Ratification of the treaty of peace has again been defeated, in circumstances no different from those which controlled the action of the Senate four months ago.

The Republican Senators, under the leadership of Mr. Lodge, would not accept the Treaty of Versailles, which has been ratified by all other belligerents and has already been put into effect. They insisted on making a treaty of their own. The Administration Democrats would not accept the reservations framed by the Republicans and adopted by the votes of the Senators opposed to the treaty in any form. The Battalion-of-Death Republicans having voted with the Lodge Republicans to make the treaty unacceptable to the Administration Democrats,. then voted with the Administration Democrats to reject the treaty that they had helped to mutilate with that definite object in view.

In so far as the action of the Senate a victory for anybody it is a victory for Senator Borah and the irreconcilable Republican Senators who have followed his leadership. They have held the balance of power in both parties. It was their votes that enabled Senator Lodge to retain the reservations that the Administration Democrats rejected and it was their votes that finally prevented the ratification of the treaty that they had assisted in mangling.

In consequence the treaty-making power of the United States is inoperative. The Government of the United States could win a great war; it could negotiate a great peace; but it is incapable of ratifying any kind of peace, because the Senate is unable to perform its constitutional functions.

There have been humiliating episodes in the history of the United States, but nothing else that was quite so humiliating as this; nothing else that so sharply challenged the capacity of the American people for self-government; nothing else that so sweepingly indicted their national self-respect and their sense of responsibility. On the whole, the records of the Senate since the Treaty of Versailles was formally submitted by President Wilson, July 10, 1919, constitue the most mortifying chapter in American history.

Having voted in November, 1918, to divide their Government in the midst of a world crisis, the American people now find themselves without a Government that can function. Partisanship has paralyzed its members. The commanding prestige that the United States won in the war has been frittered away, and the country, after all its superb achievements, stands before the world today discredited and without a real friend. This is the penalty of that betrayal of faith which is all concentrated in the repeated refusal to ratify the treaty of peace. So far as the United States Senate is concerned, the dead of this war have died in vain. NEW YORK WORLD.