A DEBT UNPAID

Whether due to the ineptitude of the Wilson administration or to the reactionary conservatism of part of the opposition. America soon after the war crawled into her shell, drew in her horns after her, and has remained there ever since. All talk of the war has been thrust resolutely out of the window, and the door shut and battened against Europe by the adroit use of the Monroe Doctrine. Although this document was first promulgated only with reference to South America, it has stood the present government authorities in good stead on many occasions during the past two and a half years. No later than last Friday Secretary Hughes reasserted its principals in words "full of sound and fury."

In shutting its ears to all talk of the war, America is not a whit different from other countries. To a large part of the world the very sound of the word has become anathema. What shall be said, then, when but six years after the close of one tremendous catastrophe, Mr. Villard, the editor of the Nation, returns from Europe and in a speech last Sunday night predicts another by next April? Have people's sensibilities become so dulled that they are unable to conceive of another war germinating out of the war to end wars?

It is quite likely that Mr. Villard has been so impressed with the trees that he has, as yet, been unable to view the whole forest. Certainly it is hard to see how there can be much of a fight when no nation in Europe except France and Russia is in good fighting trim. But there have come enough facts from Europe to make it certain that Germany is already muttering about the next war, and France is frantically trying to stop it by screwing the lid ever tighter England has shown that it will not go with France under the latter's present methods. Germany cannot be stifled forever; eventually, unless there is some change in present tactics, there will come a war of retribution against France for forcing upon Germany a peace in fact just about as bad as the peace Germany would, if victorious, have enforced.

There are all the ingredients of a war sometime in the future, unless there comes some change in tactics. And that change can never be looked for so long as this country keeps locked up at home the guarantee of help which France has wanted so badly. The veterans of the war are no longer proud of America. One of these veterans, writing in a recent issue of Collier's Weekly, has demanded to know what kind of recompense this isolation is for the immense sacrifice that they made. How in fact have these veterns been repaid? By promises of a bonus which a large number of them do not want, and by leaving Europe to create another war out of the turmoil of the last, a war into which America will be drawn as inevitably as it was in 1916. While the government is apparently awaiting an opportunity to be of help, the opportunity, in fact, the necessity of giving France such backing as to get her off Germany's neck, is waiting for the government.