Evening Star Newspaper, December 8, 1929, Page 33

- Edito rial Page 1 Part 2—18 Pages EDITORIAL SECTION Che Sunday Star. TARIFF FIGHT TO CENTER ON FLEXIBILITY AGENCY Opposing Arguments on Giving Power| to Congress or President Are -Summarized. BY MARK SULLIVAN. HE heart of this tariff fight. when it comes to its closing phase, will be the flexible provision. “Flexible provision” is going to step into its place in history along with scores of other cryptic phrases that have blazed through the newspaper headlines for a few weeks and then have in most cases disap- peared. though- in some cases not. “Flexible provision” will take its place alongside such recent terms as ‘“de- benture plan,” “equalization fee,” and such- phrases of a generation ago as “Sixteen to one,” and such phrases of two generations ago as “Missouri Com- ," “Wilmot Proviso” and “Dred | tt Decision.” What is attembted in the present ar- | ticle goes no further than simplifica- | tion. There are already in the Co gressional Record pages of oratory— frem Senator Hiram Johnson of Cali- fornia, Senator Walsh of Montana, Senator David Reed of Pennsylvania, Senator Borah of Itaho, Senator Fess of Ohio, Representative Beck of Penn- sylvania, and others. There will be yet more pages of oratory. The aim of the present articles is to reduce the | immense mass of argument to the bare | skeleton of the question. In the proc- | ess of clarification & good many details necessarily will be omitted. First of all. nearly everybody agrees that the tariff should be made flexible. Nearly everybody, but not quite all. It is.understood that Grundy of Pennsyl- vania, outstanding exponent of high and permanent protection, does not want any flexible provision nor any flexibility of the tariff whatever. He and the comparatively small group of manufacturers he repre- sents wants Congress to go on in the old way—to write a good, old-fashioned, high protective tariff, and then let it remain exactly as it is for six or seven years. This group of protectionists ‘wants permanence, stability. Want Permanent Duties. They want to know exactly what the fariff is on every one of some 25,000 items—and they want it to remain ex- actly what it is for at least five or six years. < The group that feels this way is, bowever, very small. Probably there are 'dly a dozen such among the 95 Senators, hardly two dozen such among the 435 members of the House. ‘That the tariff had best be flexible is close to a universal conviction. The need for flexibility is dictated by the conditions of modern trade. Chan in trade come so fast that it is felt there must be a mechanism which from time to time can change the tariff on one commodity or another—without waiting for those general tariff revi- sions which only come, on the average, about once every seven years. % A tariff that is “set” and remains set for six or seven years s certain to work too eccentrically as some com- ‘moditles. Within a period of six to seven years, considering the speed at which things move nowadays, a whole new industry can arise, as substantially the rayon industry has arisen. Through new discoveries or other changes such an industry as the chemical one can become within a year or two subject to such fundamental alterations as make a two-year-old tariff antiquated and grotesque. ‘The argument that there should be flexibility in the tariff, that there should be a mechanism which can pick RUSine, a6 meh axnee.that, argument alone, as arises—1 need hardly be expanded. Practically it proves itself, and the assent to it is © elming. Issue Arises on Process. the Tarff Commission. Thi to | yet more months. Or Cor to giving to c(gpunnlgz a other man, that the President next week might be Mr. Curtis. These Sena- tors are reminded that four years from ocrat. This is brought forward again and again in the debates: If the law is passed, it will remain a law, unless and until repealed. While it remains the Presidents entitled to exercise the function may change. There might be 2 President strongly Republican and high-protectionist in view, who would make changes upward but not down- strongly Democratic and low-tariff by ! conviction, who would make changos | downward but not upward. Conse- | quently the question must be decided, not with reference.to President.Hoover, | but to any President—President X. The flexible provision would give the ! President much power. No doubt of that. Yet not as much as the argu- ments frequently imply. It must be remembered that the President cannot pick out a business or | A commodity and arbitrarily raise the tariff on it or lower the tariff on it. The Presiuent must wait on the Tariff Com- mission. He can do nothing until tne Tariff Commission has sent him a report, ! and recommendation. Then, and omiy | then, does the President get any power. At that point, and only at that point, heH[el! twotpowem. e can act upon the report or he can | ignore it. If he