Evening Star Newspaper, August 15, 1937, Page 29

Edi torial Page Special Articles EDITORIAL SECTION he Sunday Stat Part 2—8 Pages WHITE SAYS COURT PICK IS “MASTERFUL STROKE” Asserts Choice Improves Roosevelt’s Status, Making It Obvious He Is Never 1g to Turn to Right. Go The political dilemma into which President Roosevelt has been pre- eipitated by the split in his Demo- eratic support is analyzed here by the noted Midwestern editor who Ras been both observer and par- ticipant in the major political bat- tles of the last 40 years. BY WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE. HE President’'s appointment of Senator Hugo Black to the United States Supreme Court was one of those masterful #trokes of political diplomacy which | hearten his friends in the belief that the President will extricate himself from the bog which seems to bé slowly engulfing his second term. For here he handed his choicest gift to the South. which has been shunning his court liberal of his sane progressive followers and he named the most advanced lib- eral who could be confirmed by the Benate—a veritable three-bagger. Yet the appointment of Black, smart | s it is from the President’s personal standpoint, does not vitally affect the eituation in which the President finds himself. It is becoming more and more apparént that his famous victory last November left him without a party. He merely led seven distinct and sometimes antagonistic minorities which overwhelmed the Republicans and left the President nearly as lonely, politically, as Alfred M. Landon. Minorities Listed. Those minorities were: First, radical labor, marching under the banner of John L. Lewis: second. the conserva- tive South. typified by Garner, Robin- ton. Harrison and Cotton Ed Smith; third. the farmers, following Secretary Wallace: fourth, the city Tammanies from Tom Pendergast to Jim Curley, with the Kelly sh machine and the Philadelphia machine. all of which are interested more in patronage than in principles; fifth, the starry-eved lib- erals, who are more interested in prin- ciples than patronfige: sixth, the American Negroes; seventh, the un- emploved The Negroes distrust the Solid South. The farmers fear ‘the Tam- manies and are jealous of the prestige of labor. The liberals hate the Tam- manies and the Tammanies scorn the liberals. bunch of hicks. If the crowd that elected Roosevelt is a political party, the seven Southerland sisters are the Goddess of Liberty Although the appointment of Sen- | ator Black leaves the deeply divisory principles of the seven warring minor- ities unchanged, it does improve the President’s status. For it defines his gtatus. The nomination of a genuine liberal, whose nomination also re- moves from the Senate a valiant champion, makes it obvious the Presi- dent is never going to turn to the right. Can Snarl and Snap. Moreover, potentially, Black's ap- pointment will do a lot toward forc- ing Justices Sutherland and Butler to | get off the bench. For Black, who is the criminal lawyer type, can be, if he chooses, as mean as a bench-legged | Bull pup in a butcher shop. He can snarl and snap and show his teeth at the Supreme Court reactionaries and make life a burden for them. So long as they are completely snowed under by the present prevailing pro- gressive majority, it wouldn't be sur- prising to see Sutherland and Butler come bursting out of the Supreme Court windows, taking the sash with them. This Black appointment, in effect, advertises to the world that the Presi- dent hereafter will not compromise In situations where he must compro- mise or Wear a martyr's crown. For 50 years no President has so eompletely lost control of Congress as President Roosevelt. Certainly not Herbert Hoover; not even Wilson, who had his party fairly well behind him; not Taft. who chuckled his way out of many difficulties; not the first Roose- velt. who always was willing to take half & loaf and save a party fight. No President since Grover Cleveland ever was so completely buffeted and beaten by his own party as Franklin Roosevelt, since his inauguration last Winter. Parallel Interesting. Tndeed, the parallel between Frank- lin Roosevelt and Grover Cleveland in his second term is interesting. But Grover Cleveland did have a party behind him when he was elected, an old conservative party, which literally blew up on his hands, changed its attitude and went off and left him. Bui the point is that the democracy was a party when it elected Cleveland | in 1892, even though it was another party and remained a liberal party fairly consistently for a generation after it abandoned Cleveland. But President Roosevelt today is the leader of a disintegrating mob. He thought a year ago he was leading it to the bastille. be about to lynch him instead of the economic royalists against whom he charged such a little while ago. That he can keep his head in the midst of all these clamors and the caterwauling around him, that he can be a consist- ent, unswerving liberal, abandoning Lewis on the left as suavely as he has deserted the South on the right, proves | that America is watching one