FOREIGN RELATIONS: Spilt Tea

Britain and the U.S. have signed a secret treaty. The secret came out in a meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and broke up the meeting.

The treaty’s provisions were not revealed. But isolationists, who want to make capital of the fact that Britain and the U.S. have a secret understanding, said it is a reciprocal agreement to exempt all U.S. -owned properties and products which are needed for defense from taxation in Britain, and vice versa.

Best information was, however, that the treaty merely exempted from taxes defense plants in one country which were paid for by the Government of the other, in effect relieving the British of paying rent on the industrial trenches which they have built in the U.S.

Secretary of State Cordell Hull and Britain’s Ambassador to Washington, Viscount Halifax, signed the agreement on Oct. 17. Marked “confidential” by the State Department, it was sent to the Senate on Oct. 3 1, with an urgent letter from President Roosevelt. But Congress was busy wrestling with the Neutrality Act (see p. 22).

Last week Michigan’s isolationist Senator Vandenberg spilt the news of Franklin Roosevelt’s secret treaty. By threatening to stir up opposition in tax-hungry States and cities, Senator Vandenberg forced the hand of long Tom Connally, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. From Chairman Connally: a promise that terms of the tax treaty will be made public.