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Show h -J1 GENERAL HUGH S. JOISfJSOM Jour: LET ENVOY GO ABROAD WASHINGTON. There is no earthly reason why Mr. Roosevelt should not send Sumner Welles abroad as ambassador-at-large to Europe. There is nothing new in the idea. For several years we had Norman Davis abroad on a similar job. There is an ugly precedent in Mr. Wilson's "twin soul," Colonel House. But the very ugliness of it tends to avoid its danger. 1 Mr. Wilson finally came to feel that Colonel House's secret commitments commit-ments had foreclosed and embarrassed embar-rassed his plans for world peace. President Wilson and Premier Clera-encean Clera-encean During Peace Conference. That feeling became so bitter that in parts of Mr. Wilson's inner circle, they ran the colonel's name and title ti-tle together in pronouncing and forgot for-got the "h" in his surname. There is no danger of that kind of result here. Mr. Roosevelt has no "twin soul." Sumner Welles, in spite of a rather snooty Groton-Harvard exterior and his apparent authorship of the absurd "safety zone" around the Americas, is a good listener and a man not likely to exceed his authority au-thority in committing his country to anything not authorized by his boss. If we get mired in European mud beyond our depth, it will be by no over-reaching or indiscretion of Mr. Welles. It will be because our all-highest all-highest willed it so. That the boss has reached such a conclusion now is not likely. He couldn't as yet carry the country with him. But there is no doubt whatever that, like Woodrow Wilson, Mr. Roosevelt feels a heavenly call to make right the wrongs of the whole world. It is one of the strongest of the incentives in-centives that are leading him so to draw all lines as to make his re- election inevitable. Whether intended or not, this and all his recent actions and expres sions, tend to be, first, an argument argu-ment for a third term and second, if he gets it, a mandate to go farther in mixing us in European affairs. The argument will be that, by this increasingly close contact with the interior stresses a n d Franklin Roose-strains Roose-strains of the Eu- vell in London( ropean vortex, no 19,8 as Assist. new administra- ant secretary of tion would be as jne jjavy. well fitted to deal with it. If he is overwhelmingly elected, the "mandate" will be that his pre-election actions sufficiently revealed his purpose to take a dominant domi-nant part in the reconstruction of the world and that his election' would indicate in-dicate a vote of confidence in that policy and a popular command to carry it further. The effect, if not the purpose of sending Mr. Welles on this mission when neither belligerent seems to have requested it, or even especially to welcome it, is the cleverest kind of both personal and political strategy. strat-egy. Mr. Welles has a colleague and Mr. Roosevelt an international adviser ad-viser in assistant secretary of state Adolf Berle, the ex-infant prodigy or if you like an alternative phrasing the infant ex-prodigy. Mr. Berle has recently uttered very expansive thoughts on our coming re-enactment of our 1919 role as saviour of the world. We would again bail out its battered bat-tered hulk financially by the use of the gold we have purchased from it at nearly double its value giving it back if necessary. The generosity of some great "thinkers" with other people's money mon-ey is almost divine. In addition to generosity, Mr. Berle has the supreme su-preme self-confidence of a really brilliant intellect. Without a misgiving, mis-giving, he would undertake financial reorganization of heaven without a retainer, or charge hell with a pail of water. So would the President. LEWIS' BID John L. Lewis' proposal for a joint convention of C. I. O and A. F. of L. unions to vote on a simple proposition proposi-tion for merger is being criticized by both A. F. of L. leaders and some columnar pundits as insincere. Technically, it is true that a joint convention giving the rank and file of A. F. of L. the right to vote on healing this rift, would not have a constitutional right to admit C. I. O unions and give them A. F. of L charters but isn't that an awfu! note! |