Evening Star Newspaper, October 31, 1937, Page 37

MEDIATION I "~ OF 9-POWER By CRESTON B. MULLINS. EW international conferences since the World War have met amid more ciscouraging pros- pects for successful issue and greater need for material achievement than the session of the signatories and adherents of the nine-power treaty at Brussels Wednesday. What will constitute a successful conference will be a matter of opin- fon. For those chronic denunciators of consultation as a path to peace failure will be anything short of sum- mary termination of Japan's invasion of China. Those who are more grateful for short steps toward co-operative peace will consider the conference a failure only if it reaches a deadlock which forces adjournment without definitive result. They will welcome even moral sanctions against Japan aimed at marshaling world opinion in con- demnation of the invasion of China as another step in formulating that united front of “peace-loving pgoples” which must necessarily preced® more effective measures, perhaps utilizing force. Mediation Is Keynote. Mediation is the keynote with which the delegates assemble. At least the United States, Great Britain and Prance aim at nothing more drastic. China, no doubt, will be ready to pro- mote a trade boycott in line with the “quarantine” proposal of President Roosevelt and with the appeals of China's spokesmen in America, but it is not likely that she will even sug- | gest armed action by the treaty sig- natories in view of her careful avoid- ance of any such recommendation to the League of Nations. The direction of China's foreign re- jations during the present crisis has shown itself far too intelligent for such naive requests, for nothing is more certain than that the three powers who hold the fate of the Brussels consultation—the United Btates, Britain and France—are not going to use armed force against Japan, at least in the present state of affairs. Accordingly, China is refraining from weakening her position among nations sympathetic to her by mak- Ing impractical demands. When Dr. V. K. Wellington Koo appealed to the League for condemnation of Japan’s invasion, he carefully avoided any re- quest for action which might imply wse of sanctions. He recalled, no doubt, the damage done to the League’s prestige by the imperfect operation of sanctions against Italy. The avowed aim of mediation rules out any immediate attempt te condemn Japan anew as the aggressor against China, and makes still more remote the prospect of forceful action to in- duce Japan to desist. That Japan would not be adverse to the inaugura- tion of some kind of mediatory process by the individual nations interested in the Far East rather than by the Brussels conference as & whole, was in- dicated by the trial balloon sent up in Paris Thursday of last week. The two-point basis suggested by the high Japanese authority appears far too mild to be consonant with the aims of the Japanese military, who, after all, will decide whether the cam- paign in China continues. Temporary occupation by Japan of the five north- ern Chinese provinces and the crea- tion of a neutral zone around Shang- S KEYNOTE CONFERENCE Furthermore, pfemature use of the Neutrality Act would not only have deprived the United States of one weapon over the heads of the embat- tled nations, but would have robbed this Government of a means of co- operation with possible future embar- goes imposed by the nine-power signa- tores. As it stands, the United States has a means of applying pressure to China and Japan by threatening to invoke the act if either displays unreasonable intransigence, and in the event concil- iatory efforts fail has something to offer in the way of co-operation with Europe if an initiative is taken by some government other than the United States. This could be carried out by the League enforcing an arms embargo against Japan while the United States imposed one against both Japan and China. China could continue to obtain her arms from European countries while Japan would be deprived of American arms sources. More positive co-operation would be possible through the discriminatory use of the ‘“‘cash and carry” clause of the Neutrality Act. On the whole, consultation is not to be lightly regarded as a means of meeting threats to world peace. States- men have not ceased deploring the ab- sence of the machinery for consulta- tion in 1914, Experience has been that consultation leads either toward a def- inite alleviation of crises or to a show- down of forces which takes the place of armed combat. Threats of force in & conference room may often make | unnecessary use of force on the battle field. The integral relationship of the | Chinese and Spanish crises is already being demonstrated. Coming as the | conference does immediately after the | diplomatic convulsions at London over withdrawal of Italian volunteers from Spain, it cannot be expected that the | Brussels negotiations, where will be | represented most of those who took part in the London debates, will be entirely disconnected from the furies which raged over the Italian and Russian demands. One fact stands out as a result of | the London negotiations which is of | importance for the Brussels sessions, namely, that Great Britain and France have been forced nearer the Rome-Berlin axis than at any time | since the Spanish Civil War began. | The adamant attitude of Russia in | refusing