(November 8, 2016 at 9:33 am)abaris Wrote: I can see the mindset that went into these polls, given the time and circumstances. In their overwhelming majority people didn't want to go to war. But at the same time the US stretched the term neutrality to it's limits right from day 1. By providing british naval forces with intelligence and similar actions. I can see why an observer might consider actual conflict to be inevitable. The situation with Japan was brewing since 1937 when they invaded China. So I'm pretty sure that was on the radar of the media and gave reason for concern too.
Regarding the Germans attitude at first was that this was just another round of the perpetual European civil war. The wild string of German victories up to and including the Fall of France caused a change in that.
As for the China Incident T. V. Soong, Hu Shih and the Dragon Lady* kept the US informed about the aggressive natural of the Japanese foreign policy in their country. We were also getting reports of violations of the Nine Power Treaty, evictions and/or murder of our missionaries, and demand by Japan that US business (and all other "foreign" businesses for that matter) had to have a Japanese as the ranking member of the company and any profits couldn't leave the occupied sections of China. All in all, not good for the Japanese public relations efforts.
*"The Dragon Lady" was the nickname for Mrs. Chiang, sister to the aforementioned Soong.
