OCR Text |
Show i THE ' CITIZEN of Russia has relinquished all of the right claimed by the former imperial Russian government in Persia. It has handed back every concession to the Persians. If Bolshevisms spreads it will not he due to the assertion of American independence and liberty but because nations which are to be members of the league, members who should be setting an example of liberty and justice, are swashbuckling about the world stealing small nations. And to weld the chains of slavery with unbreakable links they are seeking to retain Article X in the covenant so that the only means by. which small nations may obtain freedom will be cut off. No nation ever obtained its freedom without external help.. Cuba did not. Poland did not. The United States did not. And yet our President has given his adhesion to a covenant which would deny to other peoples that power which set the Americans free. If our forefathers availed themselves of the only means by which nations ever, have obtained their freedom outside military aid we, who have grown to be the greatest of world powers because of our revolution, should be the last to deny other enslaved peoples the right to secure external aid to win their freedom. THE NEW TYRANNY . free speech by intimidation is as foreign to the as suppressing it by laws. During the war the American people submitted to laws which were more grinding on them than they could possibly have been on peoples accustomed to censorships and to decrees restricting speech. On the whole the American people were patient and sacrificing. Sometimes they were, almost overpowered with indignation when their freedom of action and of speech was unnecessarily restrained, either by the law or. by the regulations and intimidations of those who interpreted the law to their own tyrannical way of thinking. With the ending of the conflict we might have supposed that those who sought to suppress their brethren by the coercive methods of intimidation would have ceased to practice a system that smacks of moral despotism. In our own community the defenders of the League of Nations In his tour are denouncing the critics of the league as of the country President Wilson is committing the same offense. B. F. Roberts flung this charge at Major J. Reuben Clark in the hope that it would slience this patriots protests against the covenant of the League of Nations. Unable to answer the majors arguments adequately, he thought to crush him with a sneer. The time has come when the people of the country should rise in vigorous protest against this attempted despotism over the minds of Americans. If we are to retain the freedom and the spirit of freedom which is our heritage we must resist the efforts of those who would keep their opponents silent, not with argument, but with frightfulness. will be the last refuge of a Soon the cry of scoundrel. Doctor Johnson must have had just such intimidators in mind when, in his burly indignation, he denounced the hypocrisy of those who sought to hide their scoundrelisms behind the cloak of patriotism. The President has been the protagonist of this system of coercion. He has tried to picture his opponents as flying in the for opposing a compact, face of heaven and as being which he calls a covenant of peace, but which they believe to be a conspiracy for war. In our own state this system of intimidation has been intensified by a few who have made use of their ecclesiastical prestige, if not of their ecclesiastical authority, to frighten the unthinking into a belief that the Almighty has already placed the seal of his approval on the league covenant. If one who has no skill in the interpretation of holy writings, arrives at the conclusion that the covenant is a league for war, is he to be incinerated with ecclesiastical curses? Americans must decide these questions according to the knowledge they have. The layman must arrive at his conclusions according to the rules of logic. And if he decides this is a league for war he is justified in concluding ns. Pro-Germ- an un-Ameri- pro-Germ- an but will operate, to set up the tyranny of a few nations, he is warranted in making up his mind that there is nothing holy in it, as did O Major Clark. CURSE OF SABOTAGE S President Wilson giving his moral support to sabotage? Why is it? he asked, that labor organizations jealously limit the amount of work their men can do? Because they are driving hard bargains with you. They do not feel that they are your partners at all, and so long as labor and capital are antagonistic, production is going to be at its minimum. Without arguing the question, we beg leave to suggest that the President seems to be urging labor to drive hard bargains until the differences between capital and labor are adjusted. It sounds like a cry of Give no quarter. It sounds like Article X, the militaristic article of the covenant of the League of Nations. It is intemperate language at best, for it tends to stiffen the stubborn attitude of those radicals in. the labor movement who are advo- eating sabotage at a time when the nation, more than ever before except, perhaps, during the war, needs increased production. The controversy between capital and labor cannot be settled in a day or a month or even a year. The country needs increased production now. It cannot wait until all the disputes between employer and employe are adjusted. The country demands that production be increased to a point far above the minimum and it will not be patient with any suggestion, presidential or other, that production will remain at a minimum until the lion and the lamb or rather the two lions lie down together in perfect amity. The United Mine Workers, taking their cue from British labor, are demanding a day, five days in the week, with substantial increases in pay. They want more wages for less production at a time when the world, above all things else in a material way, requires vastly augmented production. The Mine Workers propose that a strike be called that will involve their 435,000 members unless a satisfactory basic agreement is reached by November 1. They oppose a sectional settlement by districts and urge a complete cessation of mine operations throughout their jurisdiction. During the war the Mine Worker demonstrated their patriotism. It is true that, like the great corporations engaged on war contracts for cost plus, they profiteered, but no one holds it against them now. Fif thousand of their members were in the Amer-ica- n army and, according to the unions tabulation, 3,333 laid down their lives. They subscribed liberally for Liberty Bonds and War Savings Stamps, which are excellent investments. In fact, they did what was expected of good Americans and we must give them credit for acting much more sensibly, on the whole, than did their brethren in Great Britain. The British workman, for years, has made the unutterably foolish mistake of believing that sabotage means more jobs. The Ameri, ican workers, consciously or unconsciously, went on the theory that more production meant more jobs. At all events this is the true theory, as we often have pointed out. The more production the more prosperity. More jobs result when the volume of business increases. Sabotage produces hard times and hard times throw men out of work. The proposal of a thirty-hou- r week is really a proposal to strike for a certain number of hours each day and to be paid for striking. On Saturday there is to be no work at all; if the program is enforced. If the Mine Workers were as patriotic now as during the war they would increase their hours. Then they were working to bring the United States and certain peoples of Europe victory and peacej Now they are working for their own people and, strange and sad to relate, thev want to lie down. We do not believe that the President consciously advocated sabotage; we simply believe that he did not weigh his language. lie probably had more in his mind than lie talked about. He was thinking, perhaps, of the conference of capital and labor which is to be held a SUPPRESSING pro-Germa- that it cannot be the compact of universal peace foretold in Christian prophecies. If he believes that it will not promise universal peace,, can V. six-ho- ur tv-thr- ee m t |