to concede belligerent rights to Gen. Francisco Franco until the last | foreign volunteer has left Spain did | more to solidify this embryonic Four- | Power Entente—which is the goal of Reichsfuehrer Hitler and Premier | Mussolini—than any other one factor. May Consolidate Gains. ‘There may well be efforts by Great Britain and France on the one hand | and Italy on the other to preserve the | gains thus made, the former because of the fear that antagonizing Italy on | the Far Eastern question may incite ]her to resumption of aid for Gen. | Franco; the latter because of the fear of destroying the progress thus far made in crystalizing the Four-Power Entente, Thus, the negotiations in regard to Spain at the moment appear to have provided the basis for an understand- ing upon some moderate plan. Key to the probable line-up of powers at Brussels is provided by the | non-intervention struggle at London. hai with an international police force to maintain order, comes nowhere | near accomplishing the three-point | Hirota program given to the Japanese Diet early last year: | 1. Suppression of the anti-Japanese | eampaign in China; | 2. Recognition of Manchukuo and | of Japan's economic primacy in North | China; and 3. Co-operation of China with Japan | n suppressing Communism. Japan’s initiative in Paris, if it represents & sincere overture for an armistice, paves the way for concilia- tory action at Brussels, perhaps in the form of a committee of nations substantially interested-in the fate of China—the United States, Great Brit- ain, France, Russia and Italy. Peace Structure Upset. These could undertake not merely & mediation of the present conflict, | but a drastic reform of the Far East- | ern political system based upon the | present status. The situation upon | which the present Far Eastern, peace structure exists—including the | nine-power and four-power pacts— has been outmoded by the Japanese | eonquest of Manchuria, the present in- | vasion of North China and Shanghai, | the denunciation and expiration of the | ‘Washington and London naval treaties | respectively, the continued presence of Russia in the Far East and the end of Belgian interest there. With prospects for mediation of the Bino-Japanese War brightening, the wisdom of not having invoked the Neutrality Act becomes more apparent. At this moment, when Japan may be growing receptive to attempts of the powers to restore peace, the existence of American arms and loan embargoes on Japan and China could only prove an obstacle, leading to the demand by Japan that they be revoked before mediation be accepted. The ability of President Roesevelt to withstand the pressure of the peace societies for use of the Neutrality Act leaves the United States remarkably free to undertake the.leadership in | backing of Portugal. Italy has counted there not only on the active support of Germany, but on the less manifest, but effective, The latter can | certainly act as a sounding board for | Italy's protection of the interests of | Japan if a disposition develops to shift from the field of conciliation to the fleld of action. Russia, although deserving a place at the council table because of her degp-seated interest in the final settle- ment in the Far East, appears disposed to be & disrupting influence, just as she was at London. Preparation Vital. The success of the conference may hinge upon whether adequate prepar- atory negotlations took place to pro- vide the basis for an ultimate agree- ment. The lack of sufficient prelim- | inary agreement has torpedoed more than one international consultation. One of the greatest misfortunes of post-war diplomacy has been the im- perfect development of conference technique, and the attempt to iron out questions involving “face” in| open negotiation, During the week or more between | the speech of President Roosevelt at Chicago and the calling of the Brus- sels conference, there was intense diplomatic activity not only in Wash- | ington, but in the capitals of the other signers of the Nine-Power Treaty. | How far those discussions went toward | providing the basis for ultimate agree- ment will not be knowa until the con- ference convenes, but the agenda, at least, had not been completed when | the American delegation arrived at Brussels. The assurances of Mr. Roosevelt and Norman Davis that the United States goes into the conference with no commitments and its hands free is interpreted as meaning only that there has been no agreement upon anything more concrete than an at- tempt to mediate, which was pro- claimed as the purpose of the Brussels meeting not only by Mr. Roosevelt, but by British Foreign Secretary An- mediatory measures. Japan Is Fostering thony Eden as well. Exploitation of Philippine Mineral Resources MANILA, P. 1—The Philippines at Sast have begun tapping their in- dustrial metals and Japan is the only buyer, getting them at her own figure, to increase her armaments. Japan is the only buyer of these pecessary War supplies because she {s the one great power near the Philippines. She buys and takes away, hauling & few hundred miles instead of halfway round the world. The metals are heavy and it's the freight that counts. Let's see what she’s doing: Chromium, for chrome steel and similar alloys, as well as chemistry. Judge John W. Haussermann, as & . rich miner able to do so, has just opened commercially the world’s larg- st i deposit of chromite