Honor from Congress

Congress is forever taking the law into its own hands--hands which are especially devised for that purpose. Last week it overruled the desires of the American Battle Monuments Commission (of which John J. Pershing, General U.S.A., retired, is chairman) and after three heated hours of argument passed a bill honoring the Negro.

The Battle Monuments Commission wants, itself, to pick and choose all the monuments to be erected by Americans on French battlefields. It wishes to keep down the number of monuments, lest the U.S., which can expensively honor her dead, erect so much granite and marble and bronze on the battlefields of France that it will look to future generations as if it were France that lost 120,000 men in the War, and America that sacrificed 1,400,000.

But last week a bill appeared in the House to authorize a $30,000 memorial to the 93rd Division (Colored) in France. Representative Hamilton Fish of New York (onetime officer of the 93rd Division) was its sponsor. Representative John Philip Hill of Maryland a member of the Battle Monuments Commission urged that it was unwise for the House to begin designating specific monuments. The Democrats in general joined him (a Republican) in opposition, protesting that they were not raising a race question, but supporting a principle. But the House, in acting mood, could not be deterred, passed the bill.