Backfire

Secretary of State Henry Lewis Stimson last week showed the perfectly normal reaction of a U. S. statesman who has been called "unfriendly." He insisted that he was friendly, that he had acted from the friendliest possible motives in reminding Russia and China by identic notes of their obligation as signatories of the Kellogg Pact not to fight. The retort of Moscow's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Maxim Maximovich Litvinov that the U. S. note was an unfriendly act seemed to cause Statesman Stimson only pain. His soft answer was to make no direct reply at all and to observe to correspondents: "Between co-signatories of the Pact, it can never be rightly thought unfriendly that one nation call to the attention of another its obligations or the dangers to peace which may from time to time arise. . . . In the language of the joint statement issued by the President of the U. S. and the Prime Minister of Great Britain on Oct. 10 last, 'both our governments resolve to accept the peace pact not only as a declaration of good intentions but as a positive obligation to direct national policy in accordance with its pledge.' "

Sympathizers regretted that the Pact had backfired at Mr. Stimson's first major attempt to operate it, applauded his courage in proceeding on the assumption that a positive character has been given to a perfectly negative document by the verbal resolution of President Hoover and Prime Minister MacDonald.

Landing in Manhattan from the Leviathan, last week, Pact Man Frank Billings Kellogg said: "Undoubtedly the Pact is working. It is so considered in Europe, I know. Secretary Stimson's action was entirely timely and proper."

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