ore. It is at Masinloc, on the peninsula of Zambales. Masinloc chromite draws the Japa- nese back regularly. They have bought some and want more—as much, it peems, as they can get. It is somewhat medium grade, below “line,” which is 48 per cent chromium oxide—it runs I only about 32 per cent—but the Japa- nese work it up to the desired content and find it good. In some uses it is said to be better than ore of higher grade. Here is Japan's chromite supply, 10,000,000 tons and more. Rearmament demands have shot copper up in the United States from 9 cents a pound to 15 cents; Japan is buying Philippine copper ore, probably at less even than 9 cents a pound, and she will do the smelting and re- fining herself. Except for the very highest grades of Philippine copper ores, Japan is the sole market for them. Japanese are running all over the Philippines for copper; they .are getting it, too, and financing projects to produce more. But it costs them only a fraction of the market price. It’s that short haul, 1,600 miles against 12,000 plus canal tolls either at Suez or Panama. Thus the Philippines help round out' Japan's empire; since they are producing industrial metals with Jap- anese buyers in view, Japan will never abate her intereet in them. ) (Copyright, 1937.) ! | empire and & highly vulnerable island | points over Europe, Africa and Asia, THE SUNDAY STAR, Great Britain Sprouts Wings U. S. Enters Parley for Far East Peace| With a 7,000-Ship Air Fleet in Making England Pushes Defense Plan at Top Speed. With Powerful Weapon in Threat to Invoke Neutrality Act. By C. PATRICK THOMPSON. | RITAIN's airplane factories are | busy. Some of them are so | busy they are working around the clock seven days a week. John Bull is speeding up his air-fleet program, high spot of the colossal $7,500,000,000 arms plan. ‘When Sir Cyril Newall learned to fly as a young officer of 25, back In 1911, the British air fleet consisted of five gimcrack machines. When he took over command as marshal of the Royal Air Force in September, 1937, the air fleet numbered 1,750 first-line warcraft, with an unknown number in reserve (Britain keeps the reserve figure secret). By May, 1938, the marshal's command will aggregate 3,000 first-line machines. By March 31, 1939, when the whole of the blueprints of the current ex- pansion have been metamotphosed into gleaming, high-spéed aircraft—bomb- er, fighter and interceptor—weaponed with quick-firing automatic cannon and machine-gun batteries moving with smooth rapidity in hydraulic turrets, this polo-playing air warrior will boss a sky fleet of 5,000 machines, and active and “shadow” factories back of it capable of expanding it enormously from the word “go” of a WAr emergency. This fleet—as it will be 18 months hence—John considers adequate for security. But if tensions have not eased, supplementary plans now in cold storage will go into operation and by 1941 the air fleet will number 7,000 machines. Personnel Increased. To man and handle the new air fleet personnel has jalready been in- creased from 28,780 to 57,000 in the last three years, and airmen are being recruited at the rate of 3,000 per annum. Twelve regular and 14 re- serve schools train them, and volunteer reserve schools are now being “n- augurated. The force now reckons to take youngsters direct from public | school and university and turn out | competent service pilots in 18 months, and good enough pilots in six months. It has taken John a long time—and the successive shocks to his system of the Goering air fleet, planned for aggression, the Mediterranean threat to Mussolini’s bombing planes, the Japanese air menace to Singapore,| and the realization that poison gas has come to stay in war—to make the enormous effort needed to provide hiniself with & fleet as formidable in the skies as his navy is on the seas. And even now he grunts every time he takes & look at the annual bill, and reflects not only on the building expense of the new air fleet, but on the the cost of maintaining it at full strength and maximum efficiency. For progress is so swift now that airplanes are obsolete almost as soon as they leave ground on their first test flights, and the machines of the 1937 air fleet will all be replaced and in the reserve by 1941. ‘The airmen have their own worries in the realm of air-fleet planning and air-war thinking. With an enormous heart, Britain has to plan for the shortest and the longest range attack and defense. She has to be ready to fight in the air at a dozen different and the seas between and beyond. At the.same time she has to be able to concentrate an overwhelming force at one strategic spot in the shortest time. This means the development of big bombers and troop carriers able to use long range and high speed as a means of defense, of even higher speed destroyer craft to convoy the big machines, fight on their flanks, engage in advance-guard and rear-guard actions; of flying airplane carriers (the sire of this machine is built and will soon be on test on the Atlantic air ferry). Must Create Bombing Squadrons. Great bombing squadrons have to be created to carry a war into the aggressor country. The climbing speed of fast interceptor squadrons has to be enormously boosted. The whole complex of problems means per- sistent and unremitting teamwork by scientists, engineers and chemists to give the defense advantage against the offense, since Britain will not fight