How to Make an Outlaw

Satirists and cynics make meat of a certain fact of human nature--the difference between a man's opinions before taking office and after. But that difference is a natural thing. For a man's opinions before taking office are likely to be a compound of his desires--his desire for office and his desire for what he believes should be done; and his opinions afterward are likely to be determined by the exigencies of office, by the pressure of responsibility and by the restrictions of practicability.

So the Philadelphia Forum assembled, last week, with interest to hear the opinions of the new Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee--Senator Borah. No one expected him to have changed much, for he is not the kind of man to assume opinions lightly. Nevertheless, he had played a lone part in politics; in his new post, he cannot be quite so lonesome, quite so unique in his tenets, because the form, at least, of leadership is thrust upon him.

On this occasion, his subject was the outlawing of war, and his formula was:

1) "The creation of a body of international law," the reduction of international relations to "established rules of conduct."

2) "The establishment of an independent judicial tribunal with compulsory jurisdiction over international law and treaties"--not necessarily a new World Court, but one entirely divorced from "international political institutions."

3) "The said body of international law shall declare war a crime and no longer recognize, in any way or at any time, war as a legitimate institution for the settlement of international disputes. In other words, if war comes, it must be without the shield or sanction of law, but in violation of it as a piracy, or slavery, or peonage or murder."