The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1920.

Evening Star, Issue 17279, 18 February 1920, Page 4

The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1920.

In these days of rumors and contradictions, due to a feverish The World’s haste to extract news Creditor. from the seething tur-

moil of politics and economics into which the world has been thrown, great caution is needed in the acceptance of any particular item. There seems, however, some probability about the statement that President Wilson’s Note to the Allies on the Adriatic Question contains a sinister threat. It is reported that unless a settlement is effected on the lines he advocates America will cut off Europe’s Transatlantic food supplies. This is a matter of life and death to the chief disputants, Italy and Serbia; but it is also one which practically no country in Middle and Western Europe can afford to ignore. It is much more vital than another rumored threat, since officially denied with emphasis, to withdraw the Peace Treaty from the United States Senate. For long enough the Senate have had the Treaty before them, and have done nothing with it so far as tangible results go. Still, its withdrawal would be symptomatic of a certain policy open to the United States. In plain language, it is becoming evident that in America there exists an undercurrent of feeling in favor of severing all “entangling alliances,” and assuming a splendid isolation, founded on the world’s financial indebtedness to her. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the i civilised world is mortgaged to America, and America knows it. Furthermore, she is beginning to remind the world of the unpleasant fact. For the security to bo of any value the existing political chaos in Europe must first be straightened out, so as to pave the way to the increased production necessary for payment of interest, let alone the beginnings of extinction of the debt. America’s present method in regard to political chaos in Europe is to insist on the adoption of her recipe as a cure. This, however, seems only to lead to further complications. To add to the topsy-turvydom of the position, America opposes certain variations or modifications of a Treaty which she alone of all the belligerents has so far declined to ratify. Her attitude is strangely inconsistent, at once interfering and aloof. She must have her own way, as, for instance,.!!! the Fiume controversy; but she will accept no responsibilities, as witness her refusal of mandates for any part of partitioned Turkey. All this is very distressing to the other Allies, who may either thus be coerced into decisions which, with their superior and more intimate knowledge of European conditions, they know to be fundamentally unsound, or they may ultimately be goaded into defiance of the dollar dictatorship. When the war was in progress we were told that an economic war would follow on the heels of the cessation of military operations. It bids fair to be a true prophecy, with the exception that it is not Germany that is out for world domination.