Oct. 22. the smother of words with! which the campaign for the presi-_ dential] election in America is being wound up, it is encouraging! ito come across the quiet sane' remarks of Mr. Thomas W.
Lamont. Speaking at the first business meeting of the bankers jand international representatives attending the Chinese Consortium) Conference, Mr. Lamont is reported to have said that some! Americans favoured the League of Nations and others a League of Nations and there was a vast difference between the definite and indefinite articles.
He assured America's friends in England, France and Japan that "America was strong for the arms of peace and desired to enter into some association to support her gallant Allies in preventing future catastrophes." That the peoples of the United States are in favour of some international organization to ensure peace for the future allows of no contradiction, for the speeches made during' the campaign by representatives of both sides admit the necessity of such an arrangement in principle and leave as an issue, to be decided by the electorate at large, the question of whether that principle is sustained by the present League of Nations in a way wholly compatible with American traditional usages. It is, consequently, not in issue as to whether there should a Teague of Nations, but when ther the United States are! prepared to be bound by the result of the deliberations at Versailles, and Mr. Lamont has; stated that issue in terms which cannot possibly be misconstrued.
Tt is in the nature of things that when, at such times as general elections, the stewardship of the party in power is under review, opposition to its most notable acts should be the mainstay of the attacking party; and where, as in' the case in point, the engagement entered into necessitates a complete departure from preconceived ideas of a nation's mission in world polities, the opposition is! rather more sure of support than would ordinarily be the case. It: must never for a moment be forgotten that the American desire! not to be bound up in foreign entanglements has precedent to support it, Great Britain's foreign policy for years prior to 1902 followed similar lines. Probably," not for the same reason; we do not find in it an acceptance of an academic principle so much as a recognition of the fact that, by, reason of her political insularity, Great Britain played a more powerful role in European polities than she would otherwise have done. It was a far-sighted appreciation of ultimate necessities which caused the abandonment of that policy with the establishment of the Entente Cordiale. In the case of the United States, however, conditions are different. Against a widespread desire to avoid foreign entanglements, a desire which has all the sanctions of time, the adherents of any policy supporting such a movement as a League of Nations have little but academic argument; and the prospect of the United States entering a war to prevent strife between two countries over some question in which. it has not the slightest interest, cannot be a pleasing one to those who believe that the scope of the United States lies only in the western hemisphere.
Possibly as the result of. the presidential election the League of Nations will be as dead as a door nail so far as America is concerned. In that event it must be a world wide failure, for, without the United States, the whole scheme is incomplete to weakness. But in the words of Mr. Lamont, those in other countries, who realize the necessity for some such international organization, will find more than a little hope for the future. Without a league, the world must face a continuance of the struggle for maintenance of the balance of power and all the evil that that policy implies. It is now clear that even the United States herself would be drawn into the sinister game, and into the statement of Mr. Lamont may be read the admission that those detached from the temporary incoherences of electoral strife realize this fact just as clearly as they know that in an association for ensuring universal peace is to be found the alternative.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.