The Breckenridge news. (Cloverport, Ky.) 1876-1955, 1919-12-03
MAHOMET'S COFFIN
Ed. from Boston Globe.
Ed. from

\
| Treaty has created curious situation
amongst the Nations lately at war
There is pause-a kind OF ironic
silence-no one quite knowing what
to say The French are frankly aghast.
The Germans are puzzled. The British
are courteous, but reticent. Soviet
| Russia is aggressive. Japan wears its
customary countenance of enigma.
We are in what medieval statesmen
would call an interregnum, a period
between the death of the old King and
the browning of the new.
Until another session of Congress,
at least, the treaty is dead. Nothing
| can be done short of a period of
weeks. And now that the vote has
been cast and the treaty defeated, its
| friends and its foes alike find them
selves asking one another the same
questions.
What does its defeat signify? What
meaning is it's rejection intended to
convey to the world? And what does
it let us in for at home? Europe owes
us a lot of money, to be sure. But is
not that debt as much liability as
an asset!
Such is the problematical situation.
Into it Senator Lodge has injected
the suggestion that the treaty be made
the issue of the coming Presidential
campaign; that its settlement be put
off another year.
Regardless of how people may have
viewed the treaty hitherto, the sug-
gestion that it be made the subject of
twelve months more of political
hurly-burly comes as distinct shock.
Such course might be ideal from the
politicians point of view, but the ma
jority of us are not politicians, and it
is perfectly clear that twelve months
more of uncertainty would surely be
felt by us most uncomfortably in all
manner of ways and places, from pay
envelope to sugar bowl.
Besides, all sorts of things can hap
pen in ~ months, and failure to get
the treaty ratified and European af-
fairs brought into some semblance of
settlement is pretty effective means
of assisting untoward events to take
place.
Even if we waited until the next
Presidential election, what assurance
is there that we could get a clear
judgement then? The treaty would be
only one of several issues involved in
the election, and quite possibly not
even the major one. Indeed, the issue
would have very poor chance of
being squarely presented at all; Tor 1t
is not likely that the voters would
understand the treaty any better then
than they do now, after FIVE months
OF Senatorial debate has so confused
the public understanding of it; and
il would not be the treaty that would
be presented as campaign issue so
much as another food of "reserva-
tons"
Senator Capper, of Kansas has writ
ten home explaining his action. He
says he came TO Washington open
minded and friendly to the treaty,
but the more speeches he heard the
more dubious he became. A good
many Senators will be explaining to
their home folks, but their stories will
be in the main like the Kansas Sem
ator's. 1t is the story of FIVE months
of the suffocating atmosphere, of the
destructive, negative criticism which
has so abounded in the Senate Cham
Der. Five months of that atmosphere
is enough to make skeptic OF St.
Augustine and neurasthenic out OF
Marcus Aurelius.
What the, Senator'S all need is to
get out of that politically provincial
atmosphere of Washington, to go
home, TO meet their own people, and
to learn at hrst-hand what they think
of how the treaty has been handled.
They can get referedum that way
which will tell quite as clearly as a
Presidential election, and probably
much more so. what the people want
them to do.
Indeed. il is pretty clear now what
the people want In the shock OF real
izing that the rejection OF the treaty