PRESIDENT HARDING'S INVITATIONS.
ONCE more America has a golden opportunity to help • a suffering world, and in doing so to help herself. Once more her chief citizen and chief magistrate has decided to seize the opportunity. It is our strong hope and belief that history will not repeat itself, and that the fruits of America's decision will not turn sour and wither as did those which came from the hands of President Wilson. It is not for us to declare how far that great miscarriage of noble ideals and noble aspirations was due to personal faults—to egotistic delusions, to self-confidence, to plotting, and to intrigue, to fatal and feverish misunderstandings, to the sacrificing of the substance for the shadow, to strivings to snatch light from a rainbow, to ignorings of less radiant but more useful illuminants, to doing, in a word, what the singer did who "cracked a weak voice to too lofty a tune. We are content in our confidence that President Harding has noted the signs of the times and that the warning of Paris will not be lost upon him. It is no use to pretend that the world has found a panacea in the principle of self-determination. That principle is one which has been accepted, nay welcomed, from time immemorial by wise men as an ideal. The trouble has always been that it is not a key that will fit every lock or even ten per cent. of the locks. There are, alas ! plenty of nations and plenty of areas where its application brings not peace but a sword. The making of boundaries, the holding of plebiscites, which have resulted in impossible configurations, the sacrifice of logic and of abstract right to policy, or even to the purely ambitious claims that could not safely be denied, have left the world not only exhausted but disenchanted. No one now talks of internationalism in heroic terms. It leapt once so eagerly to what seemed a promise of escape and regeneration. Now" it hears a god's tremendous voice, 'Be counselled and retire,'" and turns for its last hope to what may be called the material aspect of peace. The less the world is armed, the less chance is there of serious fighting. That is why mankind is asking almost piteously for disarmament by agreement. "Let .us at least take the harness off our backs lest it crush us to death." Men feel that this is the one way left them of making the world safe for peace, liberty, and popular government. Though we do not yet know the exact details of President Harding's plan, we know enough to recognize the wisdom and statesmanship with which it has been thought out. In the first place, the President is asking the Powers to a conference on disarmament. They will be asked to make binding agreements in limitation of expenditure on preparations for war. Such contracts can be perfectly well made without disturbing the League of Nations. Again, they can be made by Powers which stand outside the League, like the United States herself. That is a long step in the right direction ; and if such language did not sound paltry and impertinent in such a context, we should express our intense gratitude to the President. As it is, all that we need do is to express a fervent hope that the President in the great work before him will be able to avoid the spites and the follies, the craziness and the crookedness, of the Paris Conference, and of those new types of secret and degenerate diplomacy which festered and flourished in the congested area of official Paris, that swarming midden of bureaucracy and diplomacy, politics and finance. Again, we feel sure that President Harding will avoid the terrible pitfalls into which his predecessor floundered and into which he led our Government, and half the Governments of the world, owing to his persistence in ignoring the plain words of the written Constitution of the United States. It may be a good thing or a bad thing that the Constitution of the United States should place an absolute veto over all treaties in the lands of one-third plus one of the Senators, and often, indeed, into those of a smaller number of Senators. To ratify a treaty there must be a two-thirds -majority of the Senators voting, which may very often mean that the veto can be exercised by a quarter of the actual number of Senators in being. Again, it may be wrong or injudicious, or partisan, or per- sonal and petty, for the Senators to use their tremendous powers ; but to heap moral odium upon them and on a great political party because it bases its action upon the clauses of the Constitution is absurd. The framers of the Constitution wanted the Senators to act as they did act, provided that was their personal view, and not to be swept off their feet by the pressure of public opinion. Mr. Wilson led people who had not taken the trouble to peruse the Constitution of the United States to believe in an inter- pretation of the Constitution which he had chosen to adopt, but which, if he had been a man of a less obstinate type of mind, he would have pointed out to them was only his own personal view, and not necessarily the right view. No doubt his action was entirely innocent in intention, but its effects were none the less fatal to the achievement he desired. He gave the impression, that is, that he could certainly carry the Senate with him and that he was authorized to speak for America. As it turned out, however, he had not secured the support of the Senate, though very probably he could have secured it if he had stooped to wisdom and remembered that it is given to very few men—perhaps, indeed, to none—to adopt successfully the attitude of Olympus. But even if he had conciliated the Senate, it is very doubtful whether he would have had the people of America behind him.
