SIGNIFICANT GESTURES

With the question of actual adhesion to the Covenant definitely out of immediate consideration, the United States is relaxing its former attitude of strict aloofness toward the League of Nations which it has held ever since its inception. Indicative of this change of front is the recent announcement from Washington that the United States will submit to the League copies of all her treaties to be published in the League treaty series. This work, compiled in the interests of open diplomacy, contains more than one thousand treaties, and is one of the monumental achievements of the League. Although, for well-informed international lawyers, it will be about as useful as Blackstone, it is more yeast in the leaven of that expansive substance international entente. All fifty-four league members file their treaties, as they are made, in this collection. Most United States treaties, having for co-signatories various ones of the fifty-four, are already a part thereof. But United States treaties with Ecuador, Russia Egypt, Afghanistan, Turkey and Mexico--such curious bed-fellows isolation throw together--will be duly added under the new arrangement.

To the immense satisfaction of authorities at Geneva, the United States is likewise giving the League statistics and information pertinent to League investigations, and has, moreover, departed from her quondam policy of answering League communications eight months after their receipt, now answering the with solicitous promptitude. The reason is obvious. After years of uncertainty, the United States is finally determined on isolation. After years of attempted conversion, the League has given the United States up for a bad job and left her to the good graces of that isolation. Being farther apart in fact, the two are closer together in understanding. So these small gestures of the United States are harbingers of better times to come,--if League chauvinists do not overdo them.