decides to act on the report he can fix a new tariff rate with- ;r:': limlt of 50 per cent of the existing Figures Recalled From Dead. Much of the argument inst givin the power to the Preslden‘t“m cgnw,! tutional and historical. In many Speeches the ghost of Charles I stalkec ugh the Senate chamber. Prince Rupert was summoned back by Senu- tor Hiram Johnson of California. The barons of Runnymeade, Magna Charta, “the menace of monarchy’—all came back from the dead. The fundamental argument in all this was that the power to fix a tariff rate is the power to tax, and that the power to tax must always be kept in Congress—never given to the Executive. Turn now to the arguments against giving the power to Congress. One of these arguments has to do with time. Congress, everybody knows, is slow to act about anything. For Congress tv take any step consumes—on the average, it is safe to say—probably a hundrea times as many days as a normal Pres:- dent would require for the same step. Moreover, Congress normally, except for special sessions, is away from Wash- ington for eight months every other year. Consequently, between the habitual slowness of Congress and its not being in session for prolonged: periods, a flex- ible rmvllkm dependent on Congress would be too long in “flexing.” 1t is easy to visualize a possible case. A business man, or a line of industry, might be subjected to some sudden change in trade which would make a change in the tariff imperative and just. Such a business might apply to e commission might consume several weeks or months in investigation. Thereafter, Congress might fail to take the matter up for ‘ess might be out of session for eight months. The sum of all might result in as much as a year elapsing before the needea cl would be made. And, as things 80 nowadays, the uf'.hem'd! &nuht‘ beh‘u:u unnecessary, or quite a different change might be called for. Another Strong Objection. One other strong objection is made Col the sole power ufl.m into effect. us assume that a manufacturer of Let ‘The issue arises on the question WhO | jeather wants a change in the tariff. shall, so.to , do the flexing. What agency of vernment shall have the power to out one of the 25,000 items in the and change it to fit the times? How shall the process be initiated? _And 'Bni‘ or "gnb I‘eng of government, shall have the power say the final word, to decree that the new rate is in effect? 1t is agreed universally that one part of the mechanism shall be a tariff com- mission. In all this session of Con- gress there has been no questioning of the need of having a tariff commission, 2 body of experts whose power and duty is to take account of changing conditions in trade and to make inves- tigations as to whether and how such changing conditions should be recog- nized by a change in the tgriff. A tarif” commission making investiga- tions, hearing witnesses and coming to agreement about the facts with respect to any given commodity—such an in- stitution is admitted to be desirable by eyery one of those whose position on other aspects of the flexible tariff dif- fers violently. & To illustrate by an imaginary ex- ample. It is agreed that there should be a tariff commission: it is agreed that a business man or other person inter- ested should have the opportunity of going before the tariff commission and calling its attention to changing con- ditions with respect to one commodity or another; it is agreed that the tariff commission should make a careful survey of the facts: it is agreed that the tariff commission should make a zeport. But to whom should the tariff com- mission report? And who should have the power of acting or not acting upon the basis ‘of such report—this is the ‘real question that will come to a tumultuous climax when this tariff bill enters its closing stage. Who shall have the final power of saying whether there shall be a new rate; and if so, what the new rate shell be? The choice is between two—whether | the President shall have the f\owe! ory whether Congress shall have it. ! One group—and this group has a ma- | jority in the House—says the report should be made to the President and that thereafter the President should | exercise his judgment as to whether hel £hould or should not act upon the re- | port, and that the President, if he | elects to act, should have the whole power to promulgate a new rate. (His | power being limited within a certain | Tange, presumably 50 per cent above or 50 per cent below the original rate enacted by Congress.) Battle Between Two Groups. ‘The other group—and this group has | 2 narrow majority in the Senate—de- | clares this is too much power to give to a President. They declare that the report of the tariff commission on the {acts must come, not to the President, but to Congress. They declare that | Congress alone should have the power | to_decree the new rate. { Between t) - nvg groups the battle is going to ought. l’:& us