THE UNLEARNED LESSON

The World Court, like a good many other institutions, seems to stand in greater danger from its friends than from its enemies. Yesterday, the pro-Court senators, although assured of eventual ratification of the present protocol as it stood, added a few more amendments to that already much emasculated measure, thereby showing themselves less interested in the success of the new peace plan, than in passing some kind of a bill to fulfill their campaign promises.

The new reservations were evidently designed to please the most cautious isolationists. Under these reservations the United States needs only bring such matters as it pleases to the attention of the Court; is quite at liberty to disregard its decisions, and may withdraw at any time it sees fit. In short, the Court proponents may now boast with even greater pride that American participation in that body would be quite harmless.

It augurs ill for the permanent value, which it had been hoped this country would obtain from membership in the Court to see the Congressmen who favor such membership putting forth purely negative reasons for it. Nevertheless they but reflect the suspicious attitude of the country-at-large that has rendered all international peace projects abortive since the war. Perhaps disillusionment, the inevitable reaction of the violent enthusiasm the war engendered, has been the cause of this timorous provincialism, for the triumph of the Allied arms was attended with an almost universal wave of longing for a new world order. Only eight years have passed since then, but now the United States in undertaking to endorse an experiment intended to secure a lasting peace, is insisting emphatically on all its national privileges and prerogatives. Yet at that time, the cause of permanent peace was thought worthy of sacrifice and concession.