The Thirty-One

A Boomerang. At the annual luncheon of the Associated Press in Manhattan a month ago (TIME, May 5), President Harding launched what seemed a harmless little trial balloon. Now President A. Lawrence Lowell of Harvard University has turned that balloon into a boomerang.

The President stated that the Administration ” had definitely and decisively put aside all thought of entering the League of Nations. It doesn’t propose to enter now by the side door, the back door or the cellar door. . . . the Senate has so declared, the Executive has so declared and the people themselves have so declared.”

The trial balloon rose rapidly through the stagnant political atmosphere of Washington, and at high altitudes struck currents that reveal a danger lest Mr. Harding’s 1920 campaign pledges become an election issue in 1924, occasioning a rift in Republican ranks.

Last week Dr. Lowell and John H. Clarke, former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, addressed the League of Nations Non-Partisan Association at Washington.

Said Dr. Lowell: ” When the President . . . said that in his cam- paign he had declared himself absolutely opposed to entering the League and that the people in the election passed judgment on this question, I think he is going too far. Perhaps he only means that he declared himself against entering the League without substantial changes; and that was what the thirty-one Republicans, of whom I was one, certainly understood him to mean. No one will for a moment suspect him of the least insincerity; but an extremely busy man, burdened with the vast cares of a nation, may err in recollection.”

Said Justice Clarke: ” With what I am sure is a proper spirit of submission, I assert that the President has been so busy during the last two years that he has forgotten the record.”

The Record: 1) Mr. Harding’s ” Marion Speech,” Aug. 28, 1920. ” If in the failed League of Versailles there can be found machinery which the tribunal [proposed organ to replace ‘ Wilson’s League of Nations’] can use properly and advantageously, by all means let it be appropriated. I would even go further.”

2) The Declaration of the Thirty-One Republicans, Oct. 14, 1920.

Prior to Harding’s speech there had been a strong pro-League move in Republican ranks, which threatened a split in the Party and the loss of the election.

Accordingly, Harding’s campaign manager, Will H. Hays, conferred with pro-League Republicans (especially Dr. Jacob Gould Schurman, the then President of Cornell University, and Dr. Samuel McCune Lindsay, President of the Academy of Political Science at Columbia Uni- versity), and as result Elihu Root prepared a draft declaration in favor of Harding and an Association of Nations. This draft was discussed at a meeting of the Century Club of New York City. It was finally made public by Dr. Schurman on October 14, 1920, at the University Club, New York, appearing in the press on the following day.

This Declaration of the Thirty-One, so-called from the number of signatories, stated:

“The question accordingly is not between a league and no league, but is whether certain provisions in the proposed league agreement shall be accepted unchanged or shall be changed. . . .

“The conditions of Europe make it essential that the stabilizing effect of the treaty’ already made between the European powers shall not be lost by them, and that the necessary changes be made by changing the terms of the treaty rather than beginning entirely anew. . . .

“We therefore believe that we can most effectively advance the” cause of international cooperation to promote peace by supporting Mr. Harding for election to the Presidency.” Signatures:

Lyman Abbott, Editor, The Outlook

Nicholas Murray Butler, Pres., Columbia Univ.

Robert S. Brookings, Pres., Washington U., St. Louis

Paul D. Cravath, New York lawyer and economist Charles W. Dabney, ex-Pres., U. of Cincinnati

William H. P. Faunce, Pres., Brown U.

Warren Gregory, San Francisco lawyer

Frank J. Goodnow, Pres., Johns Hopkins U.

John Grier Hibben, Pres., Princeton U.

Herbert Hoover

Charles Evans Hughes

Alexander C. Humphries, Pres., Stevens Tech.

Ernest M. Hopkins, Pres., Dartmouth College

William Lawrence, Episcopal Bishop, Eastern Mass.

Samuel McCune Lindsay, Pres., Academy of Political Science of Columbia U.

A. Lawrence Lowell, Pres., Harvard U., Chairman of Executive Committee, League to Enforce Peace

John Henry MacCracken, Pres., Lafayette College

Samuel Mather, director U. S. Steel Corporation, Cleveland, O.

George A. Plimpton, Pres., Board of Trustees, Amherst College

Henry S. Pritchett, Pres., Carnegie Foundation

Charles A. Richmond, Pres., Union College

Elihu Root

Jacob Gould Schurman, Pres., Cornell U.

Henry L. Stimson, Sec’y of War under Taft

Oscar S. Straus, Member Executive Committee, League to Enforce Peace

Henry W. Taft, New York lawyer

Isaac M. Ullman, Member of Executive Committee, League to Enforce Peace

William Allen White, editor Emporia Gazette

George W. Wickersham, Attorney General under Taft

W. W. Willoughby, Prof, political science, Johns Hopkins

Ray Lyman Wilbur, Pres., Leland Stanford, jr., U.

Notable exceptions to this list of the most prominent educators of the nation, were:

H. V. MacCracken, President of Vassar College, who declined to have anything more to do with the manifesto after at first showing interest

Harry A. Garfield, President of Williams College, former Fuel Administrator, who on October 27, 1920, spoke at Rochester in favor of Cox and the Covenant of the League of Nations.

James Rowland Angell, present President of Yale University, who was then Chairman of the National Research Council and abstained from politics.

3) Harding’s Indianapolis Speech, Oct. 15, 1920: ” There is no issue drawn between the President’s League and no association. There never has been.”

4) Harding’s St. Louis Speech, Oct. 16, 1920: “I propose to you, my countrymen, that kind of fraternity of nations which is born of American ideals, that association of nations which leaves America free to make her way in the world.”

5) The fact that these utterances so far satisfied Dr. Lowell that on Oct. 20,1920, he wrote a letter (made public Oct. 31), in which he declared: “Have you seen Mr. Harding’s speech immediately following the statement preferred by the thirty-one Republicans? If in that he does not endorse what we have said, I do not understand the meaning of language.”

Other Comment. Apparently, from this record, Harding actually persuaded the pro-League Republicans that he favored an ” Association of Nations.”

This view is born out by Dr. Lindsay, who declared that there was ” no doubt in the minds of the Thirty-One that President Harding actually favored at that time the entrance of the United States into the League with proper reservations.”

Secretary Hughes declined to be interviewed, but, according to The New York World, has changed his views on the League and is now at one with Ambassador Harvey, in the opinion that ” we are damned well out of it.”

Other members of the Thirty-One offered no comment.

President Harding made no direct reply to President Lowell’s remarks. It was given out at the White House, however, that “you don’t always find it possible to carry out all you intend to do.” Besides that there was silence.

The President is in a difficult situation. Advocating the World Court, he is opposed by the irreconcilables. Attempting to pacify them, he damns the League. In so doing he steps on the toes of the pro-League Republicans. It is perhaps necessary to do this in order to get support for the Court, but he doubtless considers it a lesser offense to do so by silence rather than explicity.