President Harding, we may feel sure, will not fall into this error. He will before he acts make it quite clear that any scheme to which he assents must require ratification, and that ratification cannot be assumed as certain. In this matter the President will clearly be greatly helped by the fact that the Disarmament Conference is to sit at Washington. In the cool atmosphere of that enchanting city the nations will be taught not to forget the Senate and the tremendous powers with which, in the matter of foreign relations, it is armed by the Constitution.
But President Harding's determination to help the world and to make amends for his predecessor's failure does not stop at the calling of the Disarmament Conference. He is also inviting the Powers concerned with the North Pacific and the Far East to a preliminary discussion of their special affairs. In other words, he desires that before the general question of disarmament is approached what are now the matters most likely to trouble the world's peace shall be placed on a just and amicable basis. The Powers concerned are, of course, the United States and ourselves, Japan and China. The British Empire is willing, and more than willing, to undertake such necessary pre- liminary work, and we are glad to see it publicly stated that Japan and China are equally ready. Let us hope that the arrangements made will be just, generous, and reasonable, and that any appearance of a Chauvinistic spirit will be entirely banished from the consultation.
When we are dealing with the problem of the Far East we ought, for fear of misunderstanding, to say very plainly that we have no desire that Japan should be shut up in a water-tight compartment. It may be that in Korea and the other territory which she has acquired during the last twenty years there is room for the over-spill of her population. But if this is not so, then most assuredly Japan must have some area marked out for the future accommodation of her surplus inhabitants. This need for new homes must not, of course, be allowed to disturb the communities which prefer their own special forms of growth and development, but, on the other hand, Japan must not have her just claims for expansion met with a mere veto.
We have only one regret to express in regard to the new development, but it is one of considerable importance. It is that, owing to the way in which the matter has been dealt with by our Government, we have lost the opportunity of making that impression upon American public opinion which the Spectator so strongly desires. It is now clear that we shall not be able to seize the opportunity of making an unmistakable and public sign of friendship to the people of the United States by interpreting in action, and even anticipating, their instinctive desire that we should not have diplomatic ties with Japan, and that if any Power is to claim a position of peculiar amity with us it shall be those of ottr own kin. We are to go into the Conference arm in arm with japan. Though we shall have filed in the offices of the League of Nations. a clause intelligible, no doubt, to the experts, but unintelligible to the ordinary man, pointing out that this arm-linking is not to be taken to mean any- thing, the effect on the public mind of America will still be one of ambiguity. President Harding and the State Department will realize that in effect we are once more free, and will there- fore be fully satisfied as to the amity of our intentions, but can anyone say that is all that is wanted ? It will not be the business of the State Department to make matters clear to the people of the United States, nor, indeed, would it be of any use for it to attempt the task if it were its business, for such an attempt would only puzzle American public opinion the more and make people say in effect : What's the game now ? If the Britishers were really straight, they would tell us this themselves and not leave it to others."
In other words, under the arrangements sketched by Mr. Lloyd George, we shall still leave ourselves open to the attacks of that section of the American population who wish us ill on the ground that we seem to prefer the friendship of Japan to the friendship of the United States. If America were nearer, and if Americans were sufficiently interested in foreign affairs or studied them in enough detail, we could perhaps explain away our retention of the Alliance, but, unfortunately, explaining away—always a difficult task— is an impossibility when the details of the subject are quite unfamiliar to the person to whom the explanation is offered. The Americans would, we fear, misunder- stand our explanations, for they would have forgotten the facts upon which our long and involved explanations were based. They will always be apt to say, "There must be something queer about the British, or they would never have acted the way they did." The maxims "Innocence has a very short style and "He who excuses himself accuses himself" find easy access to men's minds.
We do not want to exaggerate the effect of all this, but it is a pity—a great pity. Therefore, even though we fear it is useless, we repeat once more our appeal to our Govern- ment at once to denounce the treaty. We have a per- fectly good ground for doing so. Let us say to Japan, `.` We want to enter both the Disarmament Conference and the Far East Conference absolutely unfettered. We want to be free, morally as well as legally, to take any line we hire." If we take this line, neither' Japan nor any other Power will have the slightest right to say that we are acting harshly, discourteously, or disloyally in dropping the Alliance.
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