THE CONGRESS: Up Senate, Down Court

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Years hence college students will be pondering the story of how a Publisher and a Priest bested a President and of how the Senate, after a long lapse, reasserted its might & majesty as a potent legislative body with a mind of its own. What they will be studying happened last week.

Last month President Roosevelt sent to the Senate a brief, earnest request that that body consent to U. S. adherence to the World Court. "The movement to make international justice practicable and serviceable," wrote he, "is not subject to partisan considerations. ... At this period in international relationships, when every act is of moment to the future of world peace, the U. S. has an opportunity to throw its weight into the scale of peace."

To the Senate since 1923 had gone seven similar messages from Presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. Only once had the Senate responded favorably. That was in 1926 when it tacked on a string of reservations which took Elder Statesman Elihu Root years to get accepted by the other powers. But after 13 years the World Court was probably the deadest political issue in the land. That deadness was precisely what gave World Court advocates hope of getting the U. S. in the Court this time. Senators Hiram Johnson of California, William Edgar Borah of Idaho and a handful of other bitter-enders, the ragged remnant of 1919, would orate against it, but nose-counters figured that well over the requisite two-thirds of the Senate would complaisantly go along with the President. In fact, approval of the World Court seemed so imminent as to impair the Administration's strategy of using this old subject as an oratorical bone for the Senate to chew on until more important matters could be prepared for its consideration.

Long a Court devotee, Mrs. Roosevelt confidently undertook a campaign in its behalf. "It looks to me," said she to a women's Conference on the Cause & Cure of War in Washington last fortnight, "as though we were about to take another step toward doing away with war." Positive of a Court victory in the Senate, Pundit Frank Kent gallantly accorded "some of the credit ... to Mrs. Roosevelt."

For two weeks the Senate fulfilled expectations by the listlessness of its debate. Because Chairman Key Pittman of the Foreign Relations Committee was too lukewarm to do a job that rightfully belonged to him, Majority Floor Leader Joseph T. Robinson had to take over Ad- ministration sponsorship of the World Court resolution. This proved an initial handicap because Senator Robinson, though a loud and earnest debater, is no expert on foreign affairs. Meanwhile the case against the Court was presented by Senate veterans who had learned their parts by heart in the debate of 1926. But the Administration entered the final weekend of the fight with confidence unimpaired.