unless attacked, and then knows she must lose the war unless she can successtully defend the island strong- hold. Everything in this new field of war is strange and experimental. The powers of & modern air fleet have never been tested. The wars in Ethiopia, Spain and China have so far given only glimpses of potentialities. Britain has come along fast sinee she shed the wish thought: “The League will take care of everything.” First in air strength at the end of the Great War, by 1932 Britain had sunk to seventh place, with only 700 first- lite aircraft. She was spending only $80,000,000 & year on her air force. “Collective security” was the slogan of socialist and pacifist, liberal, pro- gressive idealist and churchman. The notion that other states might not play never occurred to this formidable voting mass, even when Germany's economic crisis swept Hitler and his Nazis into power. There was a rude awakening when Goering three years later hatched out Europe’s most power- ful and up-to-date air fleet. By 1035 Premier Baldwin mw the [ 3 OBER 31, 1937—PART TWO. A cross-section of Britain’s huge fighting air armada, the Royal Air Force. pacifist vote declining, League illusions dying, and cautiously took his foot off the soft pedal. Timidly the gov- ernment budgeted for a home-defense force of 127 squadrons and 1,750 air- craft, with 3,500 pilots and 22500 mechanics (today this program is completed). ‘The country took it quietly. No hint then, of course, that by 1836-7 air- fleet allocations would be $345,000,000, and that a vast $7,500,000,000 arms program would be under way. The astute Baldwin played a long suit, and won. He held the political fort until England was ready to rearm, and then he got the big plan through, and moved out as an earl into the tran- quillity of the upper chamber. Air Fleets Experimental. But it was one thing to rebuild the great navy and reorganize and strengthen the little 260,000-strong army, and quite another to build in haste an enormous air fleet. Air fleets are new, strange and experimental. ‘The technical problems they throw up are frightening. John Bull realized with dismay that the air war as he knew it in 1914-18 was entirely out of date. The air staff came close to —Wide World Photos. finding itself with a new air fleet which it could not use properly. The average citizen gets his idea of the fighting power of aircraft from the film factories. On the films he sees & pilot aiming his whole machine at the target as he operates a brace of fixed, synchronized machine guns firing through the propeller, or a gunner in a bomber swinging a single machine gun about on a swivel as he shoots it at an attacking airplane. But with speeds running as high as| they do now, and rising every year, these operations are not merely obso- lete—they are physically impossible. Men cannot get on the target when moving at present-day speeds and being flung about by high-speed | tactical maneuvers, They cannot hold | a gun steady. They break arms, legs, | shoulders.. Besides, modern aircraft are so constructed that they cannot | be destroyed by a spray of machine | gun bullets as were the machines of the Great War. European war staffs saw, before the British did, that the evolution of the war planes and its power plant had run ahead of its weaponing. They started to devise new weapons and mountings for fighting destroyer craft and de- fending long-range bombers. Long Fox ggonunued }:rgm __Pnge & q— 1 :\ would be appropriated for other pur- poses. “That this is not an unlikely course of events would seem to be demon- strated by the history of the contribu- tory system for the retirement of civil employes of the Federal Government. For 15 years Congress has consistently failed to make annual appropriations to the reserve fund of this plan in the amounts required by actuarial calcula- tions as to future labilities. N “The other contingency is that, after the reserve fund has reached substan- tial proportions, it would be used as a source for drafts, in the form of loans or otherwise, of money in large amounts to be used in entirely differ- ent directions.” Other Side of Picture. ‘The other side of the picture was offered in a recent adress before the National Association of Mutual Insur- ance Companies by A. J. Altmeyer, chairman of the Social Security Board. “Those who oppose the reserve,” he said, “point out that for a number of years both the contributions from em- ployers and employes and the appro- priations to the reserve be rade by Congress will exceed the amount paid out in benefits. They therefore pro- pose that Congress each year appro- priate only so much money as would be needed to finance the benefits with relatively small contributions during the early years, while most -covered workers are still under the benefit age. But this is only a temporary advan- tage; a generation hence, annual bene- fit payments will be much larger than the amount collected anually under the tax rates established by the act. Without some sort of reserve, this would in turn necessitate either a large Government subsidy or a very much higher tax on employers and employes than the top contemplated under the present law. “In addition to arguing for current- cost financing on the basis of its ini- tially lower cost, promoters of this proposal conted that a compulsory and tax-supported system does not require reserve. It may, however, be questioned