Abroad

This season finds America represented abroad by two leading lights of the Cabinet--Secretary Hughes and Secretary Mellon. Not since 1919, when Woodrow Wilson was negotiating in Paris, have two such pertinent figures of American officialdom been presented on the European stage. Other members of the Cabinet have been abroad since 1919, but now appear there--to use the European terms--the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Finance. And this happens at a time when diplomatic and economic questions are sputtering very lustily in the European pot. Who can say what important developments are not in the making?

When President Wilson was abroad everyone knew that America had her finger in the stew. Daily bulletins from Paris told how the world was being reordered by the arbiters of destiny. But then the Democratic Party, the party of participation, was in power here. Now the Republican Party, the party of isolation, is in power, and accordingly one would expect matters to be very different, at least on the sur face. This is, indeed, the case.

Secretary Mellon's visit, labelled causa sanitatis, has been very quiet. In exactly what important business he is engaged, the world does not know, but that it is important business hardly anyone can doubt. After all, isolation is largely a matter of form. Political isolation cannot restore the real isolation which was destroyed, not by the Wilson regime, but by peaceful com merce over a period of decades.

And Mr. Hughes? He went to Eng land, technically, as President of the American Bar Association. But he has already visited, besides, France, Belgium and Germany. As a Minister of Foreign Affairs, he is, of course, expected to say more than a Minister of Finance. He has said more, if words are the measure; but has said very little more if significance is the criterion.

In Westminster Hall in London, Mr. Hughes addressed the International gathering of lawyers, saying: "Of all international contracts, none could be happier than this."

At the Hotel de Ville in Paris, Mr. Hughes said: "We meet at a time of distress and unrest, which followed as the natural result of the great upheaval and economic dislocations incident to the War. We know there is no cure for these conditions save as we may find it in the disposition of peoples intent upon the interests of peace."

In interviews, he expressed confidence in the outcome of the Inter-Allied Conference in London, and when asked on what he based his confidence, answered: "We must believe in the good sense of the peoples."

In the Archepiscopal Palace at Malines, Belgium, Mr. Hughes received from Cardinal Mercier a degree of Doctor of Laws from Louvain University, and said: "My visit to your country will leave a very deep impression on me."

U. S. Ambassador Houghton rushed back to Germany in order to take charge of receiving Mr. Hughes, although he had been home, on vacation, only 200 hours.

Said the Paris Matin: "Mr. Hughes' public utterances have been confined to safe philosophical reflections on the moral beauty of a lawyer's career."

But the fact remains that the two American Secretaries, Mellon and Hughes, did have quiet little private meetings with Ramsay MacDonald, with Doumergue, with Herriot, with Millerand, with Poincare, with Theunis, with Paul Hymans, with Chancellor Marx and other men who rule the destinies of Europe. And it is a safe bet for any intelligent American that Messrs. Hughes and Mellon did not go to Europe just to exchange small talk with the notables of the world.