of the ablest politicians the country has known in the White House since Jeff- erson rode away. The Black appointment indicates beyond a question that he is keeping his head, that he knows where he is going, that he is taking .the liberal course, and, most important of all, that, to complete his program or gain his martyr’s crown, he will have to 0 before the people for a third term. Can He Survive 19402 The question which he cannot an- swer, which time will solve, is this: Assuming that the President can con- trol the machinery of the present Democratic organization and force his nomination or possibly another as his nominee, is there a political party in the militant liberal group? When the South leaves Mr. Roosevelt and radi- cal labor goes its own way behind its own Farmer-Labor candidate, can the President survive in 1940? He cannot count on the ternal re- > Also, he satisfied the most | And, to both, the South is & | Today, it seems to | juvenation of Jim Farley. The city Tammanies deeply distrust and gen- erally dislike Franklin Roosevelt and his academicians. That is evidenced in New York, in Boston, in Kansas City and in Chicago. Can he take the Republican Cornbelt farmers, with middle ground labor under the A. F. of L. and the college professors, along with the small-town Progressives, and make the new amalgam a winning party even with%he Democratic name? That is the serious question. If any man on earth can do this, Franklin Roosevelt can. He has political acumen. He is light on his feet, politically. He knows how to dramatize himself. So far, even amid all the signs of disintegration, he has kept much of his following among the liberal group. He has held a con- sistent, courageous, middle course. But, in real politics, without the South and the Tammanies of the land behind nim, is the middle group, even if he can unite it, strong enough to make a winning fight? , Question of Money. | Where will he get the money for | his new party if he abandons Wall Street entirely? Where will he get the organization if the Tammanies of | the great urban centers desert him? | And if the old-line Democrats leave im, where will he get the electoral votes? Which checks it up to the Repub- licans. It is obvious that. if they can | break into his Progressive following, | he is gone. The conservatives of both parties will follow any reasonably in- telligent Republican—if for no better reason than to be rid of Roosevelt. If We are entering an era of good crops the naturally Republican farmers of the West and Middle West will return to their old allegiance. Their court | houses and State houses and Legisla- tures are filled with Republicans. But they will not follow a pronounced conservative. They have kept the progressives in the Senate for 30 years. The Republican strategy is to assume that the conservatives will take any |one to beat Roosevelt and then go | after the men who voted for George iNorr)s‘ the La Follettes, Capper, Mc- Nary, Kenyon, Shipstead and Jim | Couzens, in Washington, the old group | Which now controls the Republican Senate leadership in Washington. A program built upon Hoover's speech in Colorado Springs in May. | 1936, would be a middle of the road | | platform. It would advocate a Fed- | eral housing program to clear the slums of the cities, a farm program | that would include a fight on soil ero- sion and floods. a farm marketing set- up. and possibly a grain storage plan, | but never price-fixing. Minimum Women's Wage. ! The Republican platform would | follow Landon in demanding a mmi-‘ mum wage for women and adoption of | the child labor amendment, which | | both Hoover and Landon have in- | dorsed. The program would insist upon a drastic reduction of the public debt, a Sweeping extension of the civil service, a demand for the local administration | of Federal and State funds that pay old-age pensions and job insurance. It would promise a permanent, elastic program of public works. Such a pro- gram would be in line with the speeches of both Hoover and Landon. | The trouble would come when the Republicans tried to make their tariff plank. There they would have to for- | get and forgive and remember that | they are living in a new world. bidi | the Republicans in 1940 rewrite the | | tariff plank of 1936, the Whigs, who | passed into oblivion 80 years ago, are | going to see a new face in the limbo | of forgotten things! > | _In the meantime the man in the| | White House 15 not where Cleveland was when Bryan stole his party. For | Roosevelt is another man than Cleve- !land, smarter, more facile, less stub- | born, a better politician. But only time can tell whether he is as wise a statesman. (Copyright, 1937.) Accelerated Classes For Chicago Pupils CHICAGO (#).