SPRIGS OF OLIVE

As a pretty bit of ceremony to commemorate the sesquicentennial anniversary of the signing of the United States first treaty, or as a fitting, if anticlimactical, acknowledgement of Lindbergh's accomplishments in diplomacy, the peace pact signed simultaneously yesterday in Washington and Paris was most successful. As an effective measure to destroy any possibility of Franco-American hostilities, it may be said to order on the inane. For it, covers all bellicose situations except "as such disputes related to the Monroe Doctrine, France's obligations under the covenant of the League of Nations, domestic questions, . . . or questions affecting a third party." It is hard to imagine a quarrel in which one of these clauses could not be invoked. But it there is one, it is the rankling question of debt settlement; and this treaty is obviously intended to allay the fear of the French that the United States might attempt elsewhere the militant methods of debt collection that she has found so successful in South America. Lately the French cartoonists have been making pointed pictorial insinuations about the inexplicably large navy which their star-spangled Shylock is providing. In the light of this fear, it was unfortunate, perhaps typically so, that Secretary Kellogg, on the day before the signing, should propose another treaty, this time to abolish submarines, which happen to be the basis of the French navy.

Yesterday's treaty has further, the proviso that similar treaties must be concluded during the year with Great Britain, Italy, Japan, and lesser powers. For the United States is trying to superimpose on the League and Locarno covenants which it has found unacceptable, its own plan for universal peace. In this connection Senator Borah has written, "It is safe to prophesy that the United States will never become identified or cooperate with a system for peace based upon, 'pledges to wage war'." Unwilling, in other words, to assist in the forceful prevention of wars under the plans now in effect, the United States still wishes to protect her prosperity by exchanging paper promises of peace with other powers. It is explained that this multilateral pact does not interfore with the League covenant or other alliances, because it an aggressor nation breaks it, the peace is no longer valid, and it may he attacked. What it does do, is to make nations liable merely on the grounds of political honor, an unsecured liability chosen instead of the punitive assets of the League, which seems, to continue the metaphor, bad business.