whether compulsian and the taxing power of themselves take the place of reserves. Assurance of Payments. “Campulsion, plus a very much higher rate of contribution, either from those to benefit or from some other source, might make reserves theoreti- cally unnecessary. But there is a limit to compulsion and the increase in tax rate. The only test of sound insur- ance financing is the assurance that bénefits can and will be paid when due. Those who worked out the pres- ent reserve plan were well aware that no scheme of current cost fingncing has ever met this test in the private in- surance field, and they were deter- mined to avoid the pitfalls which brought the early fraternal insurance socleties to grief. Those experiments in so-called ‘pay-as-you-go’ indicate that its economies are likely to prove as unsound as its economics. Assess- ments in the early years were, to be sure, low; but as members grew older and the number of claims to be paid increased, both costs and premiums continued without reserves, the policy- holders who were unfortunate enough to live longest—and who therefore also made the largest contributions—in the end lost both their investment and all hope of protection.” Altmeyer also justifies the reserve plan on the theory that the changes to be considered at the forthcoming conference constitute “unmet needs” of the social security program that will require adequate coverage. Likely Liberalizing Proposals. One of the suggested liberalizing features that likely will come in for broad discussion will be to increase benefits in the early years. The scale of monthly payments under the plan runs from $10 to $85, but the top fig- ure will be available only to the few individuals who will have earned an average of $250 a month over a period of employment of at least 43 years from January 1, last. This not only takes the maximum entirely out of the calculations of most of the 34,000,~ 000 wage-earners already covered by the plan, but automatically “freezes” the older workers in the lower pension brackets. This is a fundamental point of difference between the American and British systems, the lat- ter providing the same payments to those retiring immediately after the passage of the law, as those going out of the ranks of the employed in the years to come and looms importantly as a talking point of the advocates of change. From the sideé of the employers may be expected to come a recommenda- tion that the taxing plan for the un- employment compensation feature of the act be changed. The unemploy- ment compensation payments, which hitherto have been confined to the State of Wisconsin, will become pay- able in 20 States and the District of Columbia, on January 1, next, and in seven other States in the course of 1938. With few exceptions, the tax, which started at 1 per cent for 1936, reaches a maximum of 3 per cent in 1938, and remains at that figure— comes entirely from employers and is based on their entire pay roll. The Chamber of Commerce, as the mouth- piece of business generally, also wants this tax assessed on but the first $3,000 of an individual salary, as is that for the old-age benefits, arguing that at present, it extends beyond the compensation of those classes of em- ployes who by reason of the scale of wages presumably would be in need of assistance in event of intermittent employment. The public assistance features of the act probably will figure least im- portantly in the deliberations of the Advisory Council, although there may be some sentiment for larger Federal contributions in this program, which covers the ever-growing army of in- digent aged, dependent children and bling. In the meantime, speculation has arisen as to the reception any recom- mendations on which the council may be able to agree will receive in the House Ways and Means Committee, where enabling legislation would have to originate. The House group pre- sumably was not consulted in the creation of the councii#and as a re- sult, it has been understood, 1ll- feeling had been stirred. and intricate arguments arose between the rival advocates of cannon firing explosive shells at 400 rounds a minute with 60 rounds in the magazine, and those favoring closer-range shooting, | who argued that a bank of four or| eight machine guns, firing 1,200 shots | a minute, can outshoot a cannon- weaponed machine any day. This group of experts and manufacturers swore by the wing cannon, mounted in the wing framework; that group swore by the motor cannon, mounted in or on the engine. Have No Special Weapon. The British, dreaming their %ollec- tive-security dream, with the air foyce starved of money and armament manufacturers starved of orders, fell behind in this fleld; and today they have no special weapon of their own. But their luck held. The whole effec- tiveness of weapons in warplanes of today and tomorrow depends less on their range and the destructiveness of their fire, even less on whether their guns fire shells or spray lead, than on | the method of their mounting and| handling. This is the problem high speeds have set for engineers; and Britain has always had good engineers. Just at the time the air ministry found that none of the regular air- craft makers or armament manufac-| turers had & mounting to meet their needs, something turned up. It was the Parnall hydraulic turret. The story back of this turret cannot yet be told in full. In brief, a couple of