—Chicago public | school authorities are installing a | new method of class division where- | by elementary pupils will be graduated in seven years instead of in eight. At grade 1b each child is to be tested as to ability from the stand- points of intelligence quotient, Realth, achievement and social adaptability. Those who rate high are put into an accelerated class. Each such class will have the same | teacher to and including the 4a | grade and another from 4b to 7b in- stead of a different teacher at the end of each semester. Upon comple- tion of the highest year the teacher | returns to pick up another class in | the lowest of her grades. The accel- erated classes will complete each three and one-half year stretch in three Good BY STEPHEN LEACOCK. MAY define business in a broad, general way as the art of losing money. This is only a: rough-and-ready definition to which numerous ex- ceptions will be found. Indeed, very often business, even if losing & certain amount of money, is carried on for other rea- sons. As one of my big-business friends said to me the ther day, “What else can I do?” Many of my business friends—the big ones— ask me that: What else can I do? I do not know what else they can do. Or very often a business connec- tion is of such long standing, of generations, perhaps, that it is dif- ficult to stop. I am thinking here of my friend, Sir John Overwarp, the big thread man. 8ir Johh is ¢ WASHINGTON, A Law to Prevent Strikes? - Observer Believes It Wouldn’t Work and Cites Sad Experience of New Zealand. BY CHARLES EDWARD RUSSELL, NDUSTRY being now the sick man of America and doing right poorly, what with convulsions and strike fevers and hallucinations and things, we see the eminent physicians of the economic world moving in a long line to prescribe for the patient. Each bears in his han#s his favorite remedy, elixir, alterative, purge, serum or emul- sion, perfectly calculated to restore health, and among these I notice ap- pearing repeatedly a large black, con- spicuously labeled bottle with which I have but too much reason to be ac- quainted. It is called compulsory arbitration for industrial disputes, and it seems to have more distinguished champions than any of the others. All the way from Senators with influential employ- ing constituemts and professors bulging brows to columnists and daily commentators it cops the prize for most _earnest regard. | Indeed, how can it fail? say these. | And echo answers, How? Nothing could be a surer cinch. Dead tired are we of these stupid disputes that dis- rupt production, paralyze business, de- press the stock market. blockade the processes of recovery, cagse huge losses to individuals and interests that have not a thing on earth to do with the quarrel. “A plague on both your houses If you will not be sane and adjust your miserable quarrels, we will compel you to listen to reason. Let the State in, take the quarrelers, one in pachfnnd. find a just and rea- | sonable basis for agreement and com- | pel both sides to accept it, being abso- | lutely fair to both and, what is mere important, fair to the suffering Nation. | Vision of Peace. It is just grand—and simple as pie. | No more of this hanging off and mut- tering that there is nothing to arbi- trate when a whole indstr being wrecked. Of course, there is some- thing to arbitrgte or there would be nothing to quarrel about. Let the State use its power to settle the row and let us return to our prosperity and the golf course. Beatific vision. Peace at last, in- dustrial peace. And all that. One hates to disturb so fair a hope, but it happens that compulsory arbitra-| tion is not at all a novelty, as some of its congressional and columnar | supporters seem to believe. It has been thoroughly tested and tried out by one nation in thi world and be- fore we are too sure we have found | the great elixir for industrial dis- | orders we might do well to ask about| it in New Zealand Years ago, the people of that coun- try, singularly alert and progressive, | thought about the distemper of indus- | trial strife and sought for remedies. | They used to have strikes in New | Zealand, bad strikes—about as bad as anything we can offer, although there | was no Chicago situation down there, for the people in general do not think well of shooting, clubbing or bayonet- | ting other people. But still there were | strikes, and the country wearied of | them as we are wearying now. ° I don't know that they had any| John L. Lewis upon whom they could | pile up the blame for strikes, droughts, | forest fires, floods, chilblains and | adenoids, but they had plenty of other | D. ., SUNDAY MORNING, AUGUST 15, 1937. troubles. So they said, a® our con-, gressional specialists say now. “If these maniacs on both sides will not settle their differences quietly, we will do the settling ourselves” And they designed the best system of compul- sory arbitration that evet was xnown is likely to be First, a conciliation when an industrial row broke out conferred with both sides, ed for peace and sought to find a common ground of agreement. Then, if these beneficent efforts failed, the state to step in and bring the disputants be- fore an arbitration court, now made part of the national judicial system and having summary jurisdiction | The court was composed of three| members, one named by the employer, one by the employes and the third a | designated judge-from the bench of an ting court of record, like one | of our courts of common pleas. No Appeal From Decision. This bodyv took the industrial dis- putes handed up to it by the con- ciliation board, summoned both sides, heard testimony and pleadings and rendered a decision from which there was no appeal—and no escape, either.