Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1920-03-11
TREATY HANGS IN BALANCE AS TIME OF VOTE APPROACHES Conferences Continue With Faint Hope of Compro-
 mise DEBATE ON FLOOR
 WITHOUT INTEREST IrreconciIables Block Republican Modification of Article Ten
 Hitchcock Sees Failure
 of Compromise

Washington, March 10.-The. peace treaty compromise negotiations en- tered period of uncertainty today as the time approached for final senate action on article 10.
 Working desperately for an agree ment, senators on both sides of the chamber confined the plans of their party leaders and threw the senate into such tangle that it tactly was agreed to delay vote for several days in the hope that all elements might be more certain of their ground.
 The hopes of the compromise ad- vocates collapsed and were revived hourly, as the days negotiations pro ceeded in private conferences while debate on the floor dragged on without apparent interest or effect. Tonight the conferences continued, with some senators hopeful and some hopeless of the outcome, but with no one confident of what might hap pen.
 It was the treaty's irreconcilable republican opponents who started the trouble by remonstrating in mlll- tant way against the decision of some of their party leaders to as- sent to a modified draft of the re- publican reservation to article 10. So effective were their, representations that the leaders decided not to offer the new resolution at all.
 That determination sent the mild reservation republicans on the war path and produced confusion also on the democratic side, where sena- tors had labored several days to line up votes for the republican substl- ute. Caught in a cross fire from reservation republicans and reser~ vation democrats the leaders with held their final decision, but lndi- cated that they probably would present the substitute if assured of enough democratic votes to adopt it..
 Meantime an agreement among the democrats became more Pronounced, partly as a result of meeting in the office of Senator Owen, democrat of Oklahoma, at which a number of democratic senators are understood to have expressed disapproval of the course of their party leaders and to have promised active support to the movement to break away from President Wilson and accept the best compromise they could get.
 g Democrats Waver.
 Among some republican advocates of compromise, it was declared to- night that 32 democratic votes could be mustered for the article 10 substitute and there were indlca- tions that unless the republican lead CTS did present it, one of the repull- can mild reservationists might do SO. It also was suggested that if the republicans abandon it entirely, It might be presented by reserya- tion democrat. v. While virtually the entire member ship was occupied with these nego- tiations, the article 10 reservation technically was taken up for debate in an almost deserted senate cham" Der. But the irreconcilables were taking chances that the unsettled situation would result in stampede and they got the floor and kept it, Senators Mccormick, republican of Illinois, and Poindexter, republican of Washington, occupying the entire day with attacks on the treaty and on the recent utterances ot Presi- dent Wilson.
 Countering the efforts of the democratic reservationists, Senator Hitchcock of Nebraska, the admin istration leader, spent busy day in conference with his colleagues seeking to hold enough in line to balk the acceptance of distasteful compromise. He held to his pre- ! diction that the compromise move, ment would fail, though he conceded that a considerable number of demo. crats were ready to vote with the republicans.