now oconsider some of the arguments against giving the power to President. By the phrase “the B t” is meant, not President Hoover alone, but any President. There are Senators and members who would be willing to give this power to Presi- dent Hoover, he being what he is. But these Senators eithér recall themselves, or are quic“:l'y reminded by their adver- He makes out a good case. The Tariff ‘Commission recommends the change ax;d the recommendation is sent to ngress. At this point a member of Congress representing not a leather district but a sugar district might see opportunity for himself and his constituents. He might say, in effect, “I move, as an amendment to the pro) d change in leather, that there shall also be a change in sugar. I will vote for your cha: in leather provided, and only pro. vided, you friends of leather will in turn vote for my chenge in sugar.” Members of Congress representing textiles might take the same attitude. Also members representing steel. And %0 on. Quickly we should have an old- fashioned general revision of the tariff, accompanied by the familiar log roll- B ‘The force of this argument was freely admitted by those Senators who demand that Congress and not the President shall have the power of operating the flexible grovlslom T(; ng};v:z thoeo Argu- ment they propose: | should adopt a rule binding xmm act only on the one rate reported by the Tariff Commission, and rates “ger- mane to the items included in such report.” That would be ideal. But Senator ‘Vandenberg of Michigan and many others emit jeering laughs. They say there is a trick in the word “germane.” As Senator Vandenberg puts it: “A pretty fairy tale! This Senate . . can find anything ‘germane’ it pleases. We might start with innocent little shoe strings, discover them ‘ger- mane’ to shoes, shoes ‘germane’ to leather, leather to hides, hides to the farm problem. the farm problem to the industrial problem—and soon the lowly shoe string runs itself into a general tariff revision and into a major po- litical crisis.” Fundamentally, like a good many other matters of government during this era, it is a conflict between ancient rigidities of the Constitution and mod- ern conditions of life and business. Between a Constitution written in the days when it took a week for a Senator to come from Massachusetts to Wash- ington and the condition in which Sen- ator Walsh can make the trip in five hours by airplane, or can_address his constituency bv radio in five minutes. Congress is still practicing the pace of stage coach days, at least the Senate is, and Congress can act not faster than the Senate end of it. If the Senate insists on Congress having the sole right to operate the flexible provision, then the Senate will under one more pressure to change those ancient ways and rules, whose in- herent and inevitable dilatoriness was picturesquelv made clear to the public by recent Vice President Dawes. New Zealand Oysters Grow at Base of Trees Sir James Parr, high commissioner for New Zealand, surprised some of his hearers in an address here by say- ing that in New Zealand oysters grew on trees. Oysters, and excellent oys- ters, grow at the root of trees in tidal waters, and when the tide has cleared New Zealanders take oysters as_easil: <) saries in nt, that President 3 Zoover is as subject to death as any as from a fish wunw\’u explained. now the President might be a Dem- a law, | ward. There might be a President | WASHINGTON, D. €, SUNDAY: MORNING, DECEMBER 8, 1929. As a result of the recent hurricane,| Porto Rico, for the moment, is in des- | | perate straits. | 1 have stopped at jarm after farin where lean, underfed women and sickly | men repeated again and again the same story—little jood and no opportunity to ! get more. As usual, the children have suffered most. Stxty per cent of the children of the entire island are undernourished. Many are literally slowly starving . Of the 710 boys and girls in one pub- lic school in San Juan, 223 come to school each day without breakfast—278 | have no lunch. These hundreds of thousands children are American. of BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT. Governor of Porto Rico, HE island of Porto Rico is neither | known nor understood by the | vast majority of our citizens in | the United States. Many of them have no idea where it is. Since I have been here I have had let- | ters forwarded to me addressed “Porto Rico, Philippine Island: ‘Porto Rico, Central America,” or “Porto Rico, Cu- ba.” One college graduate even ad- | dressed me as “Ambassador Roosevelt, | American Embassy, Porto Rico.” | I have had requests from various | people to send them the foreign stamps | of Porto Rico. Even those who know its | geographical situation are often entire- | 1y unaware of our island people. | We are a part of the United States. | The vast majority of Porto Ricans be- | came citizens of the United States in ' 1917. We number many men