Evening Post. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1919. "GRAVE-NOT DESPERATE"

Evening Post, Volume XCVIII, Issue 130, 29 November 1919, Page 6

Evening Post. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1919. "GRAVE-NOT DESPERATE"

The situation arising from the refusal of the American Senate to ratify the Peace Treaty is said to be regarded by the London Press as "grave, hut not desperate." As to the gravity of the position there is, unfortunately, no room for- doubt. Two months ago, when the illness of President Wilson and the utterly irreconcilable altitude of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee first made the outlook really black, M. Clemenceau assured us that even without the United States the League would still be operative. Within the last few- 'days Mr. Bono. Law has spoken to the same effect. "The absence of President Wilson's ratification of the Treaty would," he said, "not prevent the remaining Allies from carrying it into effect," and he added that "the Government did not lack determination to see the League of Nations become effective." These are brave words and proper words, but they cannot conceal the fact that the difficulties of a colossal task would be almost intolerably aggravated by the abstention of the United States, or that the determination of the British Government to make the League of Nations effective is a very different thing from the capacity of the nation and its European Allies to see the thing through. "The future of the British Empire," says Mr Lloyd George, "depends upon the settlement of the Turkish question." Why is a settlement delayed which is at least as important as the problem of Alsace-Lorraine, and which becomes more difficult and more perilous every day? Mr. Lloyd George himself has answered the question with perfect candour -The delay in signing peace with Turkey," he said in his speech at Sheffield on the 18th October, "is attributable to the fact that it is not known whether America is going to share the burdens of civilisation outside the United States."

The terrible plight of Armenia illustrates the effect of this procrastination and the utter impotence of the League of Nations, and even to a large extent of its individual members, while the uncertainty continues. Through one of their Admirals the United States issued a warning to Turkey to stop the Armenian massacres, but the warning was officially described as "purely informal," and tho murderers, knowing it to be purely blank cartridge, went on with their work. They have since received further encouragement from the withdrawal of British troops, conducted,' as Mr. Lloyd George ruefully admits, "in the interests of economy," and at the instance, we may add, of those humanitarians whose burning philanthropy will not tolerate "Imperialism" of any kind, even when it supplies millions of helpless people with their only protection against murder. The Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate has been duly informed that the conditions in Armenia have been horrible since the British withdrawal. "Turks and Tartars," said the Assistant Secretary of State, "threaten the extinction of the Armenians in a short period. An Armenian delegation waited upon the Senate's committee with a similar story, and preferred a request that the United States should immediately send troops to Armenia and become her mandatory. But the philanthropists of the Senate, like their fellow-humanitarians on the other side of the Atlantic, regard "Imperialism" and "militarism" as wicked, oppressive, and abominable things. They are prepared to make the world as- safe for democracy as. rhetoric can make it, but to make the world safe for the Armenians by sending a few thousand soldiers to help them would be an affront to the memory of Washington and to American independence which Senator Lodge will never tolerate.

But Armenia, where before the war American missionaries had laboured with such brilliant success, is merely an example of the general attitude of America, as represented by her Senate, to what may be called Imperial missionary enterprise. As in the East, so in the West. As in Armenia, so in Alsace-Lorraine. The Americans under this leadership will surely repudiate any responsibility for guarding the new frontier which they have helped to make for France. They will regard the Rhine as no more their concern than the frontiers of India, and will retire into a complacent enjoyment of the blessings of the Monroe Doctrine. This happiness may last until another tyrant comes along to show that if Europe becomes unsafe- for democracy, something more than the intrinsic merits of the Monroe Doctrine will be needed for the security of American democracy. But, as the Atlantic is getting narrower every day, this dream of a self-centred peace, free from any responsibility or care for the rest of the world, may not last long. Should another world-war be needed to drive home the lesson of the last three years and to prove that America's active participation in world politics is not a luxury or a fad but an essential condition of her security and her- development, let us hope that the ordeal will not be so terrible as the last, and that its teaching will abide.

It would, of course, be premature to assume that America has definitely turned her back upon what appeared to be her manifest destiny; The Treaty is not yet formally killed, and, as Mr Bonar Law points out, the Anglo-French-Americnn Convention has not even been formally considered. The Convention which guaranteed immediate help for France against German aggression, and is commonly known as France's Reinsurance Treaty, was not touched by the resolutions of the Senate. Tho French, to most of whom this Treaty means more than the League of Nations itself, have been hoping that 'it might be saved from the wreck the Senate was preparing for the rest of the President's work. But the jealous independsne. and ths fi.rc- l-spudiaiion of interlutipnal i-spoasibilities which h»vo cmn-

■bined with personal and party animosities to inflame the opposition to the League of Nations, seem likely to find an equally attractive target in the Reinsurance Treaty The position, however, is, as the London Press says, grave but not desperate, and a compromise which may save even the League of Nations in some attenuated form is not beyond hope.