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Show rfc Published Every Saturday BY GOODWIN8 WEEKLY PUBLISHING C0.f INC. F. P. GALLAGHER, Editor and Mgr.. W. E. CHAMBERLAIN, Business Mgr. SUBSCRIPTION PRICE: in United States, Canada and Mexico $2.00 per year, the Including postage tf-28ix months. Subscriptions to all foreign countries, within the Postal Union, $3.50 per year. 5 fr 8ingle copies, 5 cents. Payment should be made by Check, Money Order or Registered Letter, payable to The Citizen. Address all communications to The Citizen. Entered as second-clas- s matter, June 21, 1919, at the Postoffice at Salt Lake City, Utah, under the Act of March 3, 1879. 3 Ness Bldg. 8alt Lake City, Utah. Phone Wasatch 5409. 311-12-1- WILSON THUNDERS THREATS TO FRIGHTEN FOES ffTTTHOM the gods wish to destroy they first make mad. VV It is an ancient saying that applies with particular aptness to the violent-minde- d speeches of the President. Whatever the which are alienatcauses, he has beem afflicted with brain-storing the support of a vast number. It may be that he believes he will gain the support of those who are dominated by their feelings rather than their minds. It may be that he has lost control of his temper because of the strong reservations to the treaty adopted by the foreign relations committee or because he has been deserted by influential Democratic senators. At all events his speeches are filled with lightnings and thunders of passion and resentment. Roughly his speeches may be epitomized under the following heads : Arguments, Epithets, Threats, Promises. If we consider the matter contained under the last heading we shall see that the President is making the same kind of a bid for support that won him the election in 1916. Then he said in effect : I will keep you out of war. Now. he says in effect : Adopt my covenant and it will keep you out of war. In a word, he is making precisely the same promise that he made in 1916. And he is formulating his appeals in much the same language and addressing them to the same elements in our population, notably the mothers of our land. The mothers believed him in 1916; do they believe him today? In 1916 the critics of the President pointed out that his policy of an ultimatum, backed only by vacillations which made the Germans think we were bluffing, was drawing us swiftly into war. The impassioned plea for peace gained the President the election. And now that the mothers of the country have so many more votes than they did in 1916, he thinks to delude them again and force his treaty through the Senate and, perchance, make it an issue if he decides to run a third time. The opposition to the treaty is aroused, for the most part, by two features of the covenant: It will involve us in many foreign wars. It will deprive the United States of its old independence and subordinate it to a One of the chief reasons for the opposition to the treaty, therefore, is the belief that it will get us into wars in all quarters of the have globe. The opponents of the league believe that it is they who a right to warn the mothers of the country, that it is they who are trying to keep the country out of war and that it is the President who is trying to involve the country in war. While he prates of peace lie urges a big army and navy and universal conscription. Since he Ipst the proper conception of his office and went to ms super-sovereignt- y. Europe despite the wise advice of many of our leading statesman, he has also lost something of his cool judgment. Let us hope his blundn ers are not due to egotism, arrogance and ambitions. Let us be merciful and ascribe it to the excitement of the present controversy over the most momentous issue we have faced in half a century. When he abases his presidential dignity to call names let us ascribe it to an hysterical state caused by overwork and anxiety. Certainly Americans would feel humiliated if they were compelled to ascribe it to an unsuspected narrowness of mind and to personal anihigh-blow- mosities. There was a President once who was indulged in the use of the picturesque language of denunciation and who thereby aroused amusement and even admiration, but a college professor trying to be a rough rider is enough to stir the inextinguishable laughter of the gods. The President has called the senators pigmy minds and, more recently contemptible quitters. When American principles were at stake in Paris, who was the quitter? If men do not see through his spectacles they have jaundiced eyes. If one takes the Washingtonian view against entangling alliances or appeals to the constitution of the United States against the covenant he is a dreamer living in a forgotten age. Our most eminent statesmen arc branded as men whose heads are only fit to serve as knots to keep their 'Senators are to be gibbeted as high as bodies from unraveling. heaven, but pointed in the direction of hell. Not content with vaudeville vernacular, he must needs, like some wild prophet of pagan mysteries, invoke upon the heads of his coun-- . trymen many and weird catastrophes if they do not cringe before his Jovian lightnings. Pass my covenant, he cries, or the labor unrest will become a tidal wave in which you will perish ; pass my covenant or our friends in Europe will turn out to be bandits and thieves and rob us ; pass my covenant, or the legions of Bolshevism will overrun the world; pass my covenant or prices will rise so high that you will starve. scoriae and flaming lava from his And thus he hurls the white-ho- t vulcan forge of threats and maledictions. It is a painful, saddening spectacle. The threat that Bolshevism will take advantage of the treaty s failure to conquer the world is idle when we consider that Bolshevism is already making progress just because of the machinations of those who would belong to the league. Great Britain has forced Persia to accept what is tantamount to As a clever rejoinder the Leninc government A British protectorate, ! |