SENT BACK UNRATIPIEIS

Evening Post, Volume XCIX, Issue 69, 22 March 1920, Page 6

SENT BACK UNRATIPIEIS

i * At one time it. appeared that the tJnited States Senate might return the Peace Treaty to the President heavily tagged with reservations;. or that the Senate might even amend the Treaty. • But worse still has happened, for the Senate, . by. orte vote, has decided to return the Treaty with a notice that the Seriate Has failed to ratify it. Ho*- many of the votes- cist against ratification ■Were due to dislike of the Treaty in.its original form, and how many were due to dislike of the Senate's own additions to' it, is hot clear; but it is cabled that "Seiiato'i's, .after the adjournment, expressed the opinion that the Treaty was now dead, without a hope of revivificatien." The question arises : . What will President Wilson do? Will he press for a revision of the Treaty that the other Powers have ratified, and which is now in force ? Or will he allow the state of war betweeri the United States atid Germany to continue ? Or will he make with Germany a separate peace (which latter course Mr. Hoover declares to be "unthinkable")? The refusal of the American Senate to ratify the Peace Treaty is bound to have an effect upon European politics. It vrould almost certainly have been used by the German Junkers to* promote a. coup, if the Kapp counter-revolution had not aliready gone off at half-cock. 'Certainly the cry for revision of the Treaty is strengthened by the non-rati-fication of one of its leading signatories, a signatory whose delegate profoundly influenced the whole character of the German-Austrian settlement, and whose delegate is still, in his Presidential capacity, actively interfering in certain details of that settlemerit-^e.g.j the Adriatic littoral disputes between Italy ori the oiie hand and the Jugo-Slavs and Albanians on the other. The whole position is paradoxical and without precedent in diplomacy. The spirit of Monroeism has driven the Treaty out of the Senate, yet the President - adopts in European affairs ah attitude of authority without. responsibility. Add to that the condition of the President's health, combined with the comparative invulnerability of the Presidential position, and the anomaly is cohiplete. Meanwhile, the German ferment has unsettled Middle ' Europe, the Turkish Treaty is still unpresented, and the existence of peace, either formally or informally, is by no means assured. The Senate's action has made the President's signature almost, if not , quite, a scrap of paper. And Europe has no tangible guarantee save the armed forces of the Allies.