Evening star., 1937-12-24
Kill the Ludlow Plan!

+ VI HlSl ocCictdly VI oGdUc OtllllSOI1 Ic.
Gently aroused the Nations attention with
a manifesto urging an economic embargo
of Japan as the most effective method of
checking her policy of aggression, and
warning the United States that there is
nothing in Tokios record since 1881 to
warrant the wishful hope that the sub
jugation of China will satisfy the insular
war lords lust for conquest.
In an emergency much nearer to
Americans than Japanese depredations
in the Far East, ominous as these are,
Colonel Stimson now addresses himself to
the supreme folly of the generation in
the field of our international relations
the meretricious Ludlow war referendum.
With lawyerlike precision and logic,
he disposes, point by point, of the spe-
cious contention that to meet external
danger at the ballot box instead of on the
firing line is the road to peace. Colonel
Stimson, who is a soldier as we'll as a
diplomat and barriSter points out that
the Ludlow proposal would at one blow
"demolish the efficacy of our first line
of defense which has consisted of
warnings" like the Monroe Doctrine,
that if other nations come too close to
us, they will be unwelcome and we
will regard it as an unfriendly act.
A war referendum system would be
taken as notice to the world that this
people would not fight until long after
our outer line of diplomatic defense
had been broken through and physical
invasion of our territory actually had
been begun
At no point is Colonel Stimson more
convincing than when he deals with our
second historic line of defense-the
Navy" He adjures Americans to remem-
ber that under modern conditions hos
tile expedition which had defeated or
evaded the fleet and approached within
two hundred miles of our coast, mot
only could within twenty-four hours by
air and sea strike devastating blows at
one of our great cities and its neighbor-
ing industrial communities, but could
within a week land a hostile force of
at least hundred thousand men upon
cur shores"
ct is idle to say am citing an absurd
Illustration" Colonel Stimson asserts, cor
that no President would permit a con-
stitutional amendment to deter him from
taking defensive action. Such argument
ignores the basic vice and poison of the
Ludlow proposal, the destructive effect
of which would be felt long before the
moment of action. Its presence in the
Constitution would hamstring the long
course of preparation upon which our
present defensive policy is based and
upon which our outer line has been rest
ing. 1t would set in motion
protracted process of deterioration and
decay, which would ultimately make our
present plan entirely impossible"
Fundamental and unanswerable as are
the objections to the Ludlow alteration
from the defense standpoint, it is even
more untenable because it undermines
our system of representative government.
Colonel Stimson utters elementary truth
when he declares that this, of all others,
"is no time for the exhibition of untried
panaceas or any other evidence of in
stability of purpose The thing to do
with the Ludlow plan is to smash it be-
yond the power of resurrection. The
House of Representatives next month has
a signal opportunity to take the initia-
tive in that worthy work of legislative
sabotage.