GENERAL PERSHING'S RETURN

THR

HROUGH the acclaims of the people of New York the American Nation last week greeted the Commander-in-Chief of the American armies abroad. Secretary Baker, who met General Pershing as he left the Leviathan, greeted him with a personal message from the President, and handed him the commission making him a full General; he is the fifth to hold that rank. By the people Pershing and his splendid First Division were received with the utmost enthusiasm. It is true, as Secretary Baker remarked, that the task undertaken by General Pershing required "all the energy and all the genius of a great commander." Such criticisms as have been directed against General Pershing have not in the least thrown doubt on the fact that he carried through our great military effort with vigor, wisdom, and dignity. So long as the memory of the great war shall last General Pershing's name will stand for American courage, American steadfastness, and American victory.

THE PRESIDENT GOES
TO THE COUNTRY

The first few days of President Wilson's face-to-face appeal to the people of the country to uphold the Treaty of Peace and the League of Nations were marked by important speeches before great gatherings in Columbus, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Des Moines. In five days he traveled 2,600 miles, spoke in four States, and remained unabated in energy and earnestness.

It has been said that in no former speeches has the President been so informal and unconventional as in some passages of these addresses. Such phrases as "Put up or shut up" and "Contemptible quitters" are a departure from the usual Wilsonian suavity. But in the main the appeal was to high patriotic feeling. There was little attempt to argue point by point the many questions in dispute. The contention was that, despite possible minor defects and inconsistencies, the Treaty and the League stood for the world's peace and security. Mr. Wilson declared that his opponents had chiefly discussed only three out of the twenty-six articles of the Covenant of the League, and that "the other articles contain this heart of the matter, that instead of war there shall be arbitration; inwar there shall be discussion;

SEPTEMBER 17, 1919

instead of war there shall be the closure of intercourse; instead of war there shall be the irresistible pressure of the opinion of all mankind."

Occasionally, however, Mr. Wilson took up specifically a debated point, nota bly in his discussion of Article X. So far from being robbed of sovereign independence by that article, he said, "the Council of the League advises what should be done to enforce the respect for that covenant, on the part of the nation attempting to violate it. And there is no compulsion upon us to take that advice-except the compulsion of our good conscience and judgment."

It is impossible to quote at length from the addresses, or as yet to form an impression as to their total effect on the sentiment of the country. The burden of the President's appeal was expressed eloquently in his closing words at St. Louis :

This Nation went into this war to see it through to the end, and the end has not come yet. This is the beginning, not of the war, but of the processes which are going to render war like this impossible. There are no other processes these that are proposed in this great treaty. It is a great treaty. It is a treaty of justice.

than

We are in the presence, therefore, of the most solemn choice that this people was ever called upon to make. That choice is nothing less than this: Shall America redeem her pledges to the world? America is made up of the peoples of the world, and she has said to mankind at her birth: "We have come to redeem the world by giving it liberty and justice." Now we are called upon before the tribunal of mankind to redeem that immortal pledge.

THE PEACE TREATY IN THE SENATE

The Senate's Committee on Foreign Relations on September 4 ordered the Peace Treaty reported back to the Senate with four proposed reservations, and four proposed amendments are also made public. It was expected that the complete report would be in the hands of the Senate within a week. Then begins a debate the outcome of which it is impossible to predict, as the lines of demarcation between "mild reservationists," stringent reservationists, advocates of the Treaty without change, and opponents of it root and branch, are not definitely drawn. Various reservations differing from those offered by the Committee on Foreign Relations are already proposed. Party lines will not be followed unanimously. Compromises of all sorts may be proposed. And

as a two-thirds vote of the Senate is prescribed by the Constitution for its consent to a treaty's ratification, the possibility of a block to affirmative action is great.

The four "reservations and understandings" proposed by the Committee may be briefly summarized: The first secures for this country the unconditional right to withdraw from the League on notice and without delay. The second makes requisite the consent by a joint resolution of Congress to any obligation on the part of the United States to enter into military or economic measures which would interfere in foreign controversies or secure a foreign country against aggression as to its territory or independence or against internal conflict. The third asserts exclusive right on our part to decide what matters are within our domestic jurisdiction and therefore not to be referred to the League. The fourth declares a positive refusal to submit to the League any questions relating to the Monroe Doctrine.

Would these reservations affect the Treaty so as to require its alteration before ratification? The preamble to the Committee's resolution says that ratification

is not to take effect or bind the United States until the said following reservations and understandings have been accepted as a part of and a condition of said instrument of ratification by at least three of the four principal allied and associated Powers, to wit, Great Britain,. France, Italy, and Japan." Just what this actually involves will doubtless appear later. There are many of the milder reservationists who believe that an open declaration of our understanding and intention as to these matters would be such notice to the world at large that there would be no question as to our meaning and purpose, and that it would be totally unnecessary to insist on a formal interchange of ratifications as to the reservations. The President is understood to hold that these points are already implicit in the Treaty itself.

As to the proposed amendments, there can be no question that to become effective they must be made a part of the Treaty. They provide, briefly stated: first, that American representation in the Assembly of the League of Nations shall equal that of any other country— that is to say, that the five British dominions and provinces should not have each a separate and equal vote; second, that we shall not be made a party to the numerous commissions dealing with

European matters, with the exception of the reparation commission; third, that all the German claims in Shantung Province should go to China and not to Japan; and, fourth, that in case of "disputes which may arise between the United States and any other Power or colony of a Power the mother country of that Power may not sit in judgment of the claims of the United States, or in the event that the dispute is with the parent nation the colony is also excluded from fixing judgment upon the claims of either disputant."