| Heavy fines were provided for the side that failed to accept the award of | the court. This worked beautifully. Of course, it was in practice a one-man adjudi- cation, for the judge from the court of recotd must hold the gcales, in the final analysis, between the represent- ative of the employers and the repre- serftative of the workers; but that!| proved to be no hitch in the smooth, working of the machinery. For years New Zealand was the one free and civilized country in the world that had no industrial upheavals. Curious and sometimes incredulous observers, including the writer of these lines, went down there-to look at the | achievement and could find no flaw in its reality. Henry Demarest ® Lloyd wrote a book about it, “A Country Without Strikes.” I told the late Ar- thur Brisbane and he sounded the loud timbrel in editorials. New Zea- land, leader in so many social ad- vances, had solved the labor problem. No more strikes. All quiet along the Wanganui. Happy New Zealand! | But all this time there was in this| or board that | tration { without adorable plan a hole bigger than & transcontinental bus, though neither the open-mouthed visitors nor the astute and sincere men that conducted the New Zeal government sus- pected the fac | For years the de ns of the Arbi- | Court in disputes concerning | wages, hours or conditions were on the | side of the workers. This was in ac- cordance with the general New Zea- | land idea of giving the worker every consideration and just advantage. If | the employers thought some of the de- cisions unfair, they had no recourse but to submit—and grumble, if they | found grumbling an emollient. Be- | cause the law was & cinch. The only | result of refusal to obey would be & heavy fine and, as they had substance, | the fines could easily be exacted from them. * But the advance in the wage level, after some years, reached a point where it could not ascend farther | endangering the country’'s In the meat industry, for ex- ample-—for ]fw exporting of meat is a great business in New Zealand— | the cost of production had begun to hobble the necessary competition with Argentina. Soon after this became apparent, the workers in the meat | industry demanded another increase | in wages. The court ruled against them and in XA\'or“Df the 'employers. Refused to Accept. Then for the first time the workers refused to accept the award, and the country without strikes had a strike of the most exuberant pattern. In accordance with the law, the recalcitrant workers were fined. They declined to walk up and pay the fines, and when the government attempted to make collection of the penalty it found nothing it could levy upon ex- cept cooking ranges and carving knives. Before this unpleasant dilemma had been satisfactorily met, the miners in South Island demanded an increase of wages. Their demand was rejected by the Arbitration Court and they- likewise went on strike. This was a grave situation. The law of the land was being defied. New Zealanders are pre-eminently law re- specters. Something had to be done to vindicate authority on these rebels. trade. | other bids. | rifle, there is no way to force them to | | rearmament program which it does | not intend to stop until Britannia can claim once more to rule the waves ®f | Part Two Travel — Resorts U. S. PEACE MOVE AWAITS LULLIN RIVALRIES,ABROAD England Turns Cold Shoulder to Roose- velt Suggestions, Preferring Arma- ment ‘Safety’ to Conference Risks. BY CONSTANTINE BROWN. RESIDENT ROOSEVELT was recently discussing with a for- eign diplomat the question of world peace through limitation of armaments and a liberal economic policy free of harassing tariff barriers: “I have a good hat”” he said, “but I cannot, find a peg to hang it on.” His new hat—the plan for an inter- national economic and disarmament policy—is available to anybody who can offer the peg. The dictators can- | not make any secure offer to Mr. Roosevelt. 1In fact, the President has not been looking toward Rome or Berlin. And the British, with whom we have a closer diplomatic contact | than with any other ceuntry in the | world, have cold-shouldered all the approaches of the President and State | Department | This does not mean, however, that the London government is bent on war. But Great Britain has embarked on a sea and air. The British political philosophy is that the world can attain permanent peace only if Great Britain is strong enough to impose her will | on the other nations. era it is necessary that And in this in one he other real guns The fact that Italy has been able in rain a worker’s hou. was against the New but what could they have law and order. fects conscience, They must do? So | officers of the court entered the houses of the insurgents, seized the range, the sewing machine, the washtub, carried them out, offered them for | A crowd gathered. moe