Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-07-28
Foreign Relations.

Foreign relations of this country and
the part which America should play IN
the world picture have leaped suddenly
into the limelight as a prospective
major issue in the national campaign
next year. AS long as prosperity pre-
vailed in the United States no question
was raised, except by idealists and
those who have interests abroad, re-
garding the advisability of Americas
isolationist policy. But the drop in the
market and the business depression in
this country which followed have been
traced by both Republicans and Demo-
Gratis to world condition. In the
twinkling of an eye the theory that
! the United States is entirely Self-suffi-
cient has been upset. There has been
a growing impression, fostered by the
declarations Of political leaders of both
major parties, that the United States
is dependent for its prosperity upon the
ability of other peoples to buy Ameri-
can goods, particularly, when produc-
ton in this country has been speeded
up to a point where it is wholly i'm
possible for America to consume very
considerable proportion of what it
produces.
Already there are signs that Demo-
cratic leaders are dabbling in the in
ternational relations problem to deter
mine whether the sentiment of the
American people will stand a swing
back to the Wilsonian attitude OF
greater cooperation and interest by
America in foreign affairs. Gov. Albert
C. Richie of Maryland, candidate for
| the Democratic presidential nomination,
has been one of the first to criticize the
Hoover administration and its efforts
to relieve the European economic situa-
! ton on the ground, not that it goes too
far, but that it does not go far enough.
| Other Democrats of prominence have
seized upon international relations and
the need for closer community Of in
terests to demand that the Republican
protective tariff law be hurled down.
AS for the Republicans, some of them
are beginning to wonder Just what the
attitude OF the G. o. P. should be next
year toward this question of foreign re-
laticns At the close of the World War,
when the country was sick of the war
and glad it had ended, there was re-
action against a participation by this
country in anything European, or which
might involve the United States further
in European affairs. American partic-
ipation in the League of Nations, spon-
sored by Woodrow Wilson, was bowled
over, first in the Senate and then in the
national election in 1920. Sentiment
against closer relations with Europe
seemed to run so well politically that
the. leaders put forward with great sue
cess the idea that the nations allied
with the United States in the World
War must be compelled to pay all the
huge debts which they owed this coun-
try for money loaned them to help in
carrying on the war. And so it ran.
The isolationists, who insisted that
these foreign debtors should pay up
the billions of dollars which had been
loaned during the war, have succeeded
at last in making the United States take
deeper interest in foreign affairs,
with a possibility that it will be COM
PEELED to dabble in them to a far greater
extent than ever before in peace times
This is not what they had in mind, Of
course. But it seems to be working out
that way. The United States has come
to have great stake in Europe because
of the intergovernmental debts to this
country. The allied nations are using
German reparations to pay these debts
to the United States. And now the
United States has to come to the aid
of Germany, so that in the end the
debts to the United States of France,
Great Britain and Italy may be settled
Just what form the foreign rela-
lions issue will take in the next cam
paign has not yet become clear. The
debates in Congress the coming Winter
may clear the matter up, placing the
Republicans and Democrats on record
in the matter. Roosevelt, the out
standing candidate for the Demo-
cratic nomination for President in
1920, ran on Wilsonian platform
favoring entry of this country into the
League of Nations. Newton D. Baker
of Ohio, at the 1924 Democratic Ma
tional Convention, led a forlorn hope
fight for the League of Nations against
a growing Democratic sentiment that
the League issue was a milestone round
the neck of the Democrtic party. Yet,
next to Roosevelt, Baker is the Demo-
crat most talked of for the presidency