Return of the Native

Four months ago Senator Hiram Johnson sailed to Europe for his first visit on that Continent. He was reported to have declared at that time: " I am an American. I have no advice to offer France and no desire to visit Germany." That he is an American is evidenced by his return to this country, scheduled for July 23. Advice to France or any other country he has studiously avoided while abroad. But if he had no desire to visit Germany, he at least went there without the desire.

Now he comes back. His friends, who believe that, even if he has no advice for foreign lands, he may have some for his native country, have arranged a great banquet in his honor. It is to take place in Manhattan two days after the Senator returns. Many notables (not necessarily his partisans) will greet him there, among them Senator Moses of New Hampshire, Charles M. Schwab, Mayor Hylan of New York.

The question may well be asked: Why all this stage setting? There are two reasons. His partisans look to the square-built man from California, the high priest of all irreconcilables, as their great leader in the next campaign. Mr. Johnson was one of those who, with Roosevelt, split the Republican ranks in 1912. (Johnson was nominated for Vice President by the Progressives in that year.) Again, the Californian is regarded as a leader for the dissenters within the Republican party--not the radical La Follettonian dissenters, but the conservative, League-abhorring, strict-isolationist group. Those who want such a leader would like to make the dinner in Senator Johnson's honor a protest against the World Court proposal and a jubilant first step towards the White House in 1925 for the great irreconcilable.

Others than isolationists will appear at the dinner, however. They are regular Republicans, who, it is understood, want to " sit on the volcano "--the theory being that the more who sit on a volcano, the less likely it is to erupt. The regular Republicans want the dinner to be a cordial welcome to one of their number, not the first boom of a new gun in the coming political campaign.

The outcome, of course, depends largely on the Senator. Johnson has been away for four months. Johnson has been silent for four months. Johnson is coming back.