folk. “What am I offered? the auctioneer “A shilling for the 4 mine man. miner crooned lot,” piped up | Twenty-five cents. were no | Sold for a shilling. The | purchaser nodded to the bystanders; they picked up the range, sewing | machine, washtub and replaced them in the house whence they had been taken. Life in that household went on as before About this time, Fate or something landed me again n New Zealand to be instructed as to the foolishness of | looking upon only the outside of the | platter. For the cith was no longer a | cinch. The approved device that was to end kes in New Zealand had | crumpled up. Theree had been talk of collecting | the fine from the union. The union | was ready. It had only to dissolve | and form the Banbury Cake Benevo- Jent Society, and plainly there would be no harvest from that field. Gradually the truth becomes appar- ent—that the case is, hopeless, (ha'J compulsory arbitration is a pleasant | futility. Short of imprisoning men | who refuse to work or of marching them to work in chain gangs under the | accept an award that they aeem un- just. And imprisonment and the chain gang, meaning simply chattel slavery, are not for New Zealand. Sought Something Else. So the wise people gave it up along that line and sought something else. I do not know how it is working now, but the last time I was down there it seemed to be at least of a substantial promise. They were putting fortn every effort to adjust industrial dis- putes through conciliation, reasoning and concessions, and they séemed to me to be advancing under a still better theory of social relations. For ap- parently they were emerging from the old feudalistic conception that still | seems to haunt so many divisions of the Anglo-Saxon tribe. They were already a million miles from the state of industrial England, for example, where the dead weight of a rigid caste system is largely effective in keeping the worker in & state of submission. . For New Zealand no more of the theory of master and servant, boss and underling, superior employer and in- ferior employe, but the indicatea be- ginning of a basic belief that the men who work are the men who serve society and ought to come first in society’s consideration. It seems strange, it seems fantastic: but I be- | lieve it is the goal toward which New Zealand is moving. And the rest of the world might do well to pay heed the last 18 months to flout the wishes of the British Empire and answer threats from Downing Street with “Come ahead, we will take you on," has convinced the British government and the British people that they can talk peace only if their armament is superior to that of any potential antagonist. Thus, to the advances from Wash- ington regarding the feasibility of summoning some sort of a conference, | the British answered that the time for | such a gathering was not yet ripe.” His Majesty’s government is, still of two minds about a reciprocal trade policy as expounded by Mr. Hull. Armaments are expensive these days: national incomes are uncertain Every source for increasing them must be nursed carefully; Great Britain finds that for the time being her bilateral pacts, while less constructive in the long run, are more remunerative in the immediate future than Mr. Hull's reciprocal trade agreement policy. France Short Tempered. France wants peace. But the 13 months of war on her borders across the Pyrenees, the slaps received from across the Rhine and the sabre- rattling across the Alps have made the French nation short tempered. Not so long ago the French people would have answered a mobilization call only to defend the country from | an aggression; today this has changed. France feels that its borders extend as far as Czechoslovakia, and even to the Niemen and Vistula rivers. The for- eign policy of the French Republic is closely attached to that of the British Empire—there is nothing the French | can do but go along with the British. But the maneuvers of the British for- eign office are followed with a good deal of suspicion by the Quai d'Orsay. The French like to have as much life | insurance as money can buy. The: have bought some in London—it was | not very expensive—and more in Prague and Moscow—at an incompar- | ably higher cost. Under the circumstances the the- orizing French diplomats still play with the idea of a conference. But such a conference, as Paris sees it, will have to be mostly a forum. Armament cannot be stopped; it must g0 on until the necessary safeguards are granted to France. In general terms French security means the | guarantee that Germany will not be permitted to remain so strong as she is today and threaten the preponder- ance of the democracies on the Euro- pean mainland. The recent exchange of letters be- tween Il Duce and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlaint was regarded in Paris with alarm instead of relief. Officially, France was relieved at the easing of the tension between the two Mediterranean powers. The step to- wards reconciliation, the inspired press indicated, was the result of a panicky feeling on the part of the Italian