Evening Star Newspaper, March 8, 1936, Page 5

NEUTRALITY PERIL SEEN BY THOMAS Four-Hour Senate Address Delayed Legislation With “Teeth in It.” This is the seventh of a series of articles by Mr. Allinson on the ~new meutrality” policy of the United States. BY BRENT DOW ALLINSON. Senator Elbert D. Thomas of Utah, & member of both the Foreign Rela- tions and Military Affairs Committees of the Senate has taken a.lively in- terest in the great problems of Ameri- ean neutrality, ever since the Foreign Relations Committee first began to re- consider the matter, last Summer, be- fore the outbreak of hostilities in Ethiopia. A professor when he is at home in Balt Lake City, he is thoroughly versed i in the theory of | neutrality and can give numberless historic pre-| cedents for this and that concep- tion, together with annotated argu-| ments for things as they are and rea- sons why effective reform canaot swiftly and surely be made by act of Congress. Serious or senti- mental attempts to abolish the armed international anarchy by embargoing | the total trade in munitions of war arouse his curiosity, but his erudition tempers his enthusiasm, for he per- ceives so many aspects to the problem of attaining real neutrality, in policy and law, that he appears unable to| make up his mind what more to do, if anything, about it. Lectured Senate 4 Hours. On the eve of the passage of the compromise neutrality bill last month he delivered a four-hour address to the Scnate, raising so many doubts in the minds of his hearers as to the sigaificance of what had already been done that the net effect was to un- nerve confidence and delay decision in the drive for permanent neutrality legislation “with teeth in it.” Senator Thomas would not go be- yond approving re-enactment of the statute of last August, with addition of a provision prohibiting war-loans and credits, and stipulating that the act skall apply henceforth to all states that become belligerent in a war in which the United States is neutral. The compromise resolution passed by the Senate February 18 and &ingned by the President was origi- nally introduced by him, although Senator Pittman, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, spon- sored the measure on the floor. Senator Thomas appears to believe | that we have now gone far enough in | our “revolutionary” efforts to annul | the war-system and modify a trndl-! tional and an irresponsible conception | of neutrality. favor neutrality as a provisional meas- | ure of national safety, he yet declares | that it is without morality as a legal | doctrine, and is “impracticable now- adays, however useful it may have been in the past.” Occupies Middle Position. Senator Thomas. Firemen Battle Lumberygrd Blaze Bystanders watching the spectacular fire last night in the Galliher & Washington. THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C. MARCH B8, "1936—PART ONE. e Walker, who occupies a second-floor apartment. Other residents who were ferced to flee were Mr. and Mrs. P. G, Finlayson, Mr. and Mrs. John Reiss, Miss: Sylvia Walker and Miss Rose Walker. A short time later the frame home of E. W. Porter, colored, 5325 Eastern avenue northeast, was almost com- pletely destroyed by fire. Porter was alone in the house at the time. BANK STOCK LOSS RULED DEDUCTIBLE Return on Incomes as of 1933 Can Show Write-Off, Says Adams Case Stipulation. Losses on stock of the closed Fed- eral-American National Bank & Trust Co. were deductible from income tax returns in 1933, when the bank closed, according to a stipulation closing the case of Byron S. Adams, 512 Eleventh street, before the Board of Tax Ap-| peals yesterday. ! The stipulation had been antici- pated in the case, because the receiver of the bank, Cary A. Hardee, on ad- vice of the Treasury Department, had warned stockholders of the institution | in an official letter recently that 1933 | was the deductible year. | The stipulation, signed by represent- | atives of both the stockholder and the Treasury Department, was followed by an official order of the Board of Tax Appeals. The order, signed by Eugene Black, head of the board, held the | taxpayer owed the Government no de- | ficiency taxes as previously charged by | the Government. | Adams originally had claimed a loss of $23,300 in 1933, because of the bank's closing. The taxes involved were $2,665.98. Soagtoa TNT Stands for Trinitrotoluene. The chief military explosive used in the World War was trinitrotoluene, or TNT. " Combating u;e'.P.f.i:. of Arthritis suffering from arth; aing elief in Mountain V Min- Water direct from famous H Arkapsas. M ing, Nat cians for over : Mounta; Met, . _Phone for hooklet. Valley Mineral Water | 1105 K St. Nw. | Two firemen plunge in among the flames, seeking a vantage point from which to throw water. ~—Star Staff Photos. Fire (Continued From First Page.) a raging volcano by the time we got to the back of the house. and garages and sheds were beginning to blaze all along the alley. In a few minutes, While appearing 1o | the fire was so hot our back windows | began to break and we all ran to the front door. People were running out of houses all along the block.” 