engineers, Frazer and Nash, worked | for years on the thing, and by chance | were on the spot with it when all the | airplane manufacturers and arma- ment concerns had nothing to offer except pioneer devices which failed to come up to air-ministry specifications. Gen. Goering once had the chance to get hold of this turret. How Goering missed his chance is another story. The patents in the only device to| meet the ministry’s specifications are |is & man who reflects his immediate | now vested in the air minister, Lord | Swinton—which means that they are | automatically on the secret list, and | the Parnall Aircraft Co., manufactur- | ing them in a guarded plant near the Bristol Channel, is forbidden to sell abroad. The gun turrets were the only | part of Britain’s air armada that| Marshal von Blomberg was politely | held from inspecting when he stayed on after the coronation and the air fleet men took him down to one of their military airdromes to give him an eyeful of Britain's new fleet. Discarding Fixed Gun. ‘The British, in short, are discarding | the fixed gun in favor of the free gun | which fires from almost any angle and is power-operated. They think they have a jump on Europe’s best air forces now. “Give us another two years, and well skin ‘em,” is the general view in the air fleet. ‘There has been a long and acrimoni- ous controversy, which earlier this year nearly precipitated a cabinet crisis, over Whether the admiralty should control its own air arm or have | at its disposal only seaplanes and land planes of a special section of the whole air fleet under supreme Royal Air Force control. The air force men and their supporters in the war staff “brain trust”, insisted that the air fleet is the arm of the future, and as it is only a matter of time before it renders sea fleets obsolete, it should be kept intact as a whole force. The navy men rejected this thesis. Their brain trusters argued that sea warriors have to learn to use their surface and air gun platforms and torpedo carriers as a general uses his cavalry, tanks, infantry and artillery. ‘The navy in August won the first round. They at last got control of their own air arm. By 1940 they will have 1,000 first-line machines. Eight airplane carriers, each holding 50 to 70 machines, will enable 400 to 500 advanced type airplanes to be concen- trated at any strategic point on the seaways and launched in waves on an objective 200 to 300 miles away. and the machines will be on the target in 60 to 90 minutes after launching. One thing pleases the British. The wars since the Great War appear to indicate that the defense has caught up with the offense, and may have passed it. Bombers have disclosed a lot of vulnerable points. Up to date and skillfully handled fighters have again and again driven off raiders. City preparedness has proved its worth. Defense Is Perfected. John Bull's airport layout is de- signed to put squadron after squadron of fast, high-flying interceptors into the sky, for¢ing the attacker fleet to run the gauntlet. Far from the British coasts & running air battle would begin, with the object of stopping the attack halfway, or disorganizing it, and leaving only a scattered remnant of shaken men to reach the objective and lay their eggs from a great height, under a blast of fire from anti-aircraft batteries. - The defense strategy is based on this layout, plus the capacity of tomorrow’s defenders to be 6 miles up in 10 minutes, ready to dive onto the air fleets of potential enemies. With resolute and well-planned air and ground defense, air raids by bombers may not be as dreadful as most people surmise. Men aré learning that they are devastating only when they come as & complete surprise and hit an open town without defenses. Whea & city i ready, and defended, L] | about INDEPENDENT CONGRESS HELD DEMOCRACY’S HOPE Party Leaders, by Stiff Resistance, Could Unseat Roosevelt Adv sers Who Would Alter Government. By MARK SULLIVAN. ) HEN a person has as much power as President Roose- velt, his temperament, his moods, his traits of mind, have as much consequence as statues. ‘What flows from Mr. Roosevelt’s tem- perament has had, up to the present, rather more weight on the course of events than the deliberations of the 521 men who compose Congress. For, up to recently, much that Congress did was an emanation from the Presi- dent's mind. Along with the President’s traits go in importance the traits of the men from whom he takes suggestions, the men with whom he fraternizes. About the President’s associates and about his own traits, glimpses come occasionally from various sources. One of the most recent ‘is from Prof. Raymond Moley, who knows Mr. Roosevelt well —for several years he was the Presi- dent’s most constant and intimate associate. Prof. Moley's contribution of light is the more convincing be- cause not directly intended. It is the more convincing, too, because of the affection and admiration which Prof. Moley shows toward the President. The light appears in a brief editorial in in the periodical News-Week. What Prof. Moley wrote is printed here with only immaterial omissions dictated by lack of space: “Those who find it significant to study the operation of the President’s mind under various conditions will do well to read with care his speech at the Bonneville Dam in Oregon on Sep- tember 28. The speech is much more jmportant in its self-revelatory aspects than in the light