dictator who now has sleepless nights every time his embassy in London sends home a report on the progress of British armament. Unofficially, the news that in the shade of the guns Mussolini and Chamberlain are pulling to that remarkable and progressive people. Anyway, try, eminent ‘“docs” the guild economic, try something other than your favorite mixture now. Compulsory arbitration is a mirage and nothing more. Except with a Hitler or Mussolini, it hasn't a chance on earth. Possibly you may have a linger- ing thought that a dose of Hiyer or Mussolini might be salutary for the ailing one. Try that, then, and see how far you *will get—in this sountry. Advice on How to Improve the Business of Losing Money the senior partner of Overwarp, Underwarp & Shuttle. In fact, he is Overwarp, Underwarp & Shuttle. ‘They are probably the biggest thread people in the world. They are the thread people. They have works in Sheffield, Bradfield, Old- fleld—in short, they have so many works they don’t know where they are. Five Generations in Thread. Well, the other day Sir John said to me (he speaks to me): “We've been in thread now for five genera- tions. I don’t know how I could get out of it.” After five genera- tions jn thread you get all tangled up in it. Somebody told me that Sir John's shareholders are going to let him out. It'll be nice of them if they do. But business habit s business habit. I knew a man, one of the A McDuffs of Duff (they came from Duff) who had been in Scotch whisky, and in nothing else, for years and years. He had traveled round the world in it four times. It seemed to follow him. You could notice it. , Then there's the sense of re- sponsibility—I mean, responsibility to other people. I know quite well the Prench financier, thesBardh d Citrouille (it is pronounced Citro- uille), who brought a great quan= tity of French money to Amer- ica, and lost it there. He colidn't have lost the half of it in France, but here he was able to do what is called “spread his loss,” Some of the big men can spread their loss over half the continent. But these, of course, are the big men—what are called the captains of industry. It is not wise to try to begin with discussing such large- scale operations as theirs. It might give the beginner a sense of de- spair. Some of these men are known to lose a million dollars a day. The business beginner asks, “Can I do that?” I answer, “Not yet, but you can learn.” One has to realize that these are selected men, winnowed out, as it were, from the crowd; they are men who probably had even at the be- ginning a flair for business and kept on getting more and more flair. The word flair is Prench. It is pronounced flair and means in a general way more or.less what we call in English a flair. These big men, indeed, are dis- tinguished not so much by what they do as by what they can't do or won't do. I once knew (I knew him only once) ' Sir Humphrey Dumphrey, the big electrical man; he was probably the biggest elec- trical man in Europe, except per- haps the Italians, Nitti and Dotti. Sir Humphrey said to me: “Look at me. I can't do fractions.” I looked at him. He couldn't do them. Sad Case of Sir Hamstein. Or take Sir Hamstein Gorfinkel, the great British financier. He said he couldn't recite the Lord's Prayer; couldn’t or wouldn't. But these men are in a class by themselves. » ’ ‘When I say I want to talk about business and how money can be lost, even in a small way, I natural- ly wish to begin with simple things. Young people just enterting on life realize that if only they had money now, even & moderate sum, they could find opportunities to lose it that would never come later. There are so many choices to be made; such a difficulty in selecting a career that young people need help. “Should I live in the coun- try?” a young lady asked me at a reception. ‘“Yes,” I said, “away in, as far as you can get.” “My son,” wrote an old friend, “shows every disposition to be a stockbroker. What should I do about it?” “Shoot him,” I an- swered. One should start with some of the simpler ways of losing money, such as chicken raising, dry duck farming, keeping bees and wasps, along with such things as horticul- ture and germicide. Bigger things could come later, such as how to build & transcontinental navy. One must start humbly. & the world's | | angel of peace which wields and the olive brancb should grip in | and airplanes., therefore, | ot daisy petals and chanting “He lov: me, be loves me not” has created uneasy feeling in Paris ‘What ar the British up to?” ask the Prencl diplomats. They know that it is no{ fear on Mussolini's part that has caused this exchange of letters which may lead to a visit to Rome from Sir Robert Vansittart, the British undere secretary of state. There is no doubt in the minds of French diplomats that the olive branch offer was prompted by uneasiness in British naval and political circles regarding the situation in the Far East The Japanese are aiming not only at the occupation of the five prov- inces, but also at the control of the important Yangtze River trade. Lone don knows as well as Washington