AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18803, 5 March 1923, Page 4

AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY.

Tits Senate at Washington has not shown itself prepared to accept at short notice President Harding’s proposal that the United States should take the necessary steps to enter upon membership of the International Court of Justice. It has rejected Senator King’s motion providing for the ratification of the protocol relating to the Court. The division fairly closely followed party fines. The voting as not regarded, however, as any real test of the sentiment of the Senate concerning the President’s proposal, but merely as an indication that the majority of the Senators decline to be hurried into a decision, for they consider it desirable that they should ponder the question at leisure during the recess\upon which Congress is now entering. While the matter is shelved in the meantime, President Harding should find reason for satisfaction in the general reception which his proposal seems to/have encountered throughout the country, 'and no special cause for discouragement in the narrow margin by which the Senate has declared at least for delay. It is likely that strong feeling among the Republican senators against the proposal will be maintained, but it does not follow that it will ultimately prevail. One immediate result of the action taken by the President and Mr Hughes is that the floodgates of discussion have been opened widely on the important subject of the foreign relations of the United States. From certain quarters attention has been redirected to the scheme for an Association of Nations under the parentage of the Harding Administration. Outside of the United States at least this nnAt seem to be a visionary and supererogatory notion, and if the present Administration at Washington considers that it is under any pledge in the matter it is discreet in evincing no haste to discuss its practical aspects. By his own countrymen President Harding’s leaning towards the International Court of Justice appears to be regarded as an effort to pave the way for a broader foreign policy, and there is reason to judge that American public opinion recognises in any increasing measure the desirability of such effort. A Republican Administration has thrown itself open, it is true, to the taunt that it contemplates the adoption of a child of the League of Nations, but its foreign policy can achieve nothing on a basis of anti-Leugue sentiment, and its recognition of the value of the International Court, resting upon self-interest as well as upon.considerations of wider range, is none the less satisfactory because it carries inferentially a suggestion of recognition of the value of the League itself. There seems to be no reason why the questions raised by Senator Borah respecting the compulsory aspect of arbitrament by the Court should cause the Government embarrassment, or why the position in that relation under the protocol with which the great European Powers are content should not satisfy the United States. For the rest, everything that contributes to the prestige of the Intemaional Court should contribute also to that of the League.