Boom!

As the U. S. cruiser Detroit swung into the Irish harbor of Kingstown last week, 40 bravely martial fortress guns went BOOM! !

There was, however, a pause after the 21st boom, which divided the 40 detonations into a 21-gun salute for President William Thomas Cosgrave of the Irish Free State, and a 19-gun salute for U. S. Secretary of State Frank Billings Kellogg, both on board the cruiser.

Secretary Kellogg was visiting President Cosgrave, who was returning to Ireland after having signed at Paris a parchment called The Multilateral Treaty for Renouncing War as an Instrument of National Policy, Representatives of 15 nations had signed in Paris (TIME, Sept. 3). Moreover, when President Cosgrave and Secretary Kellogg stepped upon Irish soil, they knew that several additional nations had already declared their desire and intention to sign.

Among these were Liberia, Peru, Costa Rica, Santo Domingo, Panama, Uruguay, Cuba, Brazil, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Jugoslavia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Haiti, Latvia, Greece, Bulgaria, Lithuania and the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics.

The Russian note, despatched by Comrade Maxim Maximovich Litvinov, Vice Commissar of Foreign Affairs, raised pointed objections to the Treaty, but indicated that Soviet Russia would sign anyway, for better or worse.

Excerpts from the Red note:

". . . the Soviet Government has considered and considers now that the carrying out of a plan for universal and full disarmament is the only actual means of preventing armed conflicts. . . .

"It is necessary to recognize in the [Kellogg] pact lack of any obligations for disarmament, which are the only genuine guarantee of peace; the insufficiency and indefiniteness of the formula itself for the prohibition of war; and the existence of several reservations having the object to suspend in advance even appearance of obligations toward the cause of peace.

"Nevertheless, inasmuch as the pact objectively imposes certain obligations on the powers before public opinion and gives the Soviet Government a chance to put before the participants in the pact in question of the greatest importance for peace --the question of disarmament, the solution of which is the only guarantee of preventing war--the Soviet Government expresses its consent to sign the Paris pact."

A potent commentator on the treaty was Signor Arnaldo Mussolini, editor of Il Popolo d'ltalia, founded by his brother, Signor Benito Mussolini.

Said Signor Arnaldo: "There is no need to laugh at this pact, signed with much solemnity by various great Powers . . . but . . . there is in this Kellogg pact . . . much rhetoric and transparent insincerity.

". . . The Papacy was right when it recently said that the Kellogg pact is not a novelty, but already the thousand-year-old patrimony of the Church of Rome. . . . Anyway . . . politics is an ugly fiction."

While acclaimers and decriers warmly discussed the treaty, Secretary Kellogg received the freedom of the city of Dublin, admired Irish countryside, wenches, embarked for the U. S.