World Court

The most foreign-policied President since Woodrow Wilson is Herbert Hoover. In six months in office he has stirred up a new naval disarmament todo, and last week he opened up another question, discarded not so long ago: U. S. adherence to the World Court.

In 1925 President Coolidge asked the Senate to let the U. S. join the Court. The Senate's answer was to tack five reservations to its approval. The reservations had to be accepted by the other nations adhering to the Court, but the reservations were of such a kind that only seven lesser nations out of 47 agreed.

Last spring Elihu Root, grey Elder Statesman of U. S. diplomacy, good friend of Herbert Hoover, went to Geneva--quite unofficially--and began with foreign diplomats to draw up another set of reservations which would suit both them and the U.S. Last week more than 40 nations had approved the Root formula (see p. 26). So Henry Lewis Stimson, President Hoover's Secretary of State, announced that he had "carefully examined" the new reservations and "satisfied" himself that they would protect the U. S.

He called reporters to him and announced: "Accordingly, last month I notified the Secretary General of the League of Nations, who is presenting this to the other signatory powers, that the draft protocol met with my approval, and that if it was accepted by the other States I would recommend to the President of the U. S. that it be signed and submitted to the Senate for its consent to ratification."

The press refused to take the Secretary of State's first-personal pronouns seriously. It headlined "Hoover Advocates U. S. Court Entry," "Hoover Takes World Court Plan of Root." Seasoned Correspondent Clinton W. Gilbert took occasion to remark: "Mr. Hoover is not the kind of executive who turns over problems of his administration to subordinates." If these disrespectful remarks "got the Sec retary's goat"* he made no sign, allowed his announcement to pass as a declaration that one of Herbert Hoover's policies would be to put the U. S. into the World Court.

Actually Secretary Stimson's goat, the one attributed to him, which followed him from the Philippines, is in the White House stable. He, "Master William Hamilton Bones," in the care of Private John Hale, U. S. A., is reported to chew the blackest plug tobacco, which accounts for the brownness of his whiskers, to eat the horse's hay, to sit up on his haunches and "speak" in goatish gutturals.

* "Getting his goat" originated on the turf. Race horses, high-strung, feel more at ease if constantly attended by a fellow animal. A cheap, tractable animal, easy to feed, taking up small room in a stall, is the goat. Many a racehorse, especially in England, has had a goat for stall-mate. Turf crooks long ago found that few things will upset a horse more than to ''get his goat" (take it away) the night before the race.