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Show I THE CITIZEN leather and shoes, is reporting; to Congress that the larger packers control the hide supply and have taken ex- price of hides, . , cessive profits and passed increased costs to subsequent steps in manufacture and distribution; that the tanner has taken exceptional profits ; that the manufacturer of shoes has taken ' unusual margins, and the prices charged by the retailer are not justifiable; each factor in the industry adding to the burden he had to bear before he passed it on to the next: This is a sweeping indictment hot only of such old offenders as is the packers but of all traders. The spirit of profiteering,-whicmerely the modern name for that love of money which is the root of all evil, is the vice of all who have anything to sell nowadays. It afflicts the workman as well as the dealer. Each profiteer imagines that he is going to get the better of some one else. The result is a general rise in prices and the profiteer, who consumes so many more articles than he produces or sells, is the victim of other profiteers. But there is a mad scramble among the profiteers for the position of prize or surviving profiteer. Each one imagines that he wili outstrip the other and get rich while his fellow profiteer with less imagination and ability remains a mere piker or fails altogether iri the struggle to survive. EXILE OF COLONEL HOUSE i - ... it has been revealed just why Secretary Lansing was taken ATtolastParis by President Wilson. Our secretary of state was the dummy delegate. No one told him anything. He was supposed to know nothing. He was supposed to return to the United States and, when compelled to testify before a committee of the United States Senate, say that he knew nothing. Ask Colonel House, he said in reply to several questions. Colonel House knows; therefore he remains in Paris. The colonel evidently is in exile until such time as the Senate needs no more information, having definitely accepted the treaty or amended it. Into Colonel House's ear our President poured his confidential information. All the secrets and perfidies of the negotiations were confided to House and then the house was locked, so to speak, and the key hung about the President's neck like an amulet for safekeeping. From Secretary Lansing the senators obtained a wide and desert expanse of ignorance. Across the Sahara of the secretary's ignorance not even a whispering zephyr of information blew. What was the secretary of state doing in Paris ? It would seem that he was shut up at the Hotel Crillon through the long days and nights. Guards must have been placed at his doors so that no one carrying information about the peace negotiations could inscribe a single thought on the blank page of his In fact, the secretary did not even know that he did not know. He confessed that he made a treaty in 1917 with Japan conceding the paramountcy of that nation in China and did not know that Japan had concluded a treaty with Great Britain and France for possession of Shantung. He negotiated the treaty with a real Nipponese knower Count Ishii. In the pleasant, process of misleading Tbansing the wily count informed him that Japan did not intend to retain Shantung, and at that very time the secret treaty with Great Britain and France was in existence. Japan has no hesitation in affronting the United States, but the President is so fearful that this double-dealin- g power will not enter his League of Nations that he makes every concession to it even though he knows of its treachery. It is an amazing and saddening spectacle to see the great Christian civilization kow-towito a nation which has given so many evidences of its pagan selfishness and its disregard for the interests of the nations with which it is leagued. It has been suspected that it .'carried on secret negotiations with Germany during the war, but this fs almost beyond belief. A secretary of state, who is really a foreign minister, is supposed to know what is going on in the world of diplomacy and intrigue, but Secretary Lansing seems to have labored tirelessly to keep himself uninformed. know-nothingne- ng ss. 5 Evidently he understood just what was expected of him when he took office. He understood that the President was to be the secretary of state. He understood that, whatever knowledge he might acquire about politics, astrology, palmistry and bunk, he must keep his mind clear of all knowledge of the business of his office. But Colonel House knows. Ah, yes, the colonel knows. But, then, the colonel is not secretary of state; And he is in Paris. WILSON PLAYS POLITICS SHALL the United States be bulldozed and starved into accepting covenant without change? The President took advantage of the high cost of living crisis to threaten the country with a continuance of hunger and distress unless it bowed its neck to the yoke of his sacred covenant. We realize that we are stating the case in the crudest terms and that even those who oppose the covenant will declare that our position is too radical. We purpose, therefore, to demonstrate that we have not exaggerated the President's challenge to the country. In the first place let us admit that a statesman who could acquiesce in the shame of Shantung and agree to defend and maintain of Japanese atrocities in Korea by means of Article X and by means the same article to bid the' Egyptians, the Irish and other subject races to leave all hope behind, is not fully conscious of the enormity of his offense in seeking to coerce the nation. While there is any possibility that the peace terms may be changed, says the President at the height of his threatening, or may be held long in abeyance or may not be enforced because of the divi-sions of opinion among the powers associated against Germany it is idle to look for permanent relief. He proceeds to designate all the proposed measures of relief as provisional because, forsooth, he1 has taken the position that only his covenant can set the world right in every respect. Nothing, he says in effect, can relieve the world of unrest, unhappiness, trade disturbance and starvation until the covenant is adopted without change. We conceive this attempt to capitalize politically the high cost crisis to be as egregious a blunder as his declaration last fall, that only Democrats were to be trusted in office. He is trying to exercise a species of direct action on the Senate, to obtain by coercion what he failed to secure in senatorial votes at the last election. Had the President's edict cowed the people instead of rendering them indignant and resentful at the election, had they elected the candidates he sought to have, elected, he would not now be under the necessity of holding over the Senate and the country the club of intimidation. He. foresaw that he could not carry to complete fruition ' his international plans unless he had a subservient Senate. He was denied control of the Senate, but he is unwilling to accept the decision at the polls. While he utters words of mild reproof for those workingmen who use coercive methods to obtain higher wages from the government he adopts coercive methods to gain his own ends. It seems to us that the apologists for the President are neglecting to look at the treaty as a whole. They apply the President's plea only to that portion of the treaty which suits their fancy. For the President's sake let us admit that he, too, is so obsessed with what he conceives to be the virtues and the glories of the covenant that his mind fails to function properly when his attention is called to those provisions of the treaty which strike such good Americans as Lodge and Borah as appalling. But, it will be said, the President is simply stating a condition; he is not to blame if a continued state of war in Europe and elsewhere prevents the processes of peace from restoring normal conditions in r trade. The President did not limit himself to expressions of regret for the continued state of war. He boldly blamed the Senate for continuing the state of war by holding his sacred covenant in abeyance and declared that the covenant must be accepted without change if the people of the United States were to have permanent relief from intolerable conditions. The President was held responsible both here and abroad for the delays in the Versailles negotiations. To many the President seemed |