itgthrows upon speci- fic policies. Becomes Himself. “Get the picture. The President is 3,000 miles from Washington. He has spent several days traveling through a happy country in the most luscious time of year. The local politicians he meets are anxious to be cheerful ... A group of zealots who dogged the Presi- dent’s heels in Washington, always pressing him to make more and more inflammatory declarations of a class | If ever the| warfare, is far away. President s himself, it"is under such circumstances. “Add to this an equally important fact. The public demonstration of carelessness or gullibility or bad judg- ment which followed on the heels of the Black appointment would naturally move & sensitive man to a little quiet | soul searching. The resultant speech was not flabby, but sound, firm and constructive. “There is & story to the effect that the President’s young literary |and legal aides prepared elaborate memoranda for a ‘fighting’ speech reactionary lawyers, utility octopi, economic royalists and the like—memoranda which he consigned to oblivion. Whether or not that phrasing of the speech indicates that, at Bonneville Dam, Mr. Roosevelt delivered an utterance completely his own, out of a heart warmed by a friendly countryside and made serene by the bittersweet of adversity. “The country might be better gov- erned from a White House tre’ler, far from the vexations of Washington.” There in Mr. Moley's editorial we have several statements. One is that Mr. Roosevelt, to an exceptional degree, surroundings, gives out the color and tone he absorbs from those about him. This trait of Mr. Roosevelt has been observed by others. It is extremely strong in him. Much could be said about jt, and its effects on Mr. Roose- velt’s course, and therefore on the destiny of the country. Even more specific is Mr. Moley's picture of the President’s habitual advisers, and the effect they have on him. There is in Washington, Mr. Moley says, “a group of zealots who dog the President’s heels, always pressing him to make more and more inflammatory declarations of a class warfare.” What Prof. Moley here says is con- firmed by another. Gen. Hugh John- son, llkke Mr. Moley, was an intimate friend of the President, during the period when the general was head of |N. R. A, and he continues to have | close information about what goes on in the White House. Play on Moods. Gen. Johnson describes a group of persons who at this time are in and out of the White House continually— persons who have the President’s ear, who understand the President’s tem- perament and moods, who entertain | him when he wants entertainment, and on other occasions stir him up, and at all times influence him. It is these—so Gen. Johnson says— who write the bills, filled with “adroit obscurities,” which Congress passes without detecting the trick clauses, and therefore without realizing what the statutes will do in practice. The general calls them “Machiavellis.” He says they are “cynically adroil He says that—acting through their in- fluence on the President, but with- out Mr. Roosevelt’s realizing it—the Machiavellis are making over the American Government into “the most dangerous on earth.” “To them the Constitution is & musty and useless relic.” The general “shudders to think” of what these Machiavellis intend. “The stark cleverness of this gang,” says the general, “is getting away with murder.” I print one more obéervation. This is from Walter Lippmann. While Mr. Lippmann has not had as much opportunity to know the inside of the White House as Prof. Moley and Gen. Johnson, his information, and his views, agree with what many others observe. “It is a fact, denied by no one, that he (President Roosevelt) wields the job of a bomber fleet may well prove to be that of a suicide club. And in the near future the invader will have to face other new defense weapons which are being busily evojyed in laboratories. Just what those may be is one ‘of England’s closely-guarded secrets, but Defense Co-ordinating Minister Inskip raised a corner of the veil a few weeks ago. In Parliament he said that if they could keep the peace for two or three years longer, develop- ment of inventions the scientist teams were working on would make it im- possible for any air raider to reach a city provided with the best modern defenses. The work of thede teams is meshed in with John’s air-warfare st¥ategy and planning. No idea, however fan- tastic, is dismissed. The idea of a great net hung around a city from several thousand balloons has been worked out in blueprint form. But the great hope is a disabling ray, operated from the giant power stations, through which no aircraft could break. L] this vast personal power, which'may mean economic life or death to the community, in an entirely haphazard and unaccountable fashion. Thers is no official cabinet which really participates in his decisions. Thers are no first-rate men in his adminis- tration who can speak their real minds and still keep their places . . . Thers are no Democratic party leaders who are independent and still in his con- fluence. And there is no recognized and organized opposition. Court Includes Jester. “With tiee Executive's power greater than it has ever been in our whole history, the President lives not under & Constitution, but as a personal sovereign surrounded by his courtiers. He seems even to have gotten around to having a court jester, which in