20 Fire Companies. Within a few minutes, fire appa- ___ ! regular stock in storage. willing to make an estimate but said that he had at least 100,000 board | feet of flooring and a new carload | of white pine. in addition to the Gas Company Aids. The Washington Gas Light Co. turned out approximately 25 emer- | gency crew workers and company ! fire apparatus, under leadership of H. | L. Leonard, company safety engineer, and they were joined by a hook and ladder and three engines from the Dis- i trict forces to protect the gas plant across Twelfth street from the blaz- | | g lumber sheds. The wind blew | ratus was converging on the scene | the sparks away from the gas plant from all nearby engine houses and in | and Leonard said that there was no little more than a half hour 20 com- ! actual danger to the plant. gotten my new car put away in the garage before the fire started.” The garage was burned to the ground. Although the fire in the center of | the square in and immediately around the lumber piles was of terrific inten- sity. it was under control except in the sheds proper within 15 minutes after the arrival of the first appara- tus and within a little more than an hour the fire was confined to the mountainous heaps of embers which had been the lumber and sheds and the danger was over. While the lumber yard blaze was at its height, fire, also of undetermined | origin, broke out in the basement of an apartment house at 1644 Columbia | road, forcing occupants to flee to the | MR. C. I. SMITH Associated for 25 Years With Hugh Reilly Co. 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The ruffled Priscilla curtains (sketched) have shell-stitched contrast corded edges. Then there are new type tailored Priscillas with ruffles at top only, and flat tailored curtains that measure 72 inches across the pair.—Third Floor, Answering the Call of Spring Fashions With These Like the Bible, therefore, Senator | streets and causing several hundred Thomas and his profound address |Danies were on the scene and 12,000 | may be quoted in support of both the feet of hose had been unlimbered. The gas company guards kept spec- | tators off the oxide dump piles along old and the new testament of neu- | The first streams were turned on the | Twelfth street closest to the flames trality and in defense of apparently | Smoldering rear walls and roofs of !although, Leonard explained, the oxide contradictory and irreconcilable forms | of national behavior in war time. The Senator occupies a middle-of-the-road position between that of the Munitions Committee, on the left, and the na- | tional isolationists or do-nothing tra- | ditionalists, on the right. Yet he| quoted Livy to the effect that “There 15 no middle ground” between war and peace! | He cited Thomas Jefferson’s len,er‘ to Robert Livingstone, September 19. | 1801, in defense of the old neutrality, | s follows: “War between two nations cannot diminish the rights of the rest of the world remaining at peace. "The doc- trine that the rights of nations re- maining quietly in the exercise of moral and social duties are to give way to the convenience of those who prefer plundering and murdering one another is a monstrous doctrine and ought to yield to the more rational law that ‘the wrong which two na- tions endeavor to inflict on each other must not infringe on the rights or conveniences of those remaining at peace’ Shall two nations turning tigets break up in one instant the peaceable relations of the whole| ‘world?” 1 To this Senator Thomas added: “I hold no brief for any one who would glory in extra profits taken from war; but T am totally unable to see why an American oil company, or a motor company, or a hot-dog salesman, or even a student or a tourist who wishes to go abroad to study and observe, should have to suspend his ordinary pursuits and suffer inconvenience and loss, simply because some state is seized with the hydrophobia of war.” Old Neutrality Dangerous. A little later, however, he exclaimed: “Neutrality in its old form is dan- gerous. If the neutral state thinks it has rights, it can maintain them only by fighting for them. We have been led into two great wars in ex- actly that fashion. Under the old law there was no interference at all by Government in the economic ac- tivities of - Americans. Public mili- tary activity must not be indulged in; but there was private economic participation of every kind. We aimed at political isolation only, and were impartial in theory, The degree of impartiality, in fact, depended upon the state of belligerent control of the trade-routes. Those facts and circumstances actually controlled our neutrality. But there was full diplo- matic support of any kind of mer- chants’ adventure. That was part of our acheme.” In regard to the present measure, he said: “Under the new theory we have made such a revolutionary change that there is a contrast in almost every item. Under the former theory, private participation in the economic and financial phases of war was al- lowed. We not only sold, for ex- ample, over $2,000,000,000 worth of . goods to the belligerent countries of Europe;—chiefly the Allies—while we were ‘neutral’ but we lent $2,000,- 000,000 to help finance the selling. Almost All Rights