that as soon as Japan is permanently established in Northern China, she will cpen factories there. the raw materials and the cheap labor which can be obtained in China by the Mitsui and Mitsubishi barons will eliminate complet Western eom= mercial competition from the Asiatic mainland Great Britain cannot afford to have | enemies at the gate of her communi= cations with the Indian Ocean and in the Far E: at the same time, Following her traditional policy of “becoming the devil's brother until the bridge is crossed,” she suddenly decided to extend a friendly hand to Mussolini; then wait and see what will happen. In this policy she has over- looked altogether the interests and the policies of her continental ally, France While European diplomatic seas are temporarily calm, the Spanish ecivil war privately concerns a1l continental foreign offices. A compromise on paper has been reached regarding the non-intervention policy in Spain. All have agreed that Ffanco should be n a belligerent's rights and that the ‘“volunteers” should be recalled. In actual fact that agreement, for the time at least, is not worth the paper on which the diplomats have placed their signaturea. The great fight between democracy | and autocracy—the fight between Ruse | sia and France on the one hand and | Italy and Germany on the other— continues. France and Russia main- | tainthat the belligerent's rights shall not be granted to Franco until the “volunteers” are withdrawn The Germans and the Italians, who have no intention of withdrawing their troops from Spain until Franco has occupied Madrid and Barcelona, main- tain that recognition shall come first. France Back of It All The British, who are realists and would like to reach a practical com- promise which might allay the fears of all concerned, are getting tired of this academic discussion. They know that the reason behind these in- terminable theoretical discussions is the concern of France for her se- curity and her position in Europe Hence, they have revived the idea of a four-power non-aggression pact Chamberlain’s letter to Mussolini and the latter's reply have not been given to the public. But it is known that they dealt with the organization of peace in Europe The Germans have not objected tn this new love feast because they have been urging a Western non-aggression agreement since last Summer. But both the Germans and the Italians have taken a definite stand that Russia is an Asiatic power which should not be included in any Wes ern agreements, and that Czechoslo- vakia jeopardized her right to be in- cluded in such an agreement from the moment she signed a military eon- vention with the U. S. §. R. The exchange of letters between Mussolini and Chamberlain was fol- lowed almost immediately by a much publicized visit to the Quai d'Orsay by the Soviet Ambassador. The con- ference between the French foreign secretary, Yvon Delbos, and the Rus- sian diplomat lasted more than tw¢ hours. Seek Soviet Inclusion. The next day the inspired Frenc press, which takes its cues from t foreign office, published lengt! “diplomatic articles” regarding th visit. It said that the result of tr conversation between the two diplo« mats was a reiteration of the French stand that there can be no conceiv- able organization for peace in Europe without the inclusion of the Soviet government, Thus, soon after the Ttalo-British flirtation became public knowledge the French government decided to make one of those diplomatic demon- strations which are characteristic of the French foreign office officials. In the office of Foreign Secretary Yvon Delbos foreign Ambassadors were told that the French people were weary of waiting on Berlin and Rome hat in hand; that the more yielding the French government appeared to be to | all requests of Hitler and Mussolini, the more exacting the dictators be- came. The policy of concessions, said Delbos, has proved a failure. Hitler and Mussolini will not recant; the only policy to be followed henceforth, say the French leaders, is one where the strong method is used ruthlesgly. “The system adopted by Germany, Italy and Japan has proved fruitful during the last six years. Let the democracies answer the doctrine of force on the part of the dictators with the same doctrine. If for the preservation of peace we must risk fighting another war, let's take that risk.” It is for these reasons that Mr, Roosevelt cannot find a peg for his hat, He has followed a policy of #trict neu- trality in international affairs since the failure of the London Economic Conference in 1933. Such a policy ap- peared imperative at that time, to him and to his advisers, because the ad- ministration was confronted with the problem of recovery in this country. In the last year the internal situation has improved to such an extent that the President and his advisers believe that this country must fulfill an interna- tional obligation which it cannot shirk because of its position as a world power, Only the President does not want to throw his hat in the ring: he is looking for a chance to place it neatly in o rack. (Copyright. 1937.) L]