THE H.B. TRIBUNE. MONDAY, JANUARY 5, 1919. AMERICA AND THE TREATY.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume X, Issue 18, 5 January 1920, Page 4

THE H.B. TRIBUNE. MONDAY, JANUARY 5, 1919. AMERICA AND THE TREATY.

We have had before so many, so varying, and, on the whole, so largely unfulfilled forecasts with regard to America’s ultimate ratification of the Peace Treaty and the League of Nations Covenant that there is now very little disposition to accept any fresh predictions on the subject. There has. probably come over the whole British community throughout the world, and over our European Allies a sense, of helpless resignation to a situation which they themselves can do little, if anything, to relieve. There is therefore now only a kind of detached interest stirred by the reports contained in recent cable messages with regard to a probable tkpprochement between the Democrat supporters of an out-and-out acceptance of the Treaty and Covenant and that section of the Republican Party which geeks to introduce wliat are called “mild reservations.” President Wilson has himself, ,of course, pronounced against anything in the way of material modification, declaring that the Treaty and Covenant as approved, on behalf of the United States, by himself and his fellow-delegates at the Versailles Conference and presented to the Senate must be ratified or rejected in toto. In the latter case, he has further declared, Ainericans must reconcile themselves to being, regarded by their European associates in the. war as sacrificing the broad interests of humanity to the narrower and doubtful interests of their own country. However, it seems, a fairly safe thing to assume that the tick President’s personal influence in the case is at a very low ebb, and that it is not likely to recover decisive strength, even were he so restored to health as to enable him to bring it to bear. It ,is therefore quite likely that only in a policy of compromise such as is suggested bes any likelihood, of an, early ratification such as will admit of America s assuming any real material part at all in the world-wide task of reorganization and reconstruction. That the Republican opposition to acceptance nag largely been dictated by personal resentments and animosi- 1 ties directed against the President individually is quite apparent from the manner in which the subject is handled by the Republican press. For instance a Californian organ of the Republican Party by no means one exhibiting the most pronounced antipathy to the Wilsonian control, would put upon the President the sole responsibility for the deadSck that appeared to have been reached. “The President,” it says, “blundered when he. went to Europe. He could have gained more if he had been ■ willing to act through other men. He blundered when he refused to take his partners, in treaty-making, or any one else, into consultation. He blundered by having no plan. He blundered when he decided that covenant and treaty should be found in one instrument He blundered when he boasted that he would so arrange things as to compel acceptance of his will as law. Coming home, he blundered further by thinking he could coerce, men of independent minds into doing that which both their minds and thenconsciences condemned. He blundered by pursuing a policy of im possible secrecy. He blundered when he stubbornly refused to consider the adoption of reservations which in the main merely redeclared what he held was in the treaty either expressly or by implication. He blundered by going on his propaganda journey across our continent. He finally- has blundered by leading his partisans to a pass wherein they are in a mood to kill the whole treaty.”

Arguing thus, even the “moderates” among the Republican Party have hitherto absolved themselves from being in any way reasonably accountable for the fact that the Treaty has been sa long hung up and its embodied League Covenant kept wholly inoperative. They have said that if the Treaty and the Covenant are beaten, then the credit or discredit must belong not to Senator Borah and his “battalion of death,” who would repudiate them altogether, but to Senator Hitchcock and his Democratic following, who have so far backed the President in his insistence upon an unqualified acceptance. The “reservationists” among the Republicans, they maintain ,are not the enemies of a League of Peace, and never have been. On the contrary, they contend that but for their conciliatory attitude both compacts would, so ‘far as the United States are concerned, have had their quietus l°ng ago. But, laying aside all thought of party advantage, _ they have striven to keep both alive with the purpose of conferring upon them a prospect of lengthy existence by appending interpretations and reservations which will alone secure the permanent and cordial co-operatior. of the American people in fulfilling the basic purposes in each. They claim, indeed ,that sanity has been all on their side, in that thev foresaw that, whatever formal resolutions of congressional approval might be carried, the essential good will of the country would not be behind them, and that therefore they would be foredoomed either to revocation at the earliest possible opportunity, or else to a speedy death from sheer inanition. They, in effect, have claimed that unqualified legislative ratification would in the end prove to be a mere empty formality, cariying with it nothing in the shape of the popular acclamation which is necessary to make America’s P al j ticipation in the League’s, proposed activities an actual and vital force.

How far-these Republican disputants are sincere in their professed belief in the arguments they adduce, and in the estimate they present to the world as to the feeling of the mass of the American people, it is, of course, impossible to decide, liie purpose of quoting them 13 merely that our readers should have opportunity of seeing’ both sides of the picture and of judging for themselves,’from such -knowledge as they may have of the ethics of American political life, which is the more likely to be the true ope. In any event, assuming the declared Repub; UCad conception of American sentiment" bn ' tire subjects under jjrtcus-sion-to be the true one, it is difficult to find in it anjrthing that- is calculated to elevate the American, peop.e in the world’s opinion. The reasons

given are, indeed, only such as go to confirm the previously received impression that this great people is great in little more than numbers and material resources, that it has yet a long way to go before it attains its full moral stature, and that it has yet much to learn before it can take its place as one of the influential factors in the world’s regeneration. The narrowness of the outlook is only emphasized by the declaration now being somewhat truculently made in Republican circles that the reservations which would- have proved satisfactory some months ago are now regarded as insufficient, or, as one Republican organ puts it, “that opposition to the Treaty and Covenant as a whole is now much more formidable, and that the demand for stiff reservations has become irresistible.” Into this there can be read nothing else than a factious counter-offensive, so to speak, for assuredly, on the merits of the case in its international application, the reservations that were sufficient four or five months ago can scarcely be inadequate now. As has been said, it is quite impossible out here to make even a rational guess at what may be .the ultimate fate of this so vital preliminary to the restoration of real peace in the world. On the other hand, British comment is' such as to. be anything but helpful to a solution. Both among public men and in-the press there is verj' manifest a disposition to subordinate frank criticism to the maintenance of “AngloAmerican friendly relations.” More especially is this suggested by the fact that President Wilson’s opponents have not hetitated to taunt him with having been “fooled by Europe, and especially by Britain, into an arrangement which helped other Powers at the expense of the United States.” This is a notion apparently intolerable to the “shrewd” American who seems to forget how much he and his country have, during the last five years, prospered “at the, expense of’ nearly every nation in Europe. It surely is not too much for the financially and economically crippled Old World to expect a little of its own back, even should, it involve some substantial relaxation of the “traditional American policy.” with which we ate so constantly faced, as if. it were an irrevocable and’ immutable thing.