of literaty and intellectual attainments, some of | whom are now in continental America | but most of whom are here in the 1= land. We have not only leaders in | literature and science but prominent | business men as well—such as Sosthenes Behn, head of the International Tele- phone & Telegraph Corporation, one of the largest in the world. We have splendid roads and a good school system. We have a university that in the future may well be a great pan-American seat of learning, Where the North American and Latin cultures will meet ahd merge in the hilly coun- try that makes up the greater part of Porto Rico. Mountaineers of Fine Stock. We have mountain farmers who are the descendants of the Andalusian | Spaniards who came here centuries ago. ‘They resemble in many ways the hill people of Kentucky, Tennessee and | North Carolina. e the hill people of nmsehsutat. theyflhnve bl"éalm'll"l\;‘d rough country and poor roads. They ll"e much like the mountaineers Presi- | dent Hoover found swrrounding his | camp in the Appalachians. Like the | mountaineers of the States, they are | of fine stock and lack only the oppor- | tunity to demonstrate their ability. ‘The future of our island is very prom- ising. We have a People of warm sym- pathies and good intellect and ‘charac- ter. In the ordinary course of events they will make for themselves the chance to show their worth. Our trouble lies in the fact that for a diversity causes we are at the moment poverty- stricken. To grasp our problem it is necessary to have a glimpse of what Porto Rico is. We are a small island, only a hun- dred miles long by thirty-five miles broad. The country is a series of steep BY C. PATRICK THOMPSON. O Washington_as Britain's new Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary comes Sir Ron- | ald Lindsay, K. C. M. G., C. B., | V. O, P. C. ;50 P! hrewd, calm, | indestructibly courteous, tall, good-look- | ing, very popular in his own service, enormously experienced, with tales and anecdotes from the court and diplo- matic circles of a dozen capitals—a member of one of the world’s oldest | and most famous houses, dispatched to interpret at the political focus point of the United States the mind and will of a government composed of labor organizers, trade union leaders and Journalists, all humbly born. In going to Washington from the | London foreign' office, where he has | been permanent undersecretary for the last two years, Sir Ronald returns to an old love, for he was counselor there in 1019 and 1920. He also re- turns to connections by marriage, for both his wives (the first Lady Lindsay died in 1918, and he married his pres- ent wife, who was Miss Hoyt of New York, six years later) were American born and bred. He has spent thirty of his fifty-two years in the service, and into that pe- riod has crowded posts at old St. Petersburg, Teheran, Washington, Paris, London, Cairo, Washington, Paris, Con- stantinople, Berlin and then London again. With the Washington appoint- ment he will have held three different embassies in less than four years. Classed as Brilliant Man. A brilliant man of commanding gg- ure and great charm; a man whose powers of conversation and flair of lan- guage enable him to shine in any so- | clety, but still not a man of command- ing intellectuality and devastating per- suasiveness, like Balfour; or of dazzling | abllity, infallible wisdom and tremen- dous force of character, like the Earl of Reading; or of fairy-tale career, like Auckland Geddes. This Ambassador is charming, astute— a trained and finished diplomat; and if you seek an aspect of quite exceptional human interest about him you will have to put him against the background of his ! clan, look at him as one of the most | firmly drawn and interesting figures in the modern section of that very ancient tapestry, the house of Lindsay. ‘This family has sat in the English Parliament for 500 years. It has taken a leading part in the deliberations of the nation for more generations than any other of the old island families, Its head is Ronald Lindsay’s brother, the twenty-seventh Earl of Crawford and the tenth Earl of Balcarres, the premier earl of Scotland, in which land its first ancestor was that Sir Walter de Lindissi, “noble and knight,” who accompanied David Earl of Huntington to Cumbria early in the twelfth century. The bones of its more remote ancestors lie buried deep in Scandinavian soil. They were vi and mandy and founded the line of dukes who subsequently conquered England, of the stock from which sprang the | berlaf the warriors who 'ook'Nor- Pit AS USUAL THE CHILDREN HAVE SUFFERED MOST. —Drawn for The Sunday Star by Austin Jew:. hills, belted by a coastal plain. We have 1,500,000 people, most of whom are dependent on_agriculture for their liv- ing. This offers a great problem, be- cause not only have we a population density of more than four hundred to the square mile but, in addition, large tracts of