An Echo of Versailles

Hoover Treaty, as years ago it wrecked the Woodrow Wilson Treaty. It will be remembered that, in the peace negotiations at Versailles, Wilson agreed to pay the price of French co-operation—an Anglo-American guarantee to protect France against aggression. France thereupon withdrew her claim to the left bank of the Rhine (which claim Foch had declared to be a military necessity), and naturally considered herself betrayed when the U.S. Senate rejected the guarantee. The passage of years finds the French price much the same as at Versailles, only at the London conference it was called a “consultative pact” instead of a guarantee. Though U.S. Secretary of State Stinson spoke of it favourably in London—and even spoke similarly in America a week or two ago—President Hoover would not risk Wilson's fate by putting it in the London Naval Treaty. That is to say, he refused to buy a real naval reduction at the price set by France. Even so, the Senate's wrath was still feared. That is why the cabled report of the vote of the Senate Committee is of high importance.

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In so far as it failed, the failures of the London Naval Conference are clearly heirs in the page 10 direct line to the Versailles failures. And, as if to drive home this tendency of history to repeat