The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1928-08-24
Kellogg Pact
Lines Up T. S.
With League
BY WILLIAM PHTLIP sIMMS

Quai D'Orsay will be fraught with
stupendous significance, particularly
in so far as the United States is
concerned.
For when Frank B. Kellogg, Sec
rotary of State, affixes his signature
to this already celebrated docu-
ment, he formally will range Amer
lea alongside the other great pow
ers, not exactly as a member of the
League OF Nations in full standing,
but certainly as an associated power.
Thus will come to an end the
aloofness which the United States
has guarded for almost a decade.
Secretary Kellogg's gesture will
mark a long and useful step in the
direction of world cooperation to
prevent war.
Henceforth, however, the United
States will be morally bound to CO.
perate with the Geneva body to
Illustrate war. In effect, it becomes
an associate member. Such is the
real meaning, and the one tremen-
dously important meaning, of Mon
days ceremony.
Curiously enough this was not
the objective Secretary of State
Kellogg had in view to commence
with. He first startled the world
with the suggestion that the prin-
cipal powers join with the United
States in sweeping treaty to out
law all war of every description in
! Guiding defensive war.
In Anti-League circles this was
hailed as a death blow to the
League. The League from the first
had outlawed aggressive war. The
United States was now proposing
to outlaw all war Aggressive war,
it was held, was too hard to define.
If all war were outlawed, the world
would instantly and forever be
freed from the scourge at one coup.
Obviously no such proposition
could be put into practice, even in
the United States. No Senate would
ever ratify a treaty for example,
which outlawed war in defense OF
the Monroe Doctrine. Similarly
Britain would not hesitate to attack
any power that threatened Egypt.
League Of Nations powers would not
scrap their obligations to the
League, the Locarno powers their
commitments to each other, and so
on.
A ND thus, of course, it has
IN worked out. First, Secretary
kellogg, then President Coolidge,
found it expedient to explain very
carefully that not only was every
nation to be left free to decide for
itself when and where it would go
to war in its own defense, but that
none of the commitments under any
of the ententes and alliances OF
Europe and the rest of the world,
would be affected by the proposed
treaty. 1t was only proposed to out
law aggressive war.
This plainly left matters pretty
much where they had been in the
beginning, but with one vastly inn
portant difference. That is to say,
if the United States was now in
viting the other great powers-the
League powers-to stand up and de-
nounce aggressive war all over
again, this time the United States
proposed to share in the general de-
nunciation.
Here was something the League
powers had been hoping and pray
ing for ever since 1920, when the
United States refused to come in.
The League Covenant not only OUT
laws aggressive war, but provides
penalties against the aggressor
State. The absence of the United
States from among their number,
they have already realized, was the
one great weakness Of their scheme.
Suppose, they asked, war broke
out and the League blockaded the
aggressor State. And, suppose the
United States--the richest, biggest
and most powerful nation in the
world-decided 70 ignore the block
AIDE, and to insist upon it's right" to
send munitions, food and money to
the aggressor nation, backing UP
this fright" with its Navy.
Clearly world crisis Of first mag
nitude would result, possibly even
world war far worse than the orig
inal war the League was trying to
stop. Decidedly the absence Of the
United States had very gripping
effect.
MTOW that danger is fading.
IN After Monday it will be en-
tirely gone. once having signed
the war outlawry pact with the
League powers, the United States
will be morally bound to remain at
least benevolently neutral in the
event sanctions are taken against
an aggressor State.
That is the principal meaning Of
the approaching ceremony. Ger
tainly so far as the League powers
are concerned, Mondays event
means no particle Of change so far
as their commitments and obliga-
tons are concerned. They renounce
afresh recourse to aggressive war,
but that they did nine years ago
when they bound themselves to the
League covenant.
But the signing of the pact will
mean much to the United States.
1t formally assumes moral obliga-
tons which it has shirked for near
ly ten years. Its consequences for
the peace of Europe and the world
are incalculable because it deflnite-
ly ranges America on the side of the
League, if not as an active member,
at least as a silent partner morally
bound to lend her cooperation.
Which brings to a strange and
unlocked for climax 2 gesture begun
with a different end in view.