the mountainous country ¢ unproductive. ‘Wages are very low, the average earn- ings of a workman being only $150 to $200 a year. The small farmers get only 8 bare existence from their farms. ‘Within recent years small factories have SIR RONALD LINDSAY—A VETERAN AMBASSADOR. —Drawn for The Sunday Star by 8. J. Woolf. There are a lot of these Lindsays—a | who played in “The Miracle” in Amer- prolific and virile stock. The trappings of the feudal past hang on some of them still. One of the cotemporary Lindsays has been Norroy King of Arms, Clarenceux King'of Arms Wind- sor Herald and Portcullis Pursuivant— the ancient titles still survive and are duly bestowed, although only members of ‘the College of Ileralds today can say offhand what they mean. Another living Lindsay has been private cham- in to four Popes in_succession— us IX, XIII, Plus X and Bene- dict XV. The Duchess of Rutland, mother .of Lady WM T, 4 ica, is ‘a Lindsay. Ronald Lindsay does not talk about his family. He does not record its history. The head of the clan does that, carrying on a family tradition started 200 years ago by an earl who suddenly realized that unless some Lindsay began the family chronicle it would be lost in the mists of time. But he carries the family hallmark in his face. The rugged lines are fined down, the Norman eye has a genial smile under the heavy brow, there is a humorous twist to the heavily mus- tached lip above & powerful chin of almost Hapsburg length. But clap on Porto Rico in Dire Straits Gov. Roosevelt Says Ruined Crops, Unemployment and Famine Work Hardships. I write not of what I have heard or read, but of what I have seen with my || on eyes. I have seen mothers carrying babies who were little skeletons. I have watched in a class room thin, palid boys and girls trying to spur their brains to action when their bodies were underfed. only one scanty meal a day of a few beans and some rice. On the roads time and again I have passed _pathetic little groups carrying homemade coffins. I have looked into the kitchens of houses where a handful of beans and a few plantains were the fare for the entire family. been started in many of our coastal towns. There is a great opportunity for the development of more, and I believe the future holds such develop- ments. Our salvation clearly depends mainly on two things—increased industrializa- tion and the development of intensive cultivation of the sofl. During the last 30 years conditions have become steadily better in Porto Rico. Education increased. Our health department was developed. Our public works of every sort multiplied. In this brief period we had attempted to ap- proximate the conditions in the United States which had been the results of a hundred years of labor and develop- ment. Even with that development the conditions of the average man was not ‘Then the cyclone struck us and in its trail came disaster for all. More than 300 lives were lost and $30,000,000 worth of property was destroyed. Schools were blown to the ground; homes were wrecked; factories were severely dam- aged; crops of sugar cane were cut by 20 per cent; the fruit trees were up- rooted, thereby destroying not only the year’s crop but the capital as well. ‘Worse than all this, the coffee plan- tations, on which the greatest number of the small farmers nd, suffered most severely. There will be little, if any, coffee crop this year, and two or three syears more must pass before we get back to normal. Outside Aid Limited. Our people here rallied nobly to aid the worst sufferers, for our pride here is to help ourselves where we can. The National Government and the National Red Cross also extended generous aid. but that was only along certain lines, and, naturally, was limited as a result of this disaster. We are for the mo- ment in desperate straits. A cyclone covering a small part of a large coun- try would not be widely felt, but with us the entire island was ‘covered; no district escaped. f Unemployment, either total or par- tial, is present everywhere. Men and women can find nothing to do, and therefore can earn nothing. We cannot offset unemployment, as is often the case in America, by an increase in public works, for ‘the government has not the money. Riding through the hills, I have stopped at farm after farm where lean, underfed women and sickly men nmflted again and again the same story—little food and no opportunity to get more for the present. From these hills the people have streamed into the coastal towns, in- creasing the already severe unemploy- (Continued on Third Page.) Britain’s New Ambassador One of England’s Most Famous Clans Will Interpret Ramsay Macdonald’s. Government to U. S. a visored helm and you have a fine type of the high-cheeked, straight- nosed, long-jawed Norman baron, sound and true bred at all points. The ancestors were warriors, but there is a strong romantic and artistic strain in this clan; they make better administrators, diplomats