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Show THE CITIZEN PRESIDENTS PLEAS i. f Try it on any outlaw nation and all the friends of that nation will seek to help her and we shall have the world arrayed in two hostile camps, and once againf that sort of war which has proved so destructive in the last five years will be inevitable. Naturally it should be easier to preserve peace among allies than to prevent war between two hostile groups of nations. It is idle to boast that the treaty, because it will prevent war the among friends, will preserve peace of the world. -- 1 i. : & . cannot see the itself into two new groups of hostile powers. The Bolshevik! are establishing a unique autocracy to replace the autocracy of kings and czars and the defeated peoples, especially the Germans, are doing everything they can to aid the Bolshevikl. Wars grow, not out of identity, but out of conflict of Interests. Germany, governed by a ruling class of imperialists yearning for worldwide domination, attracted to her side autocratic nations with similar aspirations and quite naturally this group arrayed itself against the democratic nations. Now the democratic nations are menaced by a new autocracy the dictatorship of the proletariat. Added to this is the power of all oppressed peoples from Ireland to India, for it goes without saying that the oppressed will side with the coalition which is striving to overturn the status quo. Thus we see the kaiseristic group of nations being replaced by another group and this new group is quite as determined as the old group to defree nations. stroy the first Before the words of Ills speeches has cooled on his lips the president read a plea from Premier Paderewski of Poland for succor. Poland, fighting desperately and alone against the Bolshevik! and the Germans who are secretly or openly aiding the Bolshevikl, is a nation whose territory and independence is guaranteed by Article X. Here is a typical conflict already in progress. How Is it to be stopped by the League of Nations? Will the League fight the combine or will it permit Poland to be conquered and again dismembered? The purpose of our argument in this . connection is not to show that we ought . not to . aid Poland, but merely to prove that the League of Nations, by its very nature, is destined for and legalizes war by its '.V covenant. so-call- ed president was alluding with emphasis to the sort of war Germany thrust upon the THE world. We suppose that kind of a war when we suppose an attack by Russia upon India, but the parallel may be pressed much farther. When Austria assailed Serbia, Germany rushed into the conflict to aid Austria. Bulgaria and Turkey joined the Teutonic coalition somewhat later. We can assume safely, judging by historic precedent, that Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey would ally themselves with Russians in the attack 'on India and Great Britain. And if the precedent of the world war were to be followed some of the nations in the League1 would fall away and join the counter coalition. In any event, the sort of war' which the president., says would be prevented by the League, is just the sort of war the League would deal with most weakly. . But how about the economic boycott? A trrible weapon truly, as the president remarks, but a weapon which will stir up in the world more than-anpassion and hatred, if it is tried, measure of coercion every, adopted by an alliance of powers. It will arouse a resentment which will cause , . y a terrific explosion. . is blind who HEworld arraying war. Suppose, for example, that Russia should attack India on a few days' notice. Would there be six months of discussion and then a three months wait by the League, after the Councils award? Russia, we may assume, would be attacked immediately by Great Britain. All Britains allies in the League would be required by Article X to help her. But, the advocates of the League will say, Russia would make no attack for fear of the economic boycott and the consequences sure to befall her by the action of the League. Therefore, peace would be preserved. At this very moment British, French, Japanese and American troops are making war on Russia because Russia, unimpressed by the confederation of nations and economic boycotts, believes it can hold its own, and apparently it is holding its own. Indeed, there is civil war in Russia and the Russia which is holding its own is only a part of the mighty empire the Bolshevik part. ft J -- S president frequently declares THE his speeches that the purpose of the League is to prevent the kind of war that has just ended. It is that kind of war which the League cannot prevent. It can and probably will involve us in every war of that type. Mr. Wilson makes much of the 'processes by which peace is to be preserved. After a controversy arises there will be six months of discussion and then three months of waiting after the Council's decision. Manifestly the president is referring to controversies between members of the League and not to the kind of controversy which caused the world By F. Hun-Bolshev- ik . can we contend convincingly, the president attempts to do, that we are not likely to be drawn into such a war inasmuch as the vote of the Council of the League must be unanimous and cannot be unanimous unless our delegate votes in .conforothers.