| OCR Text |
Show A BAD RATIFICATION. . The Senate has ratified the general unreserved arbitration treaty after depriving de-priving it of iif goncral terms and after af-ter making many reservations in. it; so that it is now no longer a general unreserved arbitration treaty. It is merely a treaty signifying that the United States is ready to enter into, treaties with various powers except aa to a large number of propositions held to be. not competent subjects of treaty negotiations. First of all. the Sonata objected to the creation of the joint high coiumis-sioners. coiumis-sioners. -who were to investigate and find if any subject found incapable of KOlution by the ordinary processes of diplomatic negotiation -were justieiable, and struck it out. The treaty as dra.wn provided that three of the?? joint high commissioners should bo citizens of the United States acting for this country, and three citizens of the country with which the controvers' -was pending. It. was provided that five of these six joint high commissioners must agree that the subject submitted was justiciable justicia-ble before it could bo brought before an arbitration tribunal. Two points of opposition -were developed, de-veloped, to this joint high commission. The first, energetically and mistakenly urged by President Roosevelt, aud in his wake bv others, was that the United States might be compelled by foreign influcuc.es to submit to arbitration matters mat-ters that were not arbitrable, and which, under no consideration, would this countrv consent to submit to any tribunal whatever to decide. The clear and. sullicient repjy to this was that since the United States would in every case have one-half of that joiut high commission, and two of the three United Unit-ed States commissioners would have' to agree that the matter was justiciable before it could be brought to arbitration, arbitra-tion, the probability of any betrayal of the. lonroc doctrine, of the drag-sing drag-sing in of any State, or of our immigration immi-gration laws, our cducatioual institutions institu-tions and the like, was practically impossible; im-possible; for it; is not to' be supposed for one moment that two out of three American commissioners would betray their country and lay it open io the ravages of foreigners on any cherished policv or national reservation or doctrine. doc-trine. President Taft, on this point, expressed himself willing to have the joint high commissioners nominated to and confirmed by the Senate. But the Senate, in a spirit of petty jealousy, lest it be deprived of complete control over every point and step in a treaty or arbitration procedure, decided "to strike out the joint high commission altogether. The result is that -any arbitration ar-bitration would have to be by Che consent con-sent of the Senate, and in crTecl, any specific case of arbitration would have to' be reached 'by special treaty. It is eviilcut, therefore, that the -s.trikipg out of (his clause of the treaty practically prac-tically nullifies its whole intent.- and value. It is clear that, after striking out" this clause, "it was quite unnecessary for the Senate to adopt, the 'Bacon amendment stating specifically that the Senate would not consent, to the arbitration arbi-tration of any question that affects the admission of aliens into the United States, or to the educational institutions institu-tions of the several Slates, or the territorial ter-ritorial integrity of the several States or of tho United States, or concerning the question of the alleged indebtedness indebted-ness or moneyed obligwilons of any .State, or any question which depends upon or involves the maintenance of the traditional attitude of the United Stales concomine American questions commonly com-monly described as the Monroe doctrine, doc-trine, or other mi rely governmental policy. pol-icy. The necessity of specifying nil 'these reservations after the Senate had sj c cificallv reserved to itself the complete control of-every detail rif any arbitration arbitra-tion question, is not evident; iu fact, it was all quite superfluous. Those reservations reser-vations might have been of Value in case the joint high commission provision provis-ion had been retained; but, is4that. was struck out. the reservations arc no longer either. desirable or applicable; as a matter of fact, they wore not needed in auv event, because it is not conceivable conceiv-able that two out of three American commissioners would consent that the Monroe doctrine is a subject for arbitration, arbi-tration, or that the ""control of the United States over the immigration question and the admission of aliens to educational institutions, or the "right'' of Southern States to repudiate thoir, debts, was in any way a.jnattcr of arbitration. ar-bitration. These are honip questions, not international, because thev are matters mat-ters wholly within the jurisdiction of the United States, and into tho management man-agement of which no foreign nation has the slightest right to inquire, let alone to interfere; while as to the repudiation repudia-tion of debts by some of the Southern Stales, inasmuch as those States have no international standing, it would bo impossible- for commissioners oti the pari of the United-Statos to admit that. Iheir local acts of any kind could be subject to international arbitration. The Senate has done itself but little credit in this alleged ratification. Tt hns shown, in tho first place, a moan and narrow spirit of jealousy in throwing throw-ing out the joint high commission and reserving to itself all the control in etcry matter that may come forward n& a possihlo case of arbitration, thus wholly changing the object and scope of Hie proposed treaty, narrowing it down from a working arbitration treaty to a mere dc laration, As lo tho rcse atnnR, llicv would bc Mich as tvoujd l'o ictaiu ip- V..T1; the Spun to morel .iliiiin in .id.ii-c what the joint com mission would have been sure to affirm af-firm in anv can, "ho action of the Senate is thoroughly contemptible in any way that it can b looked upon, lacking both in broadness and intelligence: intelli-gence: unless, indeed, tho real purpose .was to destroy tho treaty, which it has done effectually, under guise of ratification. ratifi-cation. Tho Senate says, as to unreserved arbitration. ar-bitration. "Oh, yes, wo 're. in favor of it: that is, after wo havo withdrawn a lot. of tilings from its scope; and provided pro-vided that we shall have the say iii all cases, not only as to what, is to be arbitrated, (reserving to ourselves the right to say in any matter that we won't arbitrate it), and Jiow tho arm-tratiou arm-tratiou is to bo plauned, submitted, and effected.'' And a nice sort of arbitration arbitra-tion that is, indeed; and how inviting to any self-respec.t.ing foreign nation it is to be told that wc will arbitrato only on such conditions! |