What the President holds in regard to action or refusal by the Senate is shown by these remarks in his speech at St. Louis:

Their position [that is, that of the opponents of the Treaty] is either that we ought to reject this Treaty altogether or that we ought to change it in such a way as will make it necessary to reopen negotiations with Germany and reconsider the settlements of the peace in many essential particulars. We cannot do the latter alone, and other nations will not join us in doing it. The only alternative is to reject the peace and to do what some of our fellow-countrymen have been advising us to do, stand alone in the world.

A GUILTY DYNASTY AND A
GUILTY PEOPLE

A stinging but dignified rebuke was administered by the covering letter which was handed to the Austrian peace delegates at Paris together with the completed treaty. The Austrians had urged that because the Hapsburg dynasty has been banished and the old Austro-Hungarian Empire broken up, the present Austria ought not to be considered as an enemy state at all nor as the inheritor of the responsibilities of the old régime. On the contrary, says in effect the covering letter, which bears strong traces of the hand of Clemenceau, the peoples of Austria and Hungary, as well as their former rulers, "bear in a peculiar degree responsibility for the calamities which have befallen Europe during the last five years." Moreover, the people of Austria were ardent supporters of the war policy from the very beginning. If they had attempted to dissociate themselves from the German and Austrian Imperial plot or had protested against the war in any way, their plea might have had force. As it is, they are copartners in the international crime and are equally guilty with their rulers. Indeed, Austria and its people have a peculiar and special responsibility in the matter, because the war was precipitated by Austria's ultimatum to Serbia, which, as the letter says, was no more than an insincere excuse for beginning a war for which the late autocratic government at

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Vienna, in close association with the rulers of Germany, had long prepared, and for which it considered the time had arrived."

The Allies, therefore, justly declare that the text of the treaty submitted to Austria must be accepted or rejected as a whole and that no further modifications will be made. The plea that Austria is now a small community and must be protected is answered by a reminder that the treaty itself makes special provisions for the protection of small communities and that "it will no longer be possible for powerful empires to threaten with impunity the political and economic life of their lesser neighbors.'

GENERAL BOTHA

The premature death of General Louis Botha (he was born in 1863) calls attention to the breadth, wisdom, and success of British colonial policy.

Here was a fighting Boer, if there ever was one. In the Boer War he was the youngest of the more prominent native leaders. He was the victor of Rietfontein, Spion Kop, and Colenso. When Joubert died, he succeed as Commander-in-Chief. He maintained war against the British to the very end with immense energy and success, winning the admiration not only of his fellow- Boers, but also of the British, because of his resourceful tenacity-he kept the Boer War going two years longer, it is said, than it otherwise would have lasted. Botha was equally notable because of his chivalric observance of humane warfare, and finally, when nothing else could be done, he surrendered.

Instead of sulking in his tent, he took a leading part in the work of reconstruction. His disposition found a welcome and characteristic counterpart in that of the British Government itself, which generally trusts the man on the ground

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to do the business." In 1907, after the grant of self-government to the Transvaal, Botha was called upon to form a. Ministry, and was its Premier until 1910. In that year the autonomous Union of South Africa came into existence and he was universally recognized as its natural leader. He became Prime Minister, and, with the exception of a short interlude, had held the office ever since. To him more than to any other is due South Africa's later development.

When the war broke out in 1914, General Botha took command of the Union forces and procceded to attack German Southeast Africa. He had a double foe to attack. He found himself handicapped by treason in his own forces. Upwards of ten thousand armed citizens took the field against him-the "old line" Boers. Even General de Wet had succumbed to the German propaga

and had raised the standard of rebellion. Botha hunted down and dispersed the rebels. Then he conducted a campaign over a nearly waterless country, where the few wells had been poisoned by the Germans and where the sandstorms compelled the soldiers to wear goggles. In July, 1915, he forced the surrender of the forces in German Southwest Africa and placed under the British flag 116,000 more square miles of territory than Germany itself contains. Finally, he furnished the troops which, under General Smuts, eventually broke through the resistance in German East Africa. With Smuts, Botha signed the Peace Treaty in Paris.

We surmise that the British Empire was prouder of no man at Paris than of Botha, statesman and soldier.

To these ends the bill would consolidate railway property into regional sys. tems; would create a board of five members appointed by the President of the United States, transferring to it some of the present Inter-State Commerce Commission's powers; would provide that railway directorates must have two members representing the employees and two representing the Government; would create a committee of eight members, four representing labor and four representing the railway companies, for decisions concerning wages and working conditions; would prohibit lockouts and strikes, and would establish a system of profit-sharing by employees..

As to the properties, to the query if in this scheme of consolidation Congress had the Constitutional right to deprive a well-conducted road of an adequate return upon the value of its property, Senator Cummins is quoted as replying:

I have no doubt about that. . . . The bill provides that the Inter-State Commerce Commission shall establish rates that will make a fair return upon the value of all property.

To a further query as to whether the result would not be to force the weaker roads into bankruptcy, Mr. Cummins replied: "The weaker roads are in bankruptcy; that is the unfortunate part of the situation."

As to labor, and strikes in particular, Senator Cummins said:

I have always regarded the strike as
aluable weapon, the only weapon