ;is the indispensable bulwark of American independence."
Last fortnight, Arthur Vandenberg, U. S. Senator since 1928, on the strength of the tradition he trailed 14 years ago, made a bet with his destiny. The stakes were the highest any U. S. citizen can set — the Presidency, in 1941. For Senator Vandenberg went to battle Franklin Roosevelt over what kind of neutrality the U. S. should have in World War II.
Sharply in the minds of political wiseacres was this thesis: if either combatant should win that battle clearly and conclusively, he would be a No. 1 figure in U. S. politics next year. And the Washington wise men added: besides Vandenberg and Roosevelt, no other man in either party stands to gain so much by winning the Neutrality debate.
The German invasion of Poland had waged an overpowering Blitzkrieg against the Presidential hopes of all other Democrats and of many Republicans. Temporarily in the background was John Nance Garner, who believes with "The Boss" that the sane course is a return to international law.
Thus the wise men came back to the possibility that this fight may make either Arthur Vandenberg or Franklin Roosevelt the Mr. Big of 1940. All the soothsayers realized that the vast unpredictability of World War II might make fine hash of their predictions at any minute. But in shooting guesses from the hip, they aimed at the biggest possibilities as last week's shifting targets slid by.
Shall or May. Like all political fights, this one could be minimized into a quarrel over terms—in this case a grammarian's choice: the word "may" or the word "shall." Vandenberg helped draft the arms embargo clause for the Neutrality Act; in it he insisted that when a state of war was found to exist, the President "shall proclaim" an embargo on sales of arms to belligerents.
The State Department wanted the law discretionary; Secretary Hull sought to have the law read: "The President may proclaim." Without enthusiasm, Franklin Roosevelt signed the bill that came to his ship in the Gulf of Mexico May 1, 1937 — and the word was "shall." Last week the President spoke from the House rostrum his grave regret for that signature of approval — the first time since he became Chief Executive he has thus publicly admitted a major mistake. This conciliatory note was typical of the surface serenity of last week's Washington scene.
Beneath that surface raged the first bitter skirmishes of what may be the greatest legislative battle since the 1919 Senate fight over ratification of the Versailles Treaty and entrance of the U. S. into the League of Nations.