And we doubt that the responsible statesmen of this country, of France, of Great Britain, of Germany, of all the other nations involved, will find a royal road out of the morass until the average man, the man on the street, in the United States, in Great Britain, in France, in Germany, pulls himself up short and thinks: "What can I do?" instead of: "How can I get what is due me?"

THE ACCUMULATING TRAGEDIES OF

IRELAND

AS THERE ever a people who paid so high a price

W for freedom as the Irish? Not alone in the

record of seven hundred years of intermittent fighting against a superior power, but in the record of the last

twelve months?

It was in July of last year, following many months of atrocious guerrilla warfare between the Irish Republican forces and the English forces in Ireland, marked by innumerable assassinations and by such gripping tragedies as MacSwiney's death by starvation, that King George made his move for peace. By this time one year ago steps to effectuate that move were under way and the heart of mankind was gladdened by the prospect of early success. There seems now to be practical assurance of the early realization of those ambitions; but through what sorrows has Ireland passed in moving to the present condition!

many

In the course of months, after threatened ruptures, negotiations between British and Irish delegates were consummated in a treaty that gave Ireland substantially the status of Canada, Australia, and other selfgoverning dominions of Great Britain, at the same time caring for the peculiar problems of Ulster. Almost immediately there was recurrence of the old horrors. The world said that Ireland had been given the substance of freedom. It had little sympathy with the extremists who demanded outright, absolute independence. It felt that Ireland had too much in hand under the treaty to pay the price of further blood-letting to add a formal freedom to the substance. Moreover, practical-minded men inclined to the belief that there would be greater security for the world in a self-governing Ireland within the British Empire than in a selfgoverning Ireland playing a lone hand at the very hem of the empire and a natural objective of all the international trouble-makers of the future. The best thought in Ireland held the same general views, as was revealed some months ago when an election was held. But Mr. de Valera and a band of irreconcilable absolutists could see only complete severance from Great

Britain and complete independence as a fit conclusion of the war.

Thus for virtually half a year Ireland has been in turmoil because of dissensions within the ranks of its patriot leaders. The dissensions began with bitter debate in the Dail Eireann. They continued until there was outright war, in which Irishmen of the South killed Irishmen of the South; in which the late sharers of common dangers from the English imposed like dangers on each other. Ultimately Dublin itself was the scene of bloodshed and destruction on a staggering scale. And while the end was fairly certain to be supremacy of the treaty forces, led by Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins, it is only lately that supremacy has been secured.

Now that it is secure, come crowning tragedies. Griffith dies suddenly, a victim of overwork and, probably, heartbreak. Behind him is a record of service to Ireland in which patriotism and reason merged in equally high degree. And in his dying breath, if the accounts from across the water are correct, he did what he could to perform a large service in reconstructing Ireland by appealing to Irishmen to stand firmly for the treaty. Almost simultaneously the dispatches brought news that de Valera, comrade of Griffith in the days when Ireland confronted Great Britain, but an enemy latterly because of lack of the practical statesmanship that guided Griffith's patriotism, lay ill and almost forsaken in a little farmhouse among the hills of southern Ireland. His absolutist troops are described as little more than a handful of boys. Disheartened and broken, he had said to them that they might go on or might cease fighting, as they wished. He would continue.

It is difficult to know which is the sadder picture, the patriot plus statesman dying of overwork and heartbreak in the hour when his guiding hand was needed by a new nation, or he who had patriotism minus statesmanship lying alone and forlorn in a far-off cot, virtually repudiated by those whom he loved and served with a zeal that swept beyond control.

And now, as we go to press, the cables bring word that Michael Collins, co-leader with Griffith of the forces of sanity that negotiated the treaty with England, has been shot down. It is stated that he was killed in ambush. A representative of Mr. de Valera in this country is quoted as saying that he was not killed in ambush, but in battle between the regulars and the irregulars. It is hard to think of an attack on the merest handful of men as legitimate battle. It is especially hard to believe there was legitimate battle, in view of the reports for days previous to his death that he was a marked man. But no matter. There stands the fact. A sincere and devoted Irish patriot is dead at the hands of Irishmen.

