PRAISEWORTHY POLITICS

The Ship Subsidy has been done to death and the doing has dealt a death blow to President Harding's prestige. Yet nothing daunted, the President sent a message to the Senate at the tag-end of Saturday's session which should raise a new oratorical storm with the Bitter-End group as the storm-center. The message calls upon the Senate to endorse certain negotiations which have been in progress for a year, regarding participation by the United States in the Permanent Court of International Justice under the League of Nations. While avoiding an actual place in the League through certain reservations, the President asks the Senate to recognize the practicability of the League institutions. Although the message reached the Senate too late for any discussion, Senator Borah, the iconoclast, and Senator La Follette, the troublemaker, along with other leading "Irreconcilable", have hinted darkly that they "might have much to say within a day or two."

Perhaps, however, the President's move was not as much courage as it was policy. With the close of Congress near, the Senators in the opposite wing were fretting with eagerness to not about criticizing the Administration's foreign policy. Certainly there has been a turn toward a more favorable view of European participation recently, and the charges which the Democratic congressmen had stored up for use during the recess would have been effective ammunition against the party in power. The President's prudent compromise, which accepts the Court without the League, will considerably dampen those stories.

But whatever the motives the measure must not be sacrificed. The record of the Hague Court stands as its best witness, and its importance to us is clear. A short time ago the Court made to Norway the award of a large sum payable by the United States for certain Norwegian ships interned here during the war. Although we were under no obligation to accept the decision we did so in the name of international amity. In its present status, the United States may be judged upon while having no voice in that judgment. When the value of the Hague Court has been proved by its increasing work, when every month adds to its growing dignity and power, the United States cannot with wisdom continue in its present anomalous position, nor fail, without rank inconsistency to endorse the best agent yet devised by humanity for the peaceful settlement of international disputes.