Wairarapa Daily Times [Established 45 Years.] THURSDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1920. AN AMERICAN THUNDERBOLT.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 46, Issue 14240, 21 October 1920, Page 4

Wairarapa Daily Times [Established 45 Years.] THURSDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1920. AN AMERICAN THUNDERBOLT.

Though the League of Nations seems almost moribund, the situation is not really so bad, for the rest of the world is too palpably awaiting the final decision of America at the beginning of next month. The League Covenant is the main issue for the Presidential elections, and while the actual platforms of both Republican and Democratic conventions were so vaguely worded as to seem hardly different on this great question, yet the violent attack and parry recorded by our cable messages during the last few days allow clearly how each side in the campaign is shapi?)«£ on the general question. The -Kupublicans alleged that reports of proceedings at the Versailles peace debates proved that President Wilson had promised Serbia and Rouinania American aid if those countries were attacked. After some days of hot controversy and a triumphant challenge to the Democratic President to produce the, shorthand reports, President Wilson did so and blew the bottom out of the charge. Not content with merely the successful parry, the President attacks in turn with the remarkable declaration that during the Versailles proceedings, so far from not consulting American opinion, lie even requested and received advice from leaders of the Republican party concerning the form and content of the League Covenant. Mr. Taft suggested four amendments of President Wilson’s policy and all were adopted; Mr. Charles Hughes suggested seven, of which five were accepted; and

live also were followed from six sent by Mr Elihu Root, Among Mr Taft’s amendments were provisions concerning the Monroe Doctrine and Oriental immigration. This declaration must strike the Republicans not so much as a thrust as a thunderbolt. It will also agitate the world ontside. We have been told by President Wilson’s opponents for a year past that the grievance of Amer ica against him and the League is that he fashioned the vital clauses of its covenant without presenting the views of all national parties. Has this •declaration to the contrary hitherto been smothered, or was it deliberately reserved as a shrewd trump card for the main crisis of the great political game in America? We have been told repeatedly that the American people really did want the League and were prepared to join it, that the pretended difference over Article X. was merely party animosity 7 . It looks now (if these are, indeed, the facts) as though that is the plain truth, and that the League has been held up in America for puiely party purposes. If this be the ease, the outside world’s comments may be expected to be bitter, but the bitterness will not last under the revival of international good feeling which would follow America’s adhesion o the principles of the Covenant. A new conference of ■world powers would probably be called to revise the compact of the League s final adoption. Nobody will deny the need for some restoration of unanimity and joint authority of the world’s chief Powers —to them at least; of all Powers, great and small, if possible* The League : created Poland, and the League’s control of Poland is rapidly becoming imperative. Otherwise the League will have been responsible jsimply for, the importing afresh . into Central Europe .of a horrible disease which in the not too distant future may have spread beyond check save by another great war. The name of that disease is really militarism—the very thing which the League set out to kill when it established, among other things free Poland. American non-adherence to the League last year was the first cause of'the decline of the League’s authority (if the League can bo said ever to have had any); and that loss of authority has been no more painfully apparent than in the series of cases first of Poland’s attack on the Bolsheviks (.however great the provocation), secondlv of the Red Armies’ threatened wiping‘out of Poland, and now, on a return swing of the pendulum, of Poland's advance into Russia and Lithuania. However fascinating to the student of history and the humanities these vivid scenes may 7 be—and the rise and fall of Poland’s fortunes have been intensely dramtic —the net result of it all is gjjave danger of another.general war in Europfr. The world must either authorise the League Covenant, or abandon it and return to international alliances and counter alliances; and for the authority of the League, the United States is an essential party.