THE CABINET: Panay Pandemonium

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The word, "requests" was written in the President's hand in place of "suggests" which appeared in the original draft. The memorandum also asked for a full apology, compensation, and guarantees against a repetition of such attacks. Since Japan's Emperor Hirohito, to Japanese minds, is a divinity who is not of the Government but above it, the knottiest problem posed for trie Japanese was 1) how to bring the matter to his attention or 2) how to avoid doing so without offending the U. S. By week's end Washington was assured that the Roosevelt note had been brought to Hirohito's attention by Premier Fumimaro Konoye.

First apology came from Ambassador Hirosi Saito. When Secretary Hull got back to his office after his call on the President, he found wiry, worried little Mr. Saito waiting to extend "full regrets and apologies." In Tokyo, before U. S. Ambassador Joseph C. Grew could make arrangements to transmit the President's note to the Tokyo Foreign Office, he received a call from Foreign Minister Koki Hirota. Later, in a formal note the Foreign Minister presented his Government's apologies for the incident and its promises to "deal appropriately with those responsible for the attack."

What made last week's diplomatic crisis increasingly grave was that Japan's running fire of apologies were accompanied by a running fire of reports from survivors of the Panay. These made it apparent that not only had the Panay been boarded and identified by the Japanese, but bombed in broad daylight, machine-gunned by four planes, after the bombing, and finally machine-gunned by two Japanese motor boats as she was sinking (see p. 13).

Resolution. Aim of the Neutrality Bill, enacted this year was to keep the U. S. out of situations leading to war by enabling the President to embargo U. S. shipments to belligerents. Since the Kellogg Pact renouncing war, no wars have been declared. To undeclared wars the President can apply the Neutrality Act or not, as he sees fit. The law for which the Panay sinking last week surprisingly supplied momentum in Congress was one which, as an expression of pacifism, made the Neutrality Act look like a speech by Mussolini.

Introduced by Indiana's Representative Louis Leon Ludlow, it sought to amend the U. S. Constitution to make it illegal for Congress to declare war except in the case of armed invasion. According to the Ludlow proposal, at other times "the authority of Congress to declare war shall not become effective until confirmed by a majority of votes cast in a nationwide referendum."

If the amendment became part of the Constitution, as New York Times Pundit Arthur Krock, who called it "dream-born" and a "museum piece," pointed out, any nation could "peacefully" occupy any part of the U. S. without danger of having war declared before a national election had been held.

Representative Ludlow is an amiable