- i mity with The weakness of this argument lies in the fact that it ignores the provisions of the covenant. Our delegate, of course, would vote according to the NOR all-th- e - . . I covenant. As soon as it is ratified, if it is, we shall be bound by ail of its provisions and so, too, will our delegate. However much he may desire to. keep us out of war he will be compelled to vote for war because of the moral. obligation arising,' from Arti- cle X and other articles of the compact. k . J suppose that it is India and LET usRussia that begins the war; that India revolts and asks for outside, aid. The supposition is by no means fantastic, for even now there is a revolt in this British possession and more than seventy insurgents have been executed within the last few months. If Russias millions, heeding the cry of the men of India, should hasten to their assistance, the members of the League would be required by Article X to go to the assistance of Great Britain to preserve British territory against external aggression. Our delegate, of course, would vote for such assistance because he would be bound to do so by the moral obligation of the covenant. The president boasts that his forebears were of revolutionary stock and declares with apparent emotion that the word "revolution was sacred to those who sat around the table of negotators at Versailles. Sacred in what sense? Was revolution sacred to them merely as a memory? Had France belonged to a League of Nations with such a covenant as we are now asked to ratify she Could not have sent the gallant Lafayette and his 20,000 men to aid our battered and almost helpless army in the darkest hour of the Revolutionary war. Had we belonged to such a League, had we been bound by such a covenant, twenty-on- e years ago, we would have been: fighting, not for Cuba, but for, Spain to keep Cuba in subjection. the presidents arguments ONE anof indictment of his own stubbornness. When the Republican United States senators, and some of the Democratic senators, urged him to separate the covenant from the treaty, he flew into a rage, sputtered about pigmy minds and arrogantly declared that he would so intertwine the covenant and the treaty that they could not be separated. His argument is this: We must supply billions of dollars' to help Europe rehabilitate itself and we ought to have supervision of the way in which our loans are used, at least to the extent of having members on the reparations and other commissions provided "for by the treaty, but if the treaty is defeated 'and we play a lone hand, we shall see our European allies robbing us of the markets of the world. That reparations commission, he says, can determine the currents of trade, the conditions of credit, it. can determine how much Germany is to buy, where it is going to buy - -- going P Gallagher ' and how it is going to pay for it, arid if we must, to save ourselves, contribute to the financial rehabilitation of the world, then without being members of the partnership, we must put our money in the hands of those who want to get the markets that belong to us. r A little further he adds: We must contribute (if the treaty fails) the money which other nations are to use in order to rehabilitate their industry and credit, and we must make them our. antagonists and rivals and not our partners. He declares that now all nations trust us, but that if we reject the League and thereby reject the treaty they will be our trade antagonists and rivals. Because here , is the rest of the picture, he says, hot rivals, burning suspicions, jealousies, arrangements made everywhere, if possible, to shut us out because, if we wont come in as equals, we ought to be shut out. . Who was it made it impossible to reject the League covenant without rejecting the treaty? Those who profess to be friends of the president chuckle over his clever device to handicap the United States senate. They boast about a piece of strategy which will reflect no credit upon him in. the pages of histroy. The president tries to picture his critics as the offenders, but it was he who laid the trap. What does his argument mean? If a paraphrase is permissible this is what he would have said had he spoken with entire candor: Reject the covenant and you reject the treaty, you make it impossible for us to serve our selfish interests, you take our member off the reparations commission and pave the way for hot rivals to rob us. I purposely intertwined the League with the treaty so that you, senators, would be placed in the position, of throwing away great benefits under the treaty if you did not abide by the covenant and all its perils, injustices and wrongs. You must accept one with the other; you must accept Article X and the Shantung injustice or reject the entire treaty and thereby place' yourself at the mercy of rival nations. And I, Woodrow Wilson, did this thing. It is nothing .to be proud of; it .is, nothing to boast about. History will not extol him for handicapping his own people in this fashion. Rather it will condemn him that he did nof' leave .his own people unfettered so that they might deal with the treaty in such a way as to protect their honor, their traditions of freedom and their principles of justice without foregoing material benefits. That is what the senate is attempting to do now, but the president says, in effect, that if the senate tries to incorporate in the covenant reservations which will preserve our Americanism;, it will defeat the treaty and thereby cause the nation to forfeit the gains of trade. VMU |