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Show THE CITIZEN We are at the parting of the ways today. We can tighten our hold on the republicanism of Abraham Lincolq and Theodore Roosevelt or we can surrender to the British system as expressed in the covenant of the League of Nations ? What shall our answer be ? ' C HOOVER OF UNITANIA E beg to nominate Herbert Hoover for President of Unitania. Unitania? f Yes, Unitania. We do not know just how long this great empire has existed. We know it will not amount to much until Article X is ratified by the United States Senate. Then it will come formally into being and the United States will disappear as an independent sovereignty. That some people think Unitania exists even today we shall proceed forthwith to demonstrate. We have before us a little journal of propaganda called The Weekly Metergram, published in San Francisco and devoted to the establishment of the metric system. On the first page is this suggestion : To Editor : You are welcome to clip any material from this publication for your news or editorial columns. So here goes. On the second page of the publication, under the heading Unitania Gumption, occur these sentences : Theodore. Roosevelt most truly said: The public wont take its own part. Surely this is true of Britannia and U. S. America ! The boast is that Britannia rules the waves and that the sun never sets on the British empire. We talk of the gumption and progressiveness of America yet the history of Unitania is full of examples of unwillingness to accept progressive inventions and modern reforms. Breathlessly we noted the asterisk and darted an eager glance to the footnote. There we discovered Unitania. The footnote read: (Unitania U. S. America and Britannia.) Thus is the great confederation proclaimed in this humble journal. Unitania is Great Britain and the United States, or, as our gentle propagandist has it, U. S. America. There are only three great powers left in this world of ours Russia, Great Britain and the United States. Russia evidently intends to maintain a separate existence, but if the backers of Article X of the League of Nations covenant have their way the United States will become simply a vassal of Great Britain. Then, in truth, we shall have Unitania. We shall surrender our sovereignty to Great Britain which will rule the world Russia excepted through the League of Nations. Not to be relegated to the ranks of the mossbacks we rush to the vanguard of progress and cry: Hurrah for Herbert Hoover, President of Unitania. Perhaps, in England, they will prefer to call him Emperor Herbert I of Unitania. The difference will be quite immaterial, for once Unitania is established we shall have consigned a government of the people, by the people and for the people to the mythical past and shall shriek ourselves hoarse for imperialism and militarism. "14 When it rains in London all of us will put up our prayer umbrellas and turn our eyes toward Westminster, St. Pauls and, above all, St. Jamess where Herbert Hoover, ruler of Unitania and the world, laughs himself sick at a certain piker who called himself Wilhelm course, we are still relying on Senator Reed and we hope he will not forsake us in this critical hour. And it was Herbert Hoover who demanded that the league covenant be ratified without change, thus revealing his desire that the United States should surrender its sovereignty to Great Britain. If we are to have Unitania it is fitting that Herbert Hoover should be its first president and continue his residence in England. But perhaps the old dear wouldnt want to accept the nomination lest lie annoy the Prince of Wales. That could be adjusted easily. After he had been elected President he could