and art pa- trons than colonels of guards' regiments and generals of divisions. His Early Home Surroundings. Ronald Lindsay was brought up in a famlly circle in which the important things of life were astronomy, philate- 1y, pictures, books and travel in strange and remote lands. His father was the wild-bearded twenty-sixth earl (a ha | race, the Lindsays), who carried a tele- | scope in his baggage as other men carry a toothbrush, was renowned among book dealers all over Europe as the greatest collector of his time, accumu- lated the second most complete collec- tlon of stamps in the kingdom (his col- lection of American stamps was sold after his death to a New York man for $200,000), and roved the seven seas in his steam yacht Valhalla. 4 Ronald Lindsay was 21 when he said good-by to tutors, friends and family, took himself into the diplomatic serv- ice, and went off to Russia as aid to the British Ambassador. An easy, amusing, instructive (in the wordly sense) life for an intelligent young man; a frivolous and aimless, if Jolly, one for a fool. You had to pos- sess all the graces of life to be a suc- cess in this old regime diplomatic court society, in one of the raciest and gayest sets in the Old World, and you had to be quick, alert, level-headed, unspoiled and useful if you wanted to be something more than a light yes- man to your chief and marked out for promotion. Combined Both Qualities. Young Lindsay combined both quali- tles and was an all around success. These Russians looked at the Western World through the window of the sea- girt capital created for that specific pur- pose by Peter the Great. They were half Orientals, ruling in barbaric state over a three-part Oriental and nine- part savage kingdom. They made thelr contacts with the West, for the most part, in Paris, where the richest of them maintained large mansions and subsidized the prettiest girls of the opera, and at Cannes and Monte Carlo, & ruined season. A waste of time and experience? Not for a shrewd diplomat with his wits about him. is chiefs in London found a post for him at Teheran after Lhe;ehm ’at tersburg. Two n other side of the world, to a new world and new experience at the British Em- ‘Washington. He el d him- brains culture I have seen them trying to study on | where a season without the Russian | grand dukes painting the town red was | years Persia before switching him to the | Collapse Would Be tention Arms BY FRANK H. SIMONDS. HE closer we get to the date of the London Naval Conference, the clearer it becomes that it is go- ing to take something like a miracle to produce any consid- erable success. The explanation of this fact is to be found in the European situation generally and in the policy of France in particular. In the London conference, as in the ‘Washington conference eight years ago, the decisive role will belong to the French. In 1922 it was the refusal of the Fiench to accept for submarines the ratio fixed for battleships which prevented any Anglo-American agree- ment in- the matter of- cruisers and opened the way for the long quarrel that followed. ‘Today the French have announced not only that they will not accept the ratio in submarines fixed for them at Washington, much less the total aboli- ly | tion of submarines, but that they will not accept any ratio whatever; in a word, that they reject the whole idea of a sliding scale of naval strength. And obviously, if the Tardieu Cabinet holds to this view, the success of the London conference is well nigh out of the question. It, of course, remains possible for the British and the Americans, or, for that matter, the British, Americans and Japanese, to make their own bargain and let the Latin nations go hang. ‘This, too, is the present purpose of the Washington Government, if one can believe the secret hints going the rounds. But the difficulty with any such pro- gram is patent. The United States and Great Britain can agree as to par- ity. That is to say, the British can agree that the United States shall have the same strength in all branches of naval craft that they possess. They can also agree to the application of some yardstick to establish equivalent uaval values. But what they cannot agree to is any such reduction of their own naval strength as will permit Mr. Hoover to realize his hope for naval limitation and an escape from the ne- cessity of fulfilling all of the Fifteen Cruiser Program. Britain Accepts Parity. Great Britain has definitely accepted the principle of American parity, but it has not renounced the idea of British supremacy in European . waters. An that supremacy is based upon a_two power standard. In practice the Brit- ish hold that. their own security rests upon the possession of naval strength at least equal to that of France and Italy. the only considerable naval powers of the continent. to accept the Washington ratio, namely, 10-10-3,5-35 for Britain, the United States, Italy