The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-03-09
Asininity in High Places


 To the Editor of The Age-Herald:
 If the official relationship of an ambassador to a foreign country should automatically terminate upon the ambassador making an ass of himself, then should Myron T. Her rick take the next boat home and jolly we'll should Brother Harvey have remained here on his recent visit.
 Whether it is German propaganda or no, the dispatches have of late intimated that France has been seeking an anti,British combination in Europe. It is also stated that MT. Herrick has informed Presi-' dent Poincare that, in suc:i an event, the United States could not remain indifferent. Thus far all intelligent and loyal Americans must approve his action; even John son, Lodge and the fire-eating Reed would surely have said, Amen" They would have forgotten for the moment their bombast and fustian in re the well thumbed doctrine foreign entanglements" and said, "Surely we can go that far without fear of wrecking our American institutions However. the de- mon of speech pursueo our ambas- sador and caught him at full tide, and if speech were ever silver when silence would have been golden, 1t was then. The dispatches state that he "pointed out" to the French government the reasons why the United States could not remain in different. We might have expected him to say that we would not sit idly by and see our mother country strangled; we would not view with complacency the subjugation of a people through whose veins flowed our own blood ana wno spoke our mother tongue and who had thrown themselves body and brooches into a losing fight to save the skin of the countries that were plotting her discomfiture. He nao the greatest opportunity that any man has had in modern times or speaking the word that would have made the world stop and think; that would have steadied Europe in her forget fulness of everything but might, intrigue and cunning. While he was pointing out'' wny did he not point to the fact that it was a ''scrap of paper" the honoring of which brought the English govern ment into the storm. Why could he not have, told the Frenchmen that to enter secret combination of the sort would negative in the widest possible sense the motives that drew the America narmy and navy across the seas and that if the victory of allied arms meant any thing to America it meant frank and open honesty m international dealing. But what did he say? Ye gods! listen to him! He pointed out" that Great Britain had been the first to settle her debt with the United States since the war. That if Europe should combine against England, it would make it necessary for her to spend large sums in ar mament and thereby hamper her in her ability to pay her debt to the United States. And this man repre- sents- us, who live in free America and call her great; represents the crippled men all over this land who left their best upon the battlefields of France; represents the boys who lie under the sea and the sod who believed they. were suffering and dying under the flag or nation of exalted ideals. How come we have fallen so low down m the scale of manliness that nothing short of a million dollars moves us to stand by our own blood, our own friends