U.S. SENATE

Evening Post, Volume XCVIII, Issue 115, 12 November 1919, Page 5

U.S. SENATE

ITS TREATY DISCUSSION

LOUD VOICES NOT THE STRONGEST.

Disoussing the energetic debate on the Peace Treaty in the United States Senate, the Now York Times remarks:— It is too much to expect that foreign newspapers should take the proceedings in the Senate at thoir proper value. We ourselves have a way of hailing the speech of some obstreperous Deputy or member of Parliament in Japan, Great Britain, or Franco as the expression of the people or tho Government, without over taking the trouble to ascertain whether the man is a Jeff M'Lsmore or a Porter M'Cumber. There are as many uncovenanted statesmen in Paris and Tokio as thero Hre in Washington. It is not surprising to find Germany plucking up hope over what it calls the proceedings of the Senate. The Senate has not' procoeded anywhere yet. The Committee on Foreign Affaire has presented two reports, one a majority report and the other a minority report. It will be a long time before the Senate decides between them or decides to compromise between them. Yet in foreign lands the stray talk of Senator Johnson or somebody like him is being treated as. if it wore a decision by the Senate. Senator Lodge, we learn, has become a popular favourite in Berlin. "The dawn of a new day," the Mittag Zeitung calls the present situation in the Senate We hear of a Commander Ruser, just returned from an American internment, who is enlightening Germany about the intentions of the United States, which ho finds favourable to Germany That nation has always been incurably optimistic in the sense of regarding a straw as a good thing for a drowning man to reach for. Commander Ruser has listened toe intently to Mr. Lodge. On the other hand; a good friend of America, the Geneva Journal, published in a neutral country, despairs too soon. It, too, treats the outbreaks in the Senate as if they were deliberate actions and results. "For the ordinary, typical American politician, and even for the best of them, only one thing counts —party interest and electoral viotory." Wait until the Senate has acted. The Senate contains many men of many minds. It has always had a way of permitting all the loose, vindictive, and senseless talk that excitable Senators might choose to indulge themselves in;.but afterwards it has acted, nob always with complete wisdom, but at worst with compromises which have been found to work out well enough in the long run. Things looked pretty bad when the "twelve wilful men" prevented the armament of American ships; but those who despaired bf the country may have got some satisfaotion over tho fact that three months later General Pershing's army was beginning to land in France. Our national habit is to let outcry go as far as it likes, nnd then to let the«i!ont men make the decision. We like to think it is also the national habit of France, Great Britain, and Japan, or of tho human race. Lot Germany not exalt her horn too scon over a few Lodge^Johnson speeches, and let not our friends in Switzerland or eleewhoro feel prematurely that nil is lost.