and France respectively, then there would be no fllfilflty in the pathway of an adoption of the ton- nage plan made tentatively by Mac- donald and = Hoover, the ~glae‘5;m which permitf the British to 50 ships and 340,000 tons against 28 or 31 for the United States with 285,000 or even 300,000 tons. In this plan, it will be recalled, we are allotf either three or six more 10,000-ton ecruisers than the British, to offset their greater a gate tonnage. ut the French are not prepared to accept any such arrangement. They are not prepared to put any limit on their cruiser tonnage, while the pro- gram, which they have already adopted, insures them of a greater tonn: than they would have under the Washington ratio. Since, too, the Italians insist upon parity with the Prench, it is clear that the British can only adopt the Macdonald-Hoover ratio not alone at the cost of allotting to the United States & parity which in British eyes amounts to superiority, but also at the cost of abandoning the two-power standard in Europe itself. Obviously the British in this situa- tion can make a bargain with the United States by which they agree that we shall build a fleet up to their level, but that level will not be. fifty ships and 340,000 tons, but seventy ships and 400,000 tons. In such case we shall still have par- ity provided we are prepared, not along to complete the Fifteen Cruiser pro- gram, which would give us 305,000 tons, but also to undertake another program which would call for any- Wwhere from seven to ten further 10,000~ ton cruisers. But such a result of the London Conference would of course be a failure for the Hoover program, me lays its emphasis upon limita- lon. Why French Favor League. From the French point of view, the London Conference is no more than a private political deal between the United States and Great Britain, which has no relation to the larger question of world disarmament. The French believe that disarmament can only be discussed at If France and Italy were prepared ' FRENCH SEEK NAVY PARLEY FAILURE TO AID LEAGUE Triumph for Con- Is Matter for League to Handle. Geneva, and have already' made clear that anything agreed upon at London must be regarded as tentative umtil Geneva has passed upon it. France desires that disarmament shall be regylated at Geneva because at Geneva the French are sure of the support of many European and South American states. As things now stand, the French control of the Les f\le. if not absolute, is nevertheless real. A failure of the London Conference will be a victory for France, however it comes about. It will be triumph for the French thesis that disarmament is & League of Nations matter. But it will not less be a relief for that very con- siderable fraction of the British pub- lic which as yet are not reconciled to the idea of resigning naval supremacy, but are prepared to do it as a conces- sion to necessity. Beyond any question a failure would be a disappol it for Macdonald, but a failure which might leave him unshaken polif ly, since it would abolish any peril coming irom the attacks of the navy groups. Japan Makes New Demands. There is, however, an extra-Euro- an aspect. Already the Japanese ave demanded that they shall have not A 10-10-6 ratio with the Anglo-Saxon countries, as in battleships, but a 10-10- 7 strength. Moreover, in this added strength they insist that there shall be included the right to base upon our cruiser strength. In other words, they are asking that they shall have not sixty but seventy per cent of our strength in 10,000-ton cruisers, and that means that they will have fifteen boats against our twenty-one. But that is the British number. ‘Thus in first line and offensively effective cruisers, the Japanese are asking for “equality with the British which would amount to superiority in Asiatic waters. But how will- Macdonald be able to rec- oncile such a demand with the British imperial needs or with the views of Anstralla and New Zealand? ¥ As far as the British and Americans are concerned, success at London would be easy. Such differences as persist between London and Washington. are insignificant and could be ironed out, since public sentiment in both coun- tries is equally awake to the advant: of agreement. But the British can only agree- to limit their naval strength, or even to reduce it, as the Hoover- d | Macdonald program requires, provided the other naval powers agree to pro- portionate _limitations. t Japan, France and Italy all insist not l:gon limitation but upon expansion of their tonnage. What Can Stimson Offer? Mr. Stimson; then, is put in the po- sition of approaching M. Tardieu and appealing to him to accept for France 2 naval ratio in cruisers which will insure for Britain an enduring suprem- acy in Eur He has second detail. | Mr. Stimson offer France in return? If the American tion would agree that in case of decision of Taa been quily of mgereson.. e n guilty of n, United