Throughout American history the settlement of claims upon foreign powers presents a lamentable succession of evasions and procrastinations. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, restitution for French spoliation of American commerce was ultimately assumed by the United States itself in connection with the Louisiana Purchase. The final decision on the Alabama claims was not rendered for a decade after that famous vessel began her depredations upon our Federal shipping during the Civil War. In that American claims against the British government for seizure of goods in the first part of the European war are still pending, there is danger that the traditional delay in such matters will be repeated.

Early in the war Great Britain agreed to make adequate compensation for ships and cargoes wrongly seized by the English authorities, insisting, however, that claimants should proceed through the regular channel of the prize courts before appealing to diplomacy. Although the United States pointed out that such cases lay in a different category from those involving property owned in England, it wisely refrained from pursuing the subject while hostilities were still in progress. Last August the State Department again opened the question by asking for an adjustment. "No final reply," says the outgoing Secretary of State in his belated report, "has been received to that communication," although literally volumes of correspondence have been exchanged in the matter.

Our experiences in the past should be sufficient to teach us that we have nothing to gain from delay. Friendly relations with Great Britain--commercial relations, in particular--can in the long run best be preserved by solving each problem as it arises. In justice to the American citizens whose interests were impaired, the Harding administration should strive for the immediate settlement of these claims.