Jasper County Democrat, Volume 22, Number 103, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 March 1920 — THE TREATY FAILS [ARTICLE]

THE TREATY FAILS

The resolution consenting to the ratification of the treaty failed of adoption in the senate yesterday for lack of a two-thirds majority, the vote being 49 for and 35 against. Twenty-eight Republicans and 21 Democrats voted in the affirmative, and 12 Republicans and 23 Democrats in the negative. After rejecting the treaty, the senate adopted a resolution sending it back to the president with the information that ratification could not be accomplished. Thus, we are informed, the treaty goes into the campaign as an issue. As a matter of fact it has been there from the start. For it has been dealt, with wholly on the basis of the pettiest partisan politics. There never has been a time when Senator Lodge, the Republican leader, was at heart in favor of the treaty. He began his fight against it even before it had come into being. His famous round robin, the

packing of the foreign relations committee, and the senator’s satisfaction with the failure to ratify last November as revealed in his statement “the treaty is dead,” sufficiently indicate his attitude. He and his immediate followers used the irreconcilables to carry reservations objectionable to the Democrats —and Indeed to the real friends ot the treaty—and to defeat reservations that might have won Democratic support. There has been the closest co-operation between the Republican leader, supposed to be favorable to the treaty, and those Republicans known to be hostile to it. And the combination, has been effective. The outstanding fact is that the great effort to organize the world on the basis of peace has been de stroyed and brought to naught by men who were unable to rise above the lowest level of partisan politics. Men who might have been supposed to have some vision have been swayed by the smallest motives, and have utterly failed to see the vast issues that were involved. The nation has been humiliated in the eyes of the world, and' almost set in antagonism to its friends and associates in the war. Peace yet waits, and everything is left uncertain and unsettled. The heart of the world may not be broken, but the heart of America has been saddened. The treaty is, we believe, dead, and the league of nations, as far as this country is concerned, a dream. Into the politics of the situation we do not care to go. It is enough today to reflect on the great loss that the nation has sustained.—lndianapolis News. A