Life — November 16, 1922 — page 16: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

NOVEMBER 16, 1922, “While there is Life there’s Hope” Published by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY Vol. 80. 2089 London Offices, Rolls House, Breams Bldgs., London, E. C. E think we know some- about the predicament of France, her anxie- ties which con- strain her to keep a bigger army than she can afford, her vast expenditures for repairs of her invaded regions, her disappointments in getting money out of Germany, her worries about what will happen to the French in the next genera- tion. We have certainly some un- derstanding of those matters but perhaps M. Clemenceau can help us to a better and a fuller one. He is one of the most interesting men alive, and anything he says will get attentive hearing. Perhaps he will implant in our minds some new ideas about the foreign debts. Judge Gary spoke of them the other day at the meet- ing of the American Iron and Steel Institute. He is not for cancelling them. To cancel any part of them without full payment would, he thought, ke forced charity, which is neither agreeable to the donor nor to the recipient. He thought the for- eign nations could pay their debts to us if given time enough, and a low rate of interest. Certainly the debts ought not to be cancelled as a measure of forced charity, and if we ever cancel them it should be because—taking into consideration the whole state of Eu- rope and of the world, the volume of the obligations, the practical dif- ficulties of payment and the effects of payment on us if the debts should be discharged—it would be more to our advantage and for our true prosperity, spiritual and eco- nomic, that the debts should be scaled down and a good many of them cancelled. If it is not to our 598 Madison Avenue, New York advantage to have those debts paid and not to the advantage of Europe to pay them, they should not be paid. We do not want to see Eu- rope make a great moral and eco- nomic advance at our expense by paying us off. Neither do we want to see Europe ruined. We have sound economic reasons for not desiring either of those things. If M. Clem- enceau can help us to see what our course should be about those debts he will be very useful. If he can help us to see how we can best co- operate with Europe either in the League or out of it that will be helpful too. We want information on those matters. We will get it in the end from facts, from things that happen while we are hanging fire, but it will be greatly to our advantage to get some helpful sug- gestions beforehand. If Mr. Lloyd George comes over here and talks, as the papers say he may, we shall of course be delighted to listen to him too. Elections being over, we shall want to think about something important. HE Bonar Law ministry in England strikes observers as an effort to get back to normalcy surprisingly like the one that re- sulted here in the election of Mr. Harding. Great Britain has been running away so fast with the moral leadership of the world, that it may be to our advantage to have her sit tight a while and do nothing. It will make our case a little easier to bear. Meanwhile the British and their precious trade seem to be getting a wonderful and timely assistance from an unexpected quarter—to wit: from American Prohibition, extend- ing to the high seas, and rapidly blighting American shipping inter- csts. Our ambitious passenger boats scem not likely to compete success- fully with the boats that sell rum. Ample opportunities of self-denial ashore have been provided at great expense in this country, and intend- ing travellers do not seem to care to pay another high price to secure them aboard ship. The British and other European ferrymen profit by that disinclination. HE Bishop and other authori- ties of the Methodist Church in Nebraska have left out of its active ministry the Rev. Mr. Buck- ner, a pious and devoted man and a very acceptable preacher, because he thought some things in the Bible were not true in the sense in which they were read. He did not believe that God told the Israelites to extir- pate the Canaanites. He does not think extirpation including women and children is right. He does not think a good God would have en- couraged the Israelites to do it, and since he thinks that God is good, he does not believe the Old Testament got the stories right. A good many of the Methodists think about as he does, but the Church authorities in Nebraska re- fused to discuss these matters at all. They would not try Mr. Buck- ner for heresy, nor let him go on in his ministry, but just dropped him without discussion. So now he is making all the noise about it that he can, and that is right, because such matters ought to be threshed out. They are not so terrifying as they seem. They turn a good: deal on phraseology. The way out is through discussion, and the increase of knowl- edge, and not through the stopping of the mouths of honest people by church discipline. E. S. M. comicbooks.com