TREMENDOUS TRIFLES

Those who feared lest Congress, following some idle resolution, should begin the new year by attending to business are reassured by the promise that the post-holiday session will open with more than the usual amount of oratorical fulmination. The strongest spark firing the barrage which should rather successfully bury the really vital issue of tax reduction is the Mexican situation. The Administration has sold arms and ammunition to President Obregon who will use them to quell the de la Huerta insurrection.

Why any but the most rabid pacifist should object to such aid to the constituted authority in Mexico is difficult to imagine, and yet Representative Fairchild, a Republican, will criticism this action by introducing a bill to prohibit sale of arms to any foreign nation. Adoption of such a policy would not only repudiate an action which in this particular case is more than wise, but would negate what has always been considered sound international practice.

The American revolution was successful partly through aid from France sent ostensibly by a private company; the Cuban revolution was effected principally by American arms. No one questioned the right of sale of arms to foreign nations at the outbreak of the last war. These actions were taken upon the principle that a nation may sell arms to any purchaser it wishes so to aid.

That the American government should sell some of its surplus ordnance to that authority in Mexico who alone for some time has brought stability, progressive reforms, and international recognition to a neighboring country where every second child seems born a revolutionist seems beyond question. The de la Huerta faction, as far as it knows its own purpose and reveals it, seems to aim at a lawless control by the military and privileged classes. While indiscriminate aid to a foreign power is admittedly unwise, aid to the Obregon government is judiciously extended. Criticism on openly pacifistic grounds is perhaps excusable, and as such could be pigeonholed out of the way of more important Congressional business.