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Show In any case, the course of the United States is pretty clearly indicated. The appeal put forth by the Ebert government govern-ment may have considerable force juris-tically. juris-tically. The peace terms may be inexpedient, inexpe-dient, planting the seeds of future wars rather than establishing that durable equilibrium of which we have talked so much. But whatever the individual may think of the wisdom of the terms, war still exists and we cannot be separated from our associates. Our representatives have helped to formulate and approved the peace terms. If they are not accepted we can only proceed with such war measures meas-ures as our government and the associate governments determine upon. Germany must have no doubts on that point. We do not propose to add to the division, confusion con-fusion and incipient anarchy of Europe by an eleventh hour revolt. We shall stay with our allies until peace is accepted' accept-ed' or compelled from Germany. There will be no separate peace. It is not a corollary of this that we shall adopt the treaty, of Versailles as a whole without amendment or reservation. reserva-tion. There are many provisions of the treaty which directly concerns us. How many there are we cannot know until after af-ter the publication and careful examination examina-tion of the full text of the treaty. But besides tho provisions setting up the so-called so-called league of nations ,which is primar-. primar-. ily an alliance of the great powers associated asso-ciated in the war to defeat Germany, there seem to be many which involve us in responsibilities for the enforcement of conditions or the maintenance of situations situa-tions in which we have no clear or substantial sub-stantial interest. The treaty ,therefore, must be studied with the utmost thoroughness and care, and accepted only with such reservations as a sound consideration of our own welfare wel-fare dictates. The treaty of Versailles is an elaborate instrument many of the conditions con-ditions of which do not concern the American Am-erican people, who wuld be folish to underwrite un-derwrite their fulfillment in perpetuity. It is an instrument expressing no large consistent body of principle, but a resultant result-ant of political forces, a complex of ambitions am-bitions and expediences, representing the web and woof of Eureopan international relations, the play of ancient rivalries, ani mosities, misunderstandings, fears, interests inter-ests and competitions. It proves that there i3 still a lot of human hu-man nature left in human beings, even in our own allies. We, too, shall be human enough to see them all the way through the present crris. But we are not sure that our grand children are in honor bound to undewrite all the undertakings of their grand parents Chicago Tribune |