Evening Star Newspaper, December 3, 1930, Page 16

THE EVENING -ST: , ‘'WASHINGTON, D. C, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER: 3; 1930. When the | League Court Protocol Comes Out, Viewed from the standpoint of national need, the Presi- dent’s decision to send the Root protocol to the Senate is unfortunate. The country had hoped to avoid an extra ses- sion of Congress. It expected that the short session begun today would be devoted to the necessary appropriation bills. No legislation beyond that needed to accelerate public works will aid employment. With an extra session avoided, the business of the country could proceed without undue worry to regain its feet. Men so conservative as LONGWORTH and SNELL showed willingness even to accede to a vote on Muscle Shoals in the short session if that‘would protect business from the peril of an extra session. President HoOVER’s action appears to make it sure that the Seventy-second Congress will have to be called together .in March as soon as the Seventy-first Congress has. expired. Senator BorAH, chairman of the Committee on Foreign Rela- tions, welcomes the President’s decision. He is not inclined to sidetrack the protocol. Disregarding Mr. Hoover’s “implied suggestion that the matter should not be “brought up in the press of other business,” Senator BorAn ‘voices bluntly his assumption that the protocol would not be sent to the Senate “if it was not the desire to have it disposed of as soon as practicable.” That is logical. If the President had desired to make certain that the League Court issue could not clog the important business of the lame duck session it was easy to keep the papers in their pigeonhole for a year or even longer. He has chosen to do otherwise. He has chosen to let the Senate devote the precious days of the short session—three months that include the Christmas holidays—to discussion of the Root protocol. The advocates of an extra session, no matter what their opinion of the protocol, hail his action gladly. Such is the dark side of the picture. Let us find the brighter one. Soon or late the protocol had to come to a vote in the Senate. It has been like a dangerous animal hibernating. The temptation has been to let it sleep, perhaps to let it die of inanition. Now that it is to be pitchforked into the open, the opportunity is at hand to kill it. Whatever delays may result from its unexpected entrance on the legis- lative scene, whatever temporary harm or anxiety it may bring to business, at least there will be a sigh of relief if it is disposed of forever by the simple process of annihilation. If it be done quickly, then what appears now to be an unwise movement by President HoovER may be regarded in future as a stroke of political genius. There should be no question as to the fate of the protocol in the Senate. Accepting it would mean that the Senate was eating its own words. It was after deliberate consideration and long debate that the Senate drew Reservation No. 5 and attached it to the resolution which consented to adherence to the statute for the League Court. This reseryation read: “That the court shall not render any advisory opinion except publicly after due notice to all States adhering to the court and to all interested States and after public hearing or opportunity for hearing given to any State concerned; nor shall it, without the consent of the United States, entertain any request for an advisory opinion touching any dispute or question in which the United States has or claims an interest.” Let us say in passing that adherence to the League Court under any circumstances would be a dangerous adventure. ‘A nationwide referendum on that question probably would Kill It! show that the people of the United States are as strongly opposed to joining the court as they are to joining the League itself—and the country had a “great and solemn referen- dum” on that question. But the propagandists were at work and the Senate became temporarily infected with the belief of the internationalists and idealists that the court was a palace in which the Princess of Peace lay sleeping, not to awaken until Uncle Sam’s arrival. Hence the vote, nearly five years ago, to adhere to the court with reservations, the most important of which is quoted above. The European statesmen who run the League of Nations declined to accept the terms of the Senate. When that was announced President COOLIDGE said: “I do not intend to ask the Senate to modify its position. . + . Unless the requirements of the Senate resolution [the reservations] are met by the other interested nations I can see no prospect of this country adhering to the court.” ‘Among the people the verdict was the same. It was gen- erally believed that the case was ended and sealed. But the propagandists were not so easily beaten. With the blessing of the internationalists and the idealists the Hon. ELmu Root went to Europe to effect a compromise. He carried with him a formula of his own, but it fell before the swords of the diplomatists at Geneva. Whatever effort it made to retain the force of Reservation No. 5 was eliminated by that astute British diplomat Sir CEciL. Hurst. Whether it was Sir CECIL who wrote the protocol which Mr. Roor brought back, or Mr. Root himself, or these two eminent gentlemen