principle would be excellent, if his Jester did not happen also to think he was a messiah.” The presence of these persons elose to the President’s ear, their influence on him and therefore their influence on the fate of the country—these are the plainest of facts. There, in the passages I have quoted from three writers, is a picture of the heart of the American Government as it is at this moment. ‘The picture, to be complete, should include an additional feature. The group close to, the President, their influence on him, the direction in which they are taking the country, is of course, of the highest importance. | Something should be added, however, about a larger group. These are not close to the President, they have little direct influence on him. But they have much influence in the process of taking America away from its historio form of government and society. Enemies of System. Scattered through the Government departments, in subordinate yet ine fluential places, are a considerable { number of persons who sincerely be« lieve in a changed form of governe ment and society for the United States. They know the methods by | which such a change can be brought about. They know that one of the best methods of bringing about a new order is to cause the old order to be unworkable. It would be 3 mild description of their attitude to say they believe the capitalist system is doomed and it's no harm to give it an extra kick on the downward way. This group, too, could be described, if there were space here, in the words of one who has been on the inside of the administration. The book George Peake wrote after he had served as administrator of A. A. A. | contaims many allusions to them and | their actions and their influence. | What is the remedy? It lies in | the hands of the Democratic leaders |of Congress. There is a group of these leaders who, if they acted in | concert and with Vice President Gar- |mer at their head, could successfully | story is true, an examination of the |insist on preserving our traditional | form of government and society. It |is not necessary that they should | displace the unofficial presidential ad- | visers whom Prof. Moley and Gen. | Johnson describe. The President has. | a right to have such intimates as he pleases. But the Democratic party, charged with management of the | country, has a right to insist, through its leaders, that the policies of the country shall come, not from any | unofficial advisers, but from the heads of the party in Congress. i (Copyright, 1937. Sound Sticks Invented To Replace Huge Bells | MUNICH, Germany (®).—A bell- | caster named Oberascher has invented sounding sticks to replace bells, with a resultant saving in raw materials. | The sounding sticks weigh approxi- | mately a fraction over 4 pounds and | take the place in tone strength of | bells which required approximately | 33,000 pounds of copper, tin and iron | to manufacture. The tone, produced by small hammers, is amplified by elec- tricity. Nerval (Continued From Page C-1) | | pecuniary claims, in accordance with the famous Calvo and Drago doctrines. ‘The World War interrupted the se- ries of Pan-American conferences and it was not until 1923 that the next | took place at Santiago. But, in the | meantime, many of the Latin Amer- | fcan republics and the United States had concluded bilateral treaties of arbitration, and thus the Santiago conference, in a special resolution, ac- knowledged the progress which the principle had made in recent years and recommended the study of the subjeet to a technical congress of jurists at Rio de Janeiro. ‘The Havana conference in 1928 dis- cussed the report of the Rio de Janeiro jurists and passed unanimously & res- olution in which, after condemning war as an instrument of national policy several months before the sign- ing of the Kellogg-Briand pact, the American republics pronounced them- selves for obligatory mediation and arbitration and agreed to meet again, in a special conference, within one year to give conventional form to this principle, “with the minimum excep- tions.” Such a conference was held in ‘Washington in December, 1928, and its fruits were an inter-American con- vention on conciliation and s general inter-American treaty of arbitration. Although in the latter reservations as to questions of domestic jurisdiction, disputes affecting constitutional pro- visions, conflicts antedating the signa- ture of the treaty and matters con- trolled by international agreements then in force were inserted by some of the parties, a protocol of “progres- sive arbitration” was concluded at the same time, by means of which such parties could withdraw at any time their reservations by an appropriate instrument. This flexible provision rendered it possible to broaden the scope of obligatory mediation and arbi- tration without the need of a new treaty. As the experience of these successive steps ands of the numerous bilateral arbitration pacts between American countries shows, the remaining prob- lem is to eliminate, as soon and as completely as possible, these minimum exceptions and reservations. The ultimate goal should be the unqualified adoption of obligatory mediation and arbitration, and the general acceptance of the proposition that independence and national honor are not impaired by submitting quar- rels between nations to more civilized methods of settlement than that of the (Coprright, 1087.)