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Show THE CITIZEN 4 altering- was the result of Democratic extravagance and waste and was mainly a Democratic devise. Elected in 1912 on a platform pledged to reduce the cost of living, not a single act of his administration has tended toward the accomplishment of that result, and we venture to say that most Democrats have forgotten that there was such a plank. From the time of his inauguration the cost of living has gone steadily upward. - Government squandering necessitated increased taxes, which were passed along by business to the ultimate consumers in the form of high prices. The administrations fiscal policy has produced an inflation which, in itself, is one of the chief causes of high prices. The cost-plu- s policy in letting war contracts, the waste on government jobs and the duplication of labor in such work created a shortage of labor in the general market and this, too, added to the cost of commodities. At a time when the price of sugar could have been held down the president, repudiating the advise of his equalization board and accepting the dictum of a single member of it, neglected to buy the Cuban crop and this caused the price of sugar to soar. It is true that a Republican congress did not pass all the legislation which a Democratic president suggested, but it is not customary for an opposition congress to accept the autocratic dictation of a partisan leader. In the matter of the League of Nations the president tried to force his autocratic will upon the senate and was justly rebuked by the senate with the approval of the country. The Republican congress is to be credited with the suffrage amendment, the transportation law, the merchant marine bill, the mineral and land leasing bill; the water power act, civil service retirement measure, the amplification of the wartime food enforcement act to punish profiteering, the repeal of oppressive war measures used by the administration to keep the country in a straight-jacke- t, the army reorganization bill, the bill providing for the deportation of dangerous foreigners, the postal pay increase law and the Edge bill authorizing the formation of corporations to finance American export trade. When Mr. Mondell pointed out that this congress, in its two sessions, had made a saving of $2,374,000,000; that $950,000,000 was excised from eight appropriation bills, and that the estimates submitted by the government departments were cut down $1,433,000,000, the only answer the Democratic leader could make was that the Republicans had only done what every congress had done in the years ago the last twenty-fiv- e years, forgetting that twenty-fiv- e a expenses of the government had barely reached a billion dollars year. Let us not forget that another cause of high prices was the governments unpreparedness for war. While the president was too proud to fight and while Roosevelt and General Wood were demanding preparation, our business organization as well as our us army, was practically left to its own devices and the war found in such a state of unpreparedness that we spent billions of dollars and other follies in a mad effort to meet the crisis. in cost-plu- s Had Roosevelt been in office our business would have been organized for the conflict and when the war declaration of congress came the country would have been able to enter the struggle in such a in history. way as to avoid an extravagance and waste unparalleled The president believes, perhaps, that his transparent political maneuver will aid in the promotion of his own candidacy or the and that the voters are so stupid that candidacy of his his charge will have weight during the campaign, but nothing can restore the prestige of the Democratic party so long as there is anything Wilsonian about it. son-in-la- w THE DICTATOR OF POLAND Pilsudski, the military dictator of Poland, whose victories over the Bolshcviki promise to give the new Republic of Poland a good start in life, is one of the most able, versatile and brilliant rebels of Europe. Since his youth he has been a revolutionary. The years he spent in Siberian exile and in a Russian prison sufficiently char .. acterized him as an irreconcilable revolutionary who could be neither purchased nor intimidated. Member of a family which, until the outbreak of the world war, was one of the richest in Poland,, he imbibed the principles and the spirit of Polish patriotism from his mother, who was fai' above the average in intellect and firmness of purpose. One of his uncles had been killed in the revolution in the middle of the nineteenth century and his father, grandfather and others of his kindred had been imprisoned. Born in 1867, he received his education at home and then was sent to the high school at Vilna, where the teachers derided him and his family for their Polish patriotism. So deep was his resentment and so inflamed his sense of Russian tyranny that he took an oath never to rest until Poland should be free.In 1885 he entered the university of Krakow to study medicine, but was expelled because he took part in the public political activities-of the students. Returning to Vilna, he gathered about him the resolute spirits among the younger men and formed a secret society for A Russian revolutionary society sought the aid of Pilrevolution. sudski and his comrades in a conspiracy to kill the czar, but he told the emissaries that he was not interested in a change of government in Russia, but only in the independence of his native lond. At this time he was set down in the black books of the Russian secret police and in 1887 was exiled to Siberia, where he remained five years. A close student of human affairs he made it his business to study the psychology of the Russians and he arrived at the conviction that they were imperialistic by nature, even the most radical of them, and that they neither understood nor sympathized with republicanism. The results of his observation he summarized in these words : All Russians, even the most radical, are born imperialists. The basic character of the Russian is an elemental centralists tendency. They have an oriental mind, which cannot stand a diversity in civilization. They are too easily tired, and are trying to obtain a uniformity in life that will make them free of complications. I have never yet met a Russian who was a republican. In the two years following his return from Siberia he was actively engaged in forming Socialistic societies with a patriotic object and in 1894 he began the publication of Rovotnik. the organ of his party. He wrote the editorials, set the type and distribued it himself. His fiery articles soon attracted the attention of the St. Petersburg government and in 1896 he was arrested and sent to the military prison in the czars capital city. There he passed five years before he was able to effect his escape. A physician Russian friend of his, by proclaiming himself an loyalist, obtained appointment as one of the prison physicians. Soon Pilsudski began to display signs of insanity. The Polish doctor at once denounced him as a shammer and declared and reiterated with obstreperous emphasis, that he would prove it. The Russians were taken off their guard and permitted the doctor to put Pilsudski to severe tests. On one occasion the doctor was allowed to enter the prison cell to conduct the inquisition. Five hours later, when the guards opened the door, the doctor and his patient wer; gone and a hole in the prison wall revealed the manner of their escape. The fugitives attired themselves in evening dress' and audaciously dined in the most famous restaurant of the city while the police were searching for them. When the war between Russia and Japan broke out he went to Tokio to ask aid for Polish independence, but found the Nipponese uninterested. Quickly convinced that his trip was futile, he returned to Poland and began to devise that system of masterly obstruction which made him the one rebel in Poland most feared by the czar and autocrat of the Russians. The methods adopted by the Sinn Fein in Ireland are so nearly like the method which he introduced that one suspects the revolutionists of the world have been educating one another. A writer describes the activities of Pilsudskis bands as follows! . . It is because of the activities of these men that Pilsudski in a In small recent issue of a magazine has been called a bandit. groups these forces of his raided the liquor stores, and harassed - y ultra-conservati- ve |