Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1935-09-22
BY CASTOR NERVAL.

BY CASTOR NERVAL.
|WICE within few days have
the statesmen of Latin Ameri-
ca had occasion to rejoice at
Il the news of an international
nature coming from Washington.
First, it was the abandonment at the
request of the State Department of
the oil concession in Ethiopia, which
we discussed last week in connection
with President Rooseveit's announce
ment that dollar diplomacy" is at
an end. Now it is Secretary Hull's
invocation of the Kellogg BRAND
treaty. or pact Of Paris, in the Italo-
Ethiopian dispute.
The State Departments attitude.
lining up the United States with all
the great powers trying to preserve
the peace machinery laboriously built
since Versailles may have seemed dis
quieting news to some extreme iso-
lationists who cannot see beyond the
next 48 hours, but it could not have
failed to please the governments Of
small Latin American republics which
find in that peace machinery the only
guarantee of their own sovereignty
and territories.
BY its outspoken invocation of the
Kellogg BRAND pact renouncing war
as an instrument of national policy.
the Washington Government has DEM
onStrated once more its determination
to uphold former Secretary StimSon'S
Tri0t IN ha
treaty carries with it the duty of per-
Torrance" This is particularly reas-
surfing after the campaign of intense
nationalism and indifference toward
world events which appeared to be in
full swing here. and which was be-
ginning to make other governments
skeptical as to the support which could
be expected from the United States
in the defense of the existing instru-
mentalities of peace.
Reassured on Policy.
The Latin Americans. .:ncere inter-
nationalist not solely tecause of their
political philosophy but because of
their material necessities, may now be
confident that the present administra-
ton in the United States has not the
slightest intention to modify the po-
sition taken previously by Secretary
Stimson. one which Latin Americans
Of all political creeds had received so
favorably.
In his public address of October 26,
1882, at Pittsburgh, Secretary Stimson
formally committed the United States
to a policy of consistent support of
the Kellogg BRAND treaty. Referring
himself to the two occasions in that
year in which the United States had
called the attention of quarreling
countries to their obligations under
the anti-waI pact, the Sino-Japanese
crisis and the Chaco controversy, the
then Secretary Of State emphatically
set down the course to be followed by
his country in any future emergen-
cies.
I'VE have made 1t clear" he said
that in our opinion the declaration in
the treaty carries with it the duty
of performance We have made it
clear that it necessarily alters the
whole attitude of the world toward
war; that, whereas during the CEN
turtles hitherto war has been one of
the natural functions of government,
giving rise to legal rights and obliga-
lions, hereafter among the signers of
this treaty war will be an illegal
thing-a disease instead of normal
state function; that. whereas hitherto
a breach of the peace between two
nations has been nobody's business
but their own. now under the treaty
it has become the rightful concern of
the whole world, because practically
the whole world has signed the treaty,
and that this being so, whenever a
breach of the treaty is threatened by
approaching hostilities, it implies a
duty of consultation among the other
parties in order that public opinion
may be modified against the i'm
pending disaster of war"