in concert, the protocol emasculated the reservation. It did not—it does not—permit the United States to prohibit the submission to the court, for an advisory opinion, of a question in which we assert we have an interest. We may object, but if we- insist upon our objection we must get out of the court. Such withdrawal, says the Root-Hurst protocol, drawn at Geneva for acceptance by the Senate in Washington, “will follow naturally without any imputation of unfriendliness or un- willingness to cooperate generally for peace and good will.” Never had words more sugar on the surface or more gall underneath. If we should object to the submission to the court of a request, put forward by another Power, for an advisory opinion on the right of the United States to limit or forbid immigration on the ground of color, the only cer- tain weight behind our objection, under the Root-Hurst pro- tocol, would be a single vote. If we did not yield, if we continued to object, “the exercise of the powers of with- drawal provided for in Article 8 hereof will follow natur- ally,” &. After that would come the storm of criticism, the accusation of selfishness, the deepening of hatreds which we have tried to dispel. 55 Considering these things, it is little wonder that the Root protocol has stayed in its pigeonhole for nearly two years. Tts explosive possibilities are realized by most thinking Americans. As GEORGE WHARTON PEPPER said of it, it is “an arrangement which substitutes the remedy of withdrawal from the court after the mischief has been done for the salu- tary provision which prevents the mischief from arising.” Some advocates of adherence to the court accepted it; they would accept almost anything to get us in. For most of these The above editorial is reprinted from The Sun, New York supporters are also advocates of American entrance Into the League of Nations. As Colonel HousE said when the Senate passed the resolution with reservations, “it means that we have entered something like the League of Nations.” We had not quite entered, for Europe refused our terms. Reser- vation No. 5 was the only thing that saved us from being ushered into the rear vestibule of the League of Nations. It was the only thing that prevented the United States from being entangled in the mesh of European political conflict. And now the Senate has to decide whether it shall comply with the desires of Europe, as expressed in the Root-Hurst compact at Geneva, or with the wishes of the American people. Over and beyond the point directly at issue—the accept- ance or rejection of the European substitute for Reservation No. 5—is the larger issue of membership in the League Court under any circumstances. Nearly five years have passed since the Senate voted for adherence with reservations. Meanwhile the peril of joining a subsidiary of the League of Nations, as Lord RoBERT CECIL called it, has not diminished. Conditions for peace abroad are, regrettably, no more favor- able now than they were in 1925; indeed, many observers see in overproduction, national aspirations and racial ani- mosities the making of serious trouble. Seemingly peace is more talked of than thought of. There never was a good time for the United States to join the League-or its courty this is perhaps the very worst time. We have our own prob- lems, which none of the machinery at Geneva can help us to solve. The League and its court are thoroughly European in character. It is impossible to separate them in any con- sideration of the future. It is scarcely necessary to remind informed Americans of the relationship of the court to the League. It was created by the League. It is the legal adviser of the League. Its statutes are drawn with the consent of the League. Its Judges are chosen, paid and pensioned under League auspices. Its supreme law is the Covenant of the League. In the words of Representative TINKHAM, it is the bureau, organ, political instrumentality, agent and servant of the League. It is amazing that any nation whose people rejectgd, by a majority of 7,000,000, a proposal to enter the League of Nations should still be faced with a proposal to enter the League Court. For, as the League is a supergovernment, so is the court. DAvip JAYNE Hirn passed his measured judgment on that feature of it: “A court which judges without defined and accepted law, merely in accordance with its own sense of fitness or*the decrees of a political body, is in its very nature a supergovernment, for it does not merely declare the law, which is the proper business of a court, but makes the law by its own unregulated action.” We might make friends for a day by entering the League Court. We should make enemies for a generation when the time came—and it inevitably would come—when circum- stances compelled us to withdraw. Let us keep what friendships we have abroad by refusing to adhere, by conducting only one government—our own—and by giving aid and counsel to others when we can do so without en- tangling ourselves or alienating our friends.. When the League Court protocol comes out of its pigeonhole and into the Senate chamber it should meet its death. And, to make assurance doubly sure, the Senate should rescind the resolution which Geneva rejected, thus clearing the air completely of the smoke of danger.