Abandoned. one side more than another. the six brick-and-frame houses from 1312 to 1322 Eleventh street and those at 1115 and 1117 N street. Sheds, ga- rages and wood fences in the rear of these houses already were well ablaze and were burned to the ground. Pre- liminary check revealed no automo- biles in the garages. Water was poured into most of the houses along the two sides of the square before the walls and roofs were safe from the fountains of sparks and embers. A two-story frame alley dwelling in the rear of 1322 Eleventh street, occupied by colored residents, was virtually destroyed. The occupants fled and police and firemen were un- able to get their names. Although the lumber sheds and their contents were destroyed, fire fighters were able to save the mill- ing plant and shops of the lumber firm, separated hy a small alley from | the sheds. “It was a wonderful piece of fire- fighting,” said Francis D. Klimkie- wicz, 1322 Twelfth street southeast, head of the firm. “I wouldn't have given a nickle for that mill when I first saw it, but it was scarcely dam- aged when the fire finally was under control. I don't think damage to the mill building will be more than $100.” Klimkiewicz said he would have to consult his books before he would know the exact footage of the lumber in the sheds or its value. He was un- abstention from both military and economic activity is demanded. There are stringent governmental controls over all economic intercourse with the belligerents. Political and eco- nomic isolation, impartiality in theory, are assured by the neutral—but not by the belligerent—nation in with- holding exports. It is not discretion- Ary or permissive in its provisions. It is & commanding type of law. “I think there can be no doubt,” he added, “in stressing these great changes, that it would be wrong for | us to go any further without more experimentation, or experience than we have had. Each one of the items mentioned was a radical change from the past; and we shall never know until we have run through the next 150 years of history whether the change will effect that which we tried | to do.” In reply to a request for his judg- ment of neutrality as a political theory, Senator Thomas said: “There is no morality in neutral- ity—because it is based upon a con- cept of law that ignores the ques- tion of right and wrong. However scrupulously neutral or impartial we may try to be, we are sure to hurt ‘When the United States asserted that she would sell equally to Germany and to the Allies, the actual result was that Germany could obtain nothing from us. tion then, and refused to sell to both, our neutrality would have offset the If we had reversed the situa- British Navy to the advantage of the Germans. Today, when we fefuse to sell to both Italy and Ethiopis, the result is actually to hurt Italy more than Ethiopia, for the Ethiopians| could not obtain supplies from us “Now there is an almost complete | anyhow.” abandonment of any defense of neutral rights. We have gone 5o far that, when one analyzes it, he is surprised. Public, and to an increasing degree, private y Such are some of the implications of: neutrality and the eircumstances in' which demand for reform has arisen. But the end is not yet, ¥ ’ was not particularly inflammable. Gas storage tanks, several hundred feet from the fire, were in no danger, | Leonard said. | The heat smashed windows out of the rear of an office and storage build- ing on the rear of an automobile re- pair and storage yard operated by Jacob Levine at 1310 Eleventh street. This yard has been the scene of two disastrous fires in recent years. The i flames also came within 50 feet of the gasoline station of Clark Keene at | Eleventh and N streets, but attendants | reported the buildings and property | were undamaged. It was the only | property in the mnorth half of the | square to escape damage. | Private homes which were dam- aged, all of them losing sheds and ! fences in the rear, were those of Mrs. | Kathrine C. lor, 1312 Eleventh streef™ southeast: her sons, John P. Taylor, jr., 1314 Eleventh street; Percy E. Moy, 1316 Eleventh street; Mrs. ' Annie Wheeler, 1318 Eleventh street; | Mrs. Emma Day, 1320 Eleventh street; | James I. Miles, 1322 Eleventh street; | Percy Proctor, 1115 N street south- | east, and Mrs. Susie Miner, 1117 N | street. | The Miles home, farthest south of those damaged, adjoins the alley ex- ! tending back to the lumber mill and | sheds. Houses and stores, including the show room and offices of the lum- ’ ber company, south of the alley es- | caped damage. ( An automobile truck belonging to | the Day family, parked on Eleventh | street in front of the house, escaped | damage. Lateness Saves Car. Alfonse Kunst, & roomer in the; home of Mrs. Taylor at 1312 Eleventh | | street, said that only the fact he wn‘ {late getting home from work saved new car. ‘ “I was a half hour late,” he said. “Otherwise I would have just about REASONS dollars’ ments in the building. 8 The stairway leading to the first floor was destroyed and telephone and electric light service was disrupted. Street car service on Cclumbia road was halted for about 45 minutes. 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