AMERICAN TREATIES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20028, 18 August 1928, Page 10

AMERICAN TREATIES.

In negotiating with Egypt a treaty of arbitration, the United States Government continues its policy of multiplying such bilateral international covenants. Little information is available concerning the draft of this particular treaty, but it may be taken for granted that it follows the usual lines of those made with other countries, and therefore registers a general undertaking to submit disputes to arbitrators specially chosen to deal with particular issues as they Just how the United States Government proposes to regard a State not fully sovereign, for Egypt's foreign relations come within the reservations attaching to the British declaration of 1922 which is still in force, does not appear. Probably, however, Bi'ifcam will raise no objection, provided there is given in the draft treaty adequate recognition of Egypt' 3 existing obligations. British opinion is strongly in favour of arbitration treaties, and a cognate proposal for a treaty of this kind between the United States and Canada has not produced objection by the British Government. But what inevitably invites comment is the steadfast reluctance of official opinion in the United States to consider membership in the League of Nations, while eager to add to the number of these separate treaties and to conclude with as many nations as possible a multilateral covenant renouncing war as an instrument of national policy. In the League's covenant the principle of arbitration has comprehensive expression—articles 12, 13, 14 and 15 are explicit—and its machinery is completely capable of handling all disputes. To be so bent on doing the very things for which the League stands, and ret to be so determined to stand apart from the League, are incongruously incompatible attitudes. This is carrying "splendid isolation" to an extreme at once comic and regrettable.