Manawatu Evening Standard. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 30, 1919. AMERICA AND THE PEACE TREATY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIII, Issue 1711, 30 December 1919, Page 4

Manawatu Evening Standard. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 30, 1919. AMERICA AND THE PEACE TREATY.

The close of the year finds the Peace Treaty still unratified, and there can be no resisting the conclusion that our American Ally is directly responsible for the unfortunate position that has thus arisen. The Treaty itself was subscribed to by the representatives of the Allied Powers and Germany on June 25, and was accepted by both the French Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, as also by the British House ot Commons aud the House of Lords early in July. Italy has also accepted it, but America bolds aloof, as the result of the unfortunate attitude of the United States Senate, which must approve ol all treaties concluded by the President with foreign Powers, before they can have the force of law. There are strong grounds for presuming that the Republican policy, which is voiced by Senator Lodge, is dictated more by the desire to placate the German-Amcrican and irish-Amcricau vote, in view of the Presidential election next year, than by the wish to preserve the people of the United States from the entangling alliances, which the Republicans contend acceptance, of the Treaty and the League of Nations would entail. To the Allied Governments, whose representatives deferred so greatly to President Wilson’s opinions in order to secure America’s whole-hearted co-operation in the Peace settlement, the action of the Senate is not only embarrassing, hut extremely disappointing. Beyond that disappointment, however, there is visible, on the part of Germany, an evident and continuous desire to evade the responsibilities her acceptance of the Treaty entails, and to make the most of the American failure to ratify its provisions. The protracted discussions that have taken place over the signing of the Protocol, and the palpable attempts that the Germans have made to evade responsibility for the failure to surrender floating material by way of compensation for the Scapa Flow sinkings, roupled with the semi-defiant attitude of the German delegation, and the sinister outlook in Germany itself, where the militarists appear to have regained the upper hand, are all directly attributable to the desire to gain time to sec what America proposes to do. If, in the final result, the American Senate refuses to ratify the Treaty, ov insists upon reservations that will devroy its essential portion, by converting the League of Nations into a mere alliance of European Powers, through America’s •distention from membership, then America will have to conclude a separate peace with Germany, and one that may, in its incidence, prove actually detrimental- to Anglo-British, _ Italian and Japanose. inforests. The dis-service America would thus render to the cause of her quondam Allies is too serious to ho regarded with equanimity. Tjhe position is the more unfortunate] in that President Wilson’s protracted, illness ■ , - I :

has loft the United States Government practically without an authoritative voice in regard to its policy. Had the President been able to continue his prqTreaty campaign through the States ; it is probable—indeed, more than possible —that he would have so wrought upon public opinion as to stifle the Republican opposition to the League of Nations. When America entered the war and became an active participant in world politics, she abandoned her old policy of non-intervention in European affaire, and as, through her President, and the American representatives at the Peace Conference, she is directly responsible for the terms of settlement arrived at, she can hardly escape the moral responsibility thrust upon her of upholding the Peace Treaty in its entirety. Obviously; the Treaty itself is one of compromise, and, if each of the Allied Powers accepting it followed the American example, making exceptions hero, and reservations there, the Treaty would be so largely modified as to be scarcely recognisable. All democratic Governments have their limitations, and America is not without hers. But it does seem the height of folly, for a nation like the Americans, to first of all entrust their delegates with the duty of arriving at an understanding with the Allies, in regard to Germany, and, after that understanding has been arrived at, and an agreement made that is accepted as binding upon the other signatories, to begin afresh the business of settlement, discarding tin’s provision, re-modelling that, and making sundry reservations which further modify it. That has been the attitude of the American Seriate all the way through, and it has thus been a prolific source of embarrassment to their Allies. The Peace Conference, which sits afresh in Paris to-morrow, is reduced, by the action of the American Senate, to the representatives of the three principal Powers—Britain, France and Italy— Japan having been practically jockeyed out of position by the American attitude in regard to her claims upon China.