Evening star., 1928-09-16
BY FREDERIC WILLIAM VILE.

A MID the hurly-burly of the presi-
~ dental campaign, the country
"A has not measured at full value
4 \ the underlying significance OF
Secretary Kelloggs plea for
non-partisan consideration of the inter-
national treaty to outlaw war. What
the Secretary of State has actually done
is to project program new in latter
Gay American practice-namely, of TAX
ing the conduct of foreign affairs out
of the field of party controversy and
making it entirely non-partisan and
non-political.
The Kellogg plan. in short, calls for
foreign policy which shall be neither
Republican nor Democratic policy. but
merely and wholly American policy
The State Department chief is advocat-
Ing a system which long has been ac-
cepted by most foreign governments as
traditional and fundamental. Abroad
with rare exceptions. the r..~ Is:
Party controversy ends at the frontier
and the seaboard" The rule is based
on what is known as continuity of
foreign policy"
On his recent return from Europe.
Mr.. Kellogg said: Il do not think that
the remuneration of war should be made
party issue, either in the present
presidential campaign or in the Senate.
cannot conceive that it will be. The
promotion of peace is an ideal common
TO all civilization 1t is an interna-
tional matter of worldwide Importance
And it is not the prerogative of any one
country. nor of any one group within
Q country"
Hoover in COnfOrmance.
Although the Secretary of State gave
Otterance to this view almost at the
very moment Herbert Hoover was ac-
claiming the anti-war treaty as "a
Republican accomplishment" along
with the Washington armament con-
ference and the Dawes Plan, 1t is safe
to assert that Mr.. Hoovers attitude
toward continuity of foreign policy is
in line with the one just enunciated by
Mr.. Kellogg On that famous occasion,
10 years ago this Fall, when Woodrow
Wilson sought the election of a Con-
greSS which would support his war and
peace policies, Food Administrator
Hoover joined in the appeal. Hoover
did not ask for a Democratic Congress.
H favored merely the election of a
Congress which would hold up the
hands of the President of the United
States in the midst of the country'S
gravest international crisis-a crisis
hoover DeNeVeQ 10 De so CranScenQenC
that politics should be adjourned until
1t was past.
Broadly speaking, American foreign
policy on all major occasions after the
Civil War was marked by non-political
continuity" until the League of Ma
tions crisis in 1919 The Monroe Doc
trine, for instance, has never been a
partisan foot ball. Both parties have
consistently supported it. When Grover
Cleveland sent his celebrated VeneZue-
Ian message to Great Britain in 1895,
Republicans stood solidly behind the
Democratic President. Mckinley took
the country into war with Spain in
1898, with little or no partisan opposi-
tion to that Republican administrations
procedure, though imperialism" under
Bryan's leadership later became a
political issue.
Throughout the United States trou-
bles with Mexico, following the fall of
Porf1rio Diaz continuity of policy"
was, maintained during the administra-
tions of Presidents Taft, Wilson, Hard
ing and Coolidge. AS soon as the Soviet
government seized power in Russia, a