The Supreme Council is
unknown to the Constitution of the United States. Therefore Mr. New of
Indiana submits a resolution calling for the facts.
So far the Senators still recognize vaguely that they are discussing a
rumor. Being lawyers they still remember some of the forms of
evidence. But as red-blooded men they already experience all the
indignation which is appropriate to the fact that American marines
have been ordered into war by a foreign government and without the
consent of Congress. Emotionally they want to believe it, because they
are Republicans fighting the League of Nations. This arouses the
Democratic leader, Mr. Hitchcock of Nebraska. He defends the Supreme
Council: it was acting under the war powers. Peace has not yet been
concluded because the Republicans are delaying it. Therefore the
action was necessary and legal. Both sides now assume that the report
is true, and the conclusions they draw are the conclusions of their
partisanship. Yet this extraordinary assumption is in a debate over a
resolution to investigate the truth of the assumption. It reveals how
difficult it is, even for trained lawyers, to suspend response until
the returns are in. The response is instantaneous. The fiction is
taken for truth because the fiction is badly needed.
A few days later an official report showed that the marines were not
landed by order of the British Government or of the Supreme Council.
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