States would use its fleet to blockade the guilty nation, or, at the very least, would agree not to use its fleet to permit its nationals to trade :run :P:e tgum); m‘:,e, Pnnoe‘might be oug] waive her present purpose. But, of course, neither Mr. Stimson nor Mr. Hoover himself ean commit the United States to any such thing. ‘The basis of all French foreign policy is paramount influence in a League of Nations which is itself the dominant factor in international relations. Amer- ican refusal to enter the League has created a very definite anti-American ntiment at Geneva and a manifest valry between the League and all American programs for settling ques- tions nuulcre of the e. nn('r Hoo- Shipe Talied all the ‘Teague Champions ps rallied all the e cl all over the world against him. It was a deadly blow at the whole peace ma- chinery of the League. ‘The French game is, then, to go to London to defend the League against the American attack, to make it impos- sible for any decision to be reached outside of Geneva in order to demon- strate that all questions of peace and armament must decided at Geneva. If London fails, no matter what the circumstances, the French position in Europe will be far better than it could be in case of success and the situation of the Tardieu cabinet in France will also be improved as it could not be otherwise. And it is because of the facts which I have undertaken to set down above that every member of a European em- bassy or legation at Washington with whom I have talked agrees in fore- casting failure at London. (Copyright. 1920.) ‘The world's conceptions of " leprosy and its ideas as to treatment and trans- mission of the disease are in need of an entire realignment, according to Dean E. D. Merrill, of the University of California College of Agriculture, writ- ing in the latest issue of the Review of Reviews. Discussing recent discoveries in the cure and prevention of leprosy, in which d | a University of California_scientist has taken a prominent part, Dean Merrill, formerly® director of the Philippine Bu- reau of Science, said: ‘This race-old disease, long consid- ered incurable, popularly supposed to be highly contagious, and so thought of by the majority of physicians, is yield- ing to modern science. Yet it is only within the present century that an effective method of treating leprosy has been discovered. Based on research done by numerous individuals in India, Egypt, England, the Philippines and Hawall, on the application of certain derivatives of chaulmoogra oll as a cur- ative agent, really effective ss is being made in the cure of this disease for which we all have an ingrained horror. Argues Disease Is Not Contagious. “More recent investigations seem to clearly indicate that leprosy, rather than being . a contagious disease, is really transmissible directly from one individual to another only to a limited degree if, indeed, at all. "In those countries where rather strict segregation of lepers has been practiced for a long time the incidents of the disease among the general popu- lation not at all in contact with the \mres,wd lepers c‘l‘o:od" as high ;: :: was when segr was begun. m&' of modern civilization the unfortunate victims of this d disease are treated as worse than social itcasts, &8 individuals to be shunned, ho should have no contact with their fellow men. Leprosy Is Contracted From Organisms In Soil, Declares California College Dean “From recent invemnuox& notably those of Dr. E. L. Walker, of the Hooper Foundation of the University of Cali- fornia, initiated in the Philippines Some years ago, and more recently con- tinued in Honolulu and San Francisco, it would seem that the popular con- ception that leprosy is contagious is er- roneg\u in the extreme, as I have indi- cated. Disease Traced to Fungus. “The causative organism is a primi- tive fungus of the genus Actionomyces, a soil-growing organism. es. & parasite when it accidentally gains ad- mission to the living tissues of men. Infection takes place not through di- rect contact with infected individuals, but through the contact of cuts or abrasions with contaminated sofl, . “This does not mean that lglper colo- nies are no longer needed. The need for institutions where the unfortunate victims of this disease can receive proper care and treatment is great as it ever was. It should mean, however, a realignment of our ideas concerning leprosy; the establishment of rational treatment of infected indivi- duals; the removal of a long-standing blot on civilization in our human trest- ment of lepers in the and an en- tire realignment of official and popular conceptions as to the nature of the dis- ease and its transmission. Norwegian Composer Receives Rare Honor Christian Sinding, best known of Norway’s living composers, was recent- ly honored with the Norwegian gold medal and chain in connection with the 250th jubilee of the Harmonien Mus- ical Society of Bergen. This award