National Affairs: Contours

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Dr. George Horace Gallup, the Iowa professor of journalism who developed public pulse-taking as an aid to advertisers, later as a mirror to newsreaders, a guide to politicians, last week reported that, of his pollees:

> 65% favored boycotting Germany.

> 57% wanted the Neutrality Act revised to let the U. S. sell war supplies to France and England. (Three years ago pollees favored embargoes on war material.)

> 51% expected European war this year.

> 58% believed the U. S. would be drawn into it. (In 1937 only 44% so believed.)

While Dr. Gallup's doorbell-ringers sought a statistical answer to the question of whether or not people want the U. S. to participate in a world conference to avert war, TIME through its correspondents and news services traced a contour map of U. S. public opinion. Object: to break down Dr. Gallup's national totals into the kinds and degrees of war sentiment dominant in the U. S. last week prior to Franklin Roosevelt's dramatic peace invitation to the Dictators (see P-13).

Except for a few spots (Denver, Chicago), preoccupation with the war question was general. Everywhere people opposed any war but sided with the Democracies if there must be one. Everywhere their belief that should Europe fight, the U. S. would be drawn in, was a fatalistic, unhappy, shoulder-shrugging belief. In few quarters was any one so cheerfully cynical as retired General Smedley D. ("Gimlet Eye") Butler of the U. S. Marines, who said at Albuquerque, N. Mex.: "After Italy and Germany get the swamps and deserts they're after, they'll all sit down and talk it over." Still fewer were as cheerfully bellicose as Sergeant Alvin C. York, No. 1 U. S. hero of the last war, who said at Pall Mall. Tenn.:

"Hitler and Mussolini jes' need a good whuppin' and it looks like Uncle Sam's gonna have to do it."

A common attitude of American Legionnaires was: "No fighting for us off U. S. soil."

On the Northwest Coast, with Japan straight across the Pacific, awareness of war's imminence was at peak. People took its coming for granted. Goat-bearded young Roman Catholic Bishop Gerald Shaughnessy of Seattle preached loudly against U. S. participation. A British Consul and the journalist dean at Washington State University argued hotly, their nerves on edge, as to who should "shut up," Britain or the U. S. The man-in-the-street's preoccupation was: will the draft get me?

In Portland, Ore. pessimism was profound. Wealthy families were reported hoarding food supplies in mountain cabins. Meddling in Europe's affairs was deplored in a newspaper poll, but Portland's leading liberal minister, Unitarian Richard M. Steiner declared: "If war comes, let us move swiftly to make it as short as possible." He proposed giving U. S. food and war supplies to the Democracies gratis.

San Francisco, believing war inevitable, wanted U. S. action to be constructive. A front-page editorial last month in the conservative Chronicle, calling loudly for a stand against the Dictators, was applauded by 70% of letters-to-the-editor. At the Institute of Pacific Relations' round table talks. President Roosevelt's plan to use all measures short of war was seconded.