LIGHT AND MORE LIGHT FROM MR. LLOYD-GEORGE AND ALL OTHERS

U

NDER DATE of August 12 a dispatch to the New

York Times from London states that "the London

press and public are greatly exercised over current rumors relative to the publication of a war book by Prime Minister Lloyd-George"; and, further, that "there is a good deal of discussion on the point whether Lloyd-George should write a book on the war while still holding the office of Prime Minister. One weekly, The Outlook, devotes two columns to the apparently congenial task of castigating Lloyd-George on the ground that he is disregarding 'the old English tradition.'"

This is a case in which sensibilities and traditions, whatever they may be, are less important than facts. Mr. Lloyd-George's book will have facts. They may be, and probably will be, covered by a personal and national viewpoint and by ambition and vanity. Still

there will be facts. And the more facts the world can get about the war and the events following the war, the more opportunities there are to look behind the scenes, the greater hope there will be for the world today and the world tomorrow. And the sooner facts and more facts are seen the more useful they will be.

The experiences through which the world went from 1914 to 1918, while war covered the earth, and through which it has gone from 1918 to 1922, while it has sought to extricate itself from the consequences of the war, have been so incredibly perplexing that there cannot be too much light cast by those best able to cast light on all that has transpired. If ever the "pitiless publicity" so much talked about a few years ago was needed, it is needed now.

It will help the peoples of the world to a just appraisement of what has been done and, with the arguments offered back and forth, as to what should be done. More than that, it will help the men and women of the next generation to see this war and its consequences as they are; and that is, perhaps, of more importance to the welfare of the race than anything else. Somehow the world will stagger on to a better day. What is important beyond human statement is that when it reaches that better day those who then guide the destinies of nations shall see the degradation and the horrors experienced by our generation in their true proportions, and thus be warned.

Undoubtedly one of the potent forces against peace throughout the world's history has been the tendency to romanticize over past wars. The far-sighted and the clear-sighted, devoted to the work of making the last war the last great war at least, have feared that in time

a romantic veil will be cast over the supreme convulsion civilization has been suffering. Unless we are mistaken, Mr. Henry W. Nevinson, dean of British war correspondents, who represented the Manchester Guardian at the Washington Conference on the Limitation of Armament, gloomily shook his head in talking to a group of peace advocates and expressed the fear that the virile and adventurous young men of the next generation, if living in an era of peace, will look back on our day longingly as the day of heroic things, and then unconsciously will the return of a similar day.

the front in many wars are matched by the ardor of his Mr. Nevinson, whose years of service with armies at longing for permanent peace, feared that the youth of another day will not see war as he had seen it and as our youth has seen it, in all its filth and bestiality. feared, for example, that they will see in the British campaign at Gallipoli, which he saw through, not a vile and putrid slaughter-house as well as a scene of heroic devotion. He feared they will see only the devotion.

He

It is necessary that the truth be told about the actualities of war. Included in those actualities are not only the filth of the front, but the sordid double-dealing, misrepresentation, lying, and selfishness of capitals. The world should know of low bargaining, of secret treaties parceling out millions of human beings and their labor and other possessions. It should see as they are the motives and the compromises of statesmen. So Mr. Lloyd-George's book should be welcomed, without extreme squeamishness as to when and where it is published, or lifting of the eyebrows at the price of $400,000, said to have been paid for the publishing rights in Great Britain and the United States.

It should be welcomed for the opportunity it will give to see behind the scenes in the chancelleries, just as Dos Passos' "Three Soldiers" should have been welcomed as a picture of the front. In one way Mr. LloydGeorge's book may be out of plumb as Dos Passos' book was in another way. The personal bias of a statesman may color his narrative as the personal bias of Dos Passos pictured not all of the men in the armies, but only a part of them. But something of truth, the ugly arresting truth, may be had from both books.

And therefore we gladly accept Mr. Lloyd-George's offering, just as we have Ray Stannard Baker with his account of Mr. Wilson in Paris, Mr. Tumulty with his eulogistic biography of Mr. Wilson in the White House, the former Crown Prince, Ludendorf, and all others in high place who have taken pen in hand for revelation of the inner events of the war and the period following the war. The chaff in it all will be separated from the wheat, and the masses of mankind will benefit.

WRONG

ISCUSSION in the Senate Judiciary Committee of

And Secretary Hughes is entirely right when, after

ican commission to pass on claims of the American Government and American citizens against Germany and Austria-Hungary probably will be a moot affair; for Secretary Hughes has announced, since the introduction of Senator Underwood's bill, consummation of the negotiations with Germany for a mixed commission. The agreement provides one commissioner to represent the United States and one to represent Germany, and an umpire. Germany agreed to the appointment of the umpire by President Harding, and the President promptly chose Associate Justice William R. Day, of the United States Supreme Court, who served as Assistant Secretary of State and later as Secretary of State in the McKinley Cabinet.

But, although the discussion of the Underwood bill will be academic, there should be clear understanding of what the bill seeks to do and emphatic condemnation of

he makes the point that all the facts in the situation are such that the United States is under stronger moral compulsion than ever before to adhere to its policy of

mixed commissions.

It is evident that, apart from the influence of the fact that the State Department has completed negotiations with Germany for a mixed commission, the sentiments of Mr. Hughes are the sentiments of conspicuous members of the Senate, like Senator Borah, of Idaho, and Senator Walsh, of Montana. And that is a cause for genuine gratification. We believe that Mr. Borah and Mr. Walsh, in their opposition to the Underwood bill, voiced the sentiments of the American people, rather than did Senator Underwood.

IS THE UNITED STATES TO BLAME?

its own agency to pass on the claims of its own government and its own citizens, and would have the American claims, thus passed upon by a solely American agency, satisfied from the funds or property in the control of the Alien Property Custodian. Of course, Germany and Austria-Hungary would be placed in the position of the vanquished, entitled to be heard only if and when the victor were pleased to grant a hearing. Nothing more obnoxious could be imagined to the American idea of fair play and what should be the American ideal of justice, and more than justice, to the helpless.

Parenthetically, it is difficult to imagine so strange a proposal from Senator Underwood, regarded by so great a number of those who know him as approaching the apotheosis of fairness based on sanity. Whatever, the accuracy of Senator Underwood's argument that unless something be done speedily to secure the claims of Americans the funds held by the Alien Custodian will be dissipated, his plan is utterly unsatisfactory.

Secretary Hughes, in his letter to Senator Nelson, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, to which the Underwood bill was referred, properly and truthfully spoke of the measure as one of confiscation. There is no escape from that conclusion. Not only does Senator Underwood seek to set up a one-sided agency to pass upon claims, but he specifies in the bill so great a schedule of allowable claims that it is certain every dollar of alien property held would be seized without nearly meeting the total in claims. In addition to the claims of American citizens for losses sustained by such German acts as the sinking of the Lusitania, the Government of

engaged in the manufacture of arms; that these interests are fostering a spirit of war in different parts of the world; and that the United States authorities are at least partially controlled by these interests. The argument is substantially as follows:

A convention was concluded at St. Germain on September 10, 1919, relative to the control of the trade in arms and munitions. In this convention it is set forth that following the war huge stocks of arms remained in various belligerent countries, constituting a danger to peace and public order. In the document it is set forth that it is, therefore, necessary for the governments to exercise supervision over the trade in and the possession of these munitions of war. According to the terms of the instrument, it is proposed to prohibit the export of the arms of war without a license from the government of the exporting country. In case munitions are exported according to license, all such licenses shall be published in an annual report setting forth the quantities exported, together with their destination; which report shall be sent to a central office under the control of the League of Nations. In the case of certain "prohibited areas" in Africa and in parts of Asia, commonly termed the Near and Middle East, there shall be no importation of arms. The principle involved is that traffic in arms, like the traffic in opium and other dangerous drugs, should be subject to strict supervision and to the control of public opinion.

It appears that the Treaty of St. Germain is not in force; that, indeed, only Greece and Siam, among the

MR. HOLT'S SERVICE

score of signatories, have ratified it. Sir Cecil Hurst explains in a report to the Armaments Commission of

VERY ONE is indebted to Mr. Hamilton Holt, presi

a dead letter. The substance of his explanation is that the American Government is not in position to control the export of arms and munitions by private firms except to a limited number of countries, such as Mexico, Turkey, and Soviet Russia. Since the United States has not ratified the Treaty of St. Germain, other signatory powers do not feel justified in inflicting severe losses upon their manufacturing industries when the effect of such action would not terminate the trade in arms, but would simply divert it into other hands. In short, it is charged that the United States is to blame for the failure. to ratify the Treaty of St. Germain and to remedy the distressing situation as to the manufacture and trade in the munitions of war.

Our own opinion is that this charge is unjust. The United States has refused to accept the League of Nations. It is not in position, therefore, to ratify the Treaty of St. Germain or any other instrument tied to the League of Nations. The trouble in the whole situation is that our European friends treated with a selfappointed group of unrepresentative Americans. They have not yet sensed the fact, namely, the United States cannot, and, in no appreciable time will, conduct its foreign policy, directly or indirectly, in conjunction with the organization set up under part 1 of the Treaty of Versailles. The United States does not abstain from ratifying the convention for the control of the trade in arms and ammunition because of its subservience to the manufacturers of arms. It refuses that convention because under chapter 5, article 23, it is provided that the high contracting parties would agree to use their best endeavors to secure the accession to the present convention of other States, members of the League of Nations. Under article 24 the signatories would agree to submit disputes to an arbitral tribunal in conformity with the provision of the Covenant of the League of Nations. Thus the blame for the present deplorable situation relative to the traffic in arms is due, not to the refusal of the United States to ratify the convention of September 10, 1919, but to the inability of European statesmen to realize that, as far as the United States is concerned, such traffic will have to be controlled by some adjustment wholly unrelated to an organization repeatedly repudiated in the United States Senate and overwhelmingly condemned by the American electorate.

It is to be hoped that those taking the lead in discharging the important duty of removing this danger to peace and order will set themselves to the task of finding a way to do it that will be in conformity with the fundamental policies of the United States. There must be some workable method.

letters to Secretary Hughes criticizing the latter's attitude toward the League of Nations and the Permanent Court of International Justice, since those letters evoked from Mr. Hughes replies of customary clarity which tell us something we are glad to know.

Thus we have Mr. Hughes' statement, made in his usual convincing way, that he has not treated the League of Nations discourteously, in reply to various communications sent to this government. It is good to know that. The United States exercised its choice and stayed out of the League, but it would not be pleasant to think that our officials pettishly disregard the ordinary amenities of gentlemen in occasional dealings with agents of the League.

We also learn, in an authoritative way, why we made formal peace with Germany through the separate Treaty of Berlin instead of by using the Treaty of Versailles with reservations. When Mr. Harding went to Congress, shortly after assuming office, he gave the impression that the Treaty of Versailles would be resubmitted. It is gathered from Mr. Hughes' reply to Mr. Holt that the situation in the Senate was canvassed, and that it was found advisable to use the separate treaty.

Again we are given reliable insight into the mind of Mr. Hughes with respect to the League of Nations itself. It will be recalled that he was one of the thirty-one eminent Republicans who issued a manifesto in the 1920 campaign, Secretary Hoover and Chief Justice Taft being among the others, in which support of Mr. Harding was urged as a means of entering the League. The assumption of the manifesto was that in no event could the United States enter the League without reservations being made to the covenant, and the argument was that there would be better chance of entering the League on a sound basis, under those circumstances, with Mr. Harding in the White House than with Mr. Cox.

Alluding to Mr. Holt's not altogether friendly references to Mr. Hughes' partial responsibility for that manifesto, Mr. Hughes states in one of his replies that the Administration was compelled to deal with the situation as it found it. This plainly means that when the Administration came into office it looked at the temper of the people as revealed in the 1920 election on the one hand, and at the temper of the Republican majority in the Senate on the other hand, and concluded that any effort to enter the League would be unavailing. Perhaps reflection had convinced Mr. Harding that the country should not enter the League. But Mr. Hughes' letter indicates that the survey of the popular and senatorial situations also was made. It is well to have this under