Mr. Roosevelt & a Ghost

Last week Franklin Delano Roosevelt, like Newton Diehl Baker the week before, turned thumbs down on the League of Nations. Plain to all now was the fact that Democratic candidates for the Presidency were desperately anxious to let this ghostly old issue lie buried in its political grave throughout 1932.

In 1920 Mr. Roosevelt, then campaigning as his party's vice-presidential nominee, was so thoroughly imbued with Wilsonian idealism that he fervently repeated that U. S. entry into the League was his ''single paramount issue." Last week as Governor of New York he told a meeting of the New York State Grange in Albany:

"American participation in the League would not serve the highest purpose of the prevention of war and a settlement of international difficulties in accordance with fundamental American ideals. Because of these facts, therefore, I do not favor American participation. ... I have no apologies to make. The League has not developed along the course contemplated by its founder."

In Washington Joseph Patrick Tumulty, President Wilson's old secretary, mourned: ''It is a sad commentary upon American politics that some Democratic leaders, lured on by circumstances, find it expedient by an artful kind of indirection to run away from the peace ideals of Woodrow Wilson."

Old Republican League foes gave themselves up to quiet ironic chuckling at the ghost-laying of Democrats Baker and Roosevelt. "The Reno-like celerity with which Democratic leaders are seeking to divorce themselves from the League of Nations," observed New Hampshire's tart Senator Moses, "is interesting and amusing. . . . Deathbed conversions, however, smack of the theatrical." To this Idaho's Senator Borah piously added: "Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."

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