When the clash of principles comes in Congress, as come
it must, it will have to be decided whether the State Department can continue to pretend that things can both be and not be. The United States is deeply committed by what may be called her spheres of influence in Central America and in the Caribbean Sea, but, as the Washington correspondent of the Times justly points out, she argues as though a sphere of influence in China or elsewhere were something necessarily contrary to morals. For our part we welcome the coming elucidation. The effect of it, we think, will be to ensure a growing knowledge in the less informed parts of the United States about the methods and difficulties of other nations. It may be discovered that European acts of " Imperialism" have been due not so much to a specially large dose of original sin as to the fiimbling attempts of ordinary human beings to meet each difficulty as it presented itself in a puzzling world. .
