Battle Brewing?

There was a stir in the Senate. On the floor there was whispering, in the cloak rooms there was chatter. Remarks passed in the subway to the office building. In the office building there were conferences. Yes, the Republicans agreed, it surely behooved one of them to do something. But who should it be?

Hiram Johnson came forward. He was willing to undertake the matter. He had nothing to lose in the way of "the Administration's good will. He would draft a resolution--and he did. This is it:

RESOLVED, That the Secretary of State be, and is hereby requested, if not incompatible with the public interest, to transmit to the Senate a copy of the agreement signed by Messrs. Kellogg, Herrick and Logan during the last week at the conference of the allied and associated powers in the World War relating to the Dawes Plan, and the payment of reparations by Germany.

The text seemed innocent enough, but there is a story behind it. The Allies had been holding a financial conference in Paris to determine the division of the reparations received under the Experts' Plan. The U. S., upon insistence, had been admitted to a share in the division. So an agreement was signed in Paris by the Allied Finance Ministers and, on the part of the U. S., by Ambassadors Kellogg and Herrick and Official Observer Logan (TIME, Jan. 19).

It was reported that, just prior to the signing, Ambassador Kellogg offered, on behalf of the U. S., a reservation that the U. S. assume no responsibility for enforcing payments in case of default. The other countries objected, and the agreement was signed without reservations.

This action was hailed abroad. Quoth the London Times:

The Paris conference will make history because, through it, contact has at length been re-established with America. The representatives of the U. S. who attended it were there not as observers but as active participants. They had the same official standing and carried the same credentials as Mr. Churchill or M. Clementel.

After five years of diplomatic neutrality, if not of diplomatic aloofness, the U. S. re-entered Europe.

Her official presence at the Paris Conference does not imply that America is to be reckoned upon for all purposes of European reconstruction, or that she is in any way disposed to accept the Treaty of Versailles or to recognize or take part in the political activities of the League of Nations. What it does imply is that from now onward she has an intimate and tangible concern in what, after all, is the kernel of the European problem, namely, the restoration of Germany to political and economic health.

It was American statesmanship that first threw out the idea which has fructified in the Dawes scheme. That scheme has thus been sure from the start of the good wishes of the American people. But it is now the adopted instrument of the American Government. The U.S. is at this moment definitely and officially associated with the task of applying it. She has what she has not had before, a Governmental stake in its success.

It was just this thought--so pleasing to the London Times, which so upped Senator Hiram Johnson and some of his Republican colleagues. Could it be, after all, that Mr. Coolidge was abandoning the rallying cry of his party since 1921, the cry of "No entanglements!"?

First, of course, the text of the agreement must be discovered. This was the object of Senator Johnson's resolution. Afterward would be time.

Is the U. S. morally bound to join the Allies in securing payment in case of default? That is a matter of opinion, a matter which the Administration is doubtless willing to let go undecided in the hope that there will be no default, in the meantime justifying its action on the ground that signing the agreement was the only way of getting its money.

But nothing is justifiable in the eyes of the Senate irreconcilables if it even remotely savors of an entanglement. They were expected to pass the Johnson resolution, to receive the text of the agreement and then to begin tearing it to pieces. Another battle parallel, if not equal, to the contest which resulted in the rejection of the Versailles Treaty may be brewing. Of the old irreconcilables many are gone, never to return--Lodge, Knox, Brandegee. But some still remain. Hiram Johnson still remains, proud of being "progressive'' and "irreconcilable." Around him the Macedonian phalanx will gather. It is still to be seen whether the old phalanx has weakened, or whether its opponents have developed a defense which is capable of countering it. At any rate, it is time for War correspondents to be going over their kits preparatory to going forward whenever hostilities may develop.

Mr. Hughes, attempting to avert trouble, issued a statement declaring that "the agreement reached at Paris was simply for the allocation of the payments made under the Dawes plan. It does not provide for sanctions or deal with any questions that might arise if the contemplated payments should not be made. With respect to any such contingency the agreement in Paris puts the United States under no obligation legally or morally, and the United States will be as free as it ever was to take any course of action it may think advisable.

"The agreement at Paris neither surrenders nor modifies any treaty right of the United States."