those earlier relationships, both sentimental and practical, which made all intercourse between America and Japan suggestive of a dawning Golden Age of peace and universal brotherhood. It is with such feelings that citizens of this country extend at once their sympathies and their auspicious anticipations to the people and the Government of Japan.

AMERICA'S ALSACE

It was about ten years after the German seizure of Alsace that Chili took possession of Tacna and Arica. So perhaps by ten years after the restoration of Alsace to France, Tacna and Arica will be restored to Peru; though we must earnestly hope that it will not be by the same strenuous means. Both seizures were made by virtue of military conquest; but with quite different ostensible purposes. In the European case the act was absolute and perpetual. In the American it was, at least on its face, conditional and subject to revision and reversal. After a period of years a plebiscitum was to be held, and was to determine whether the Chilian occupation was to be permanently confirmed, or return to Peru was to be made. But after forty-five years and more the plebiscitum is still untaken, the permanent disposition of the provinces still undetermined.

The feature of the case that is most unsatisfactory, perhaps we might say most ominous, is the apparent failure of precisely those processes which we are wont to regard as most desirable and most auspicious in international transactions. Conquest through war we deprecate, as we do also the arbitrary holding of the spoils of conquest, regardless of the will of the conquered. We have regard for the sanctity of treaties, for the right of self determination and for the moral authority of mediation and arbitration. What hurts is that the Treaty of Ancon should still be unfulfilled, that the promised self determination should be withheld, and that the results of the arbitration which was not only accepted but actually solicited should not be received with effective acqui

escence.

Never, we may confidently aver, was arbitration more impar

tially, more benevolently or more intelligently performed than by the President of the United States in this dispute between Chili and Peru. Nor do we believe that a more just judgment was ever rendered. It should have been promptly accepted by both parties and put into effect. That it was not, but that under one pretext and another it has been virtually rejected, might be regarded as an affront to this country. We shall not thus resent it. But we should hope that it would restrain those concerned in it from casting suspicions and aspersions, such as some are reported to be casting, upon the attitude and course of this country toward any other Latin American affairs. Certainly, the United States does not deserve to be made the subject of Lorenzo Dow's epigram on Predestination:

You can and you can't; you will and you won't;

You'll be damned if you do, you'll be damned if you don't.

Yet what are we to think, if objection is made to intervention on the one hand, and rejection is the fate of arbitration on the other?

GERMANY ON HONOR

One of the most significant occurrences of the year thus far in Central Europe has been the withdrawal of the Allied control of German armaments; or, rather, transfer of it to the League of Nations; following immediately upon Germany's agreement to demolish all the forts along her eastern frontier which she has built since the World War. To optimists, this is auspicious; to pessimists and cynics, it is ominous. Which view is correct, only the sequel can tell. Certainly it will afford a test of the efficiency of the League of Nations in the performance of one of its most important functions. Also, it will soon throw light upon the real spirit and purpose of the German people and their Government; who are now placed on their honor to "seek peace and pursue it". It would be profoundly disappointing to have them take advantage of this release from Allied surveillance to make surreptitious increases of their military strength, with aggressively belligerent aims. There is reason to hope that they

will not do so, but that they will sincerely devote their attention to eliminating the evils which Junkerism brought upon them and to confirming the peace of Europe. And it is also to be hoped that France and Belgium will have the moral courage and the steadiness of nerve to assume, in the absence of proof to the contrary, that Germany will keep faith with them. It may be that thus this withdrawal of Allied control will be a white stone landmark on the path of peace.

TWO TYPES OF DEBTORS

Recent utterances, discussions and negotiations concerning the debts of European nations to this country have more and more marked the differentiation between two kinds of debtors, among peoples and their Governments as well as among individuals. These are, in brief, the willing and the unwilling.

There are those who, whether able or unable to meet their obligations, are willing to do so and desirous of doing so, if they can; and who give their chief attention to finding ways and means of paying. There are also those who, whether able or unable, are unwilling to pay, and who devote their ingenuity to the devising of pretexts for avoiding payment.

It is natural and just, as it is quite inevitable, that the sentiment and the attitude of the creditor toward the debtor shall largely be determined by the class, of these two, to which the debtor belongs.

VERMONT'S SESQUICENTENARY

The one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence of New Connecticut, otherwise Vermont, has not loomed as large as that of the United States in historical commemoration. Yet in some not insignificant respects it was of comparable interest; if as nothing more than a too much forgotten curiosity in American history. It should be remembered that Vermont is unique among the older States, in that it was never either a separate British province or a Territory of the United

States. It was an independent republic, declaring and maintaining its separation both from the British Empire and from the United States. It participated gallantly in the Revolution not as a part of the United States but as an ally. And finally, when it became the fourteenth State of this Union, it was not elevated from a Territorial status to that dignity, but was annexed as an independent foreign country, just as was Texas, many years afterward.

It is grateful to recall that Vermont in spirit anticipated by three-quarters of a century the proud motto of West Virginia, Montani semper Liberi, by being the first State on the American continent to abolish and prohibit human slavery. Also, it was the first to establish universal manhood suffrage, every one of the original Thirteen having at that time some property qualification for the franchise. Yet it presented an interesting combination of conservatism with advanced liberalism, by making moral and religious enactments in its statute books which were perhaps the most strict of all in America. Certainly Berkeley in Virginia or Cotton Mather in Massachusetts Bay could have done no more than to make death the penalty for blasphemy, and we cannot recall that they did more than Vermont did in prescribing fine and flogging for even the simplest profane swearing, and sending a man to the stocks for making a social call on a neighbor on a Sunday afternoon. These are interesting reminiscences for those who are fond of exploiting Ethan Allen as a free-thinker and atheist. Happily, after a hundred and fifty years the bigotry has vanished, while the freedom and manhood remain, confirmed and triumphant.

PLAYING WITH PARLIAMENTARY FIRE

Let us say, to begin with, that we do not expect to see parliamentary or Congressional-government in America overthrown. We shall have no Mussolini nor Primo de Rivera in the United States. Trust to the good sense and resolution of the American people for that. But let us also say, very advisedly, that both Houses of Congress are playing with fire in a reprehensible if not an ominous fashion, and are bringing upon themselves a measure

of reproach not to be greatly differentiated from that which has in so many European countries brought Parliaments into discredit and given opportunity for dictatorships. And they are doing this by flouting and violating the very Constitution to which they owe their existence.

Note, for example, the course of the Senate. An "immutable covenant" in the Constitution guarantees equal representation in that body to all the States. Yet Senators propose to deprive States of equal representation by excluding members who have been duly elected or appointed and are constitutionally qualified. The Constitution makes the Senate "the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members". But it does not empower it to prescribe what those qualifications shall be. On the contrary it prescribes them itself; to wit: That a Senator must be thirty years old, for nine years a citizen of the United States, a resident of the State for which he is elected, and elected by the people of the State or, in case of emergency, appointed by the Governor. That is all. And all that the Senate has any constitutional right to do is to judge whether a Senator meets those constitutional requirements. If he does, it has no option but to seat him. If the Senate had a right to impose additional qualifications of its own devising, it could impose any such tests, and it could thus deprive at will any State of its equal representation. It is a mischievous blow at the sovereign rights of the States, and at the integrity of the Constitution; though it is likely to recoil with more damaging force upon the Senate itself. It is a perilous swing of the pendulum to the opposite extreme from the ground taken by one of the ablest men that ever sat in that body, John C. Calhoun, that Senators were in fact ambassadors from sovereign States, over whom nobody but their own States had any authority or supervision.

Again, observe the conduct of the House of Representatives. The Constitution requires that body to reapportion its members among the States on the basis of a census of the population to be taken every ten years. Such a census was taken in 1920, and according to the plain intent of the Constitution the House should forthwith have made a new apportionment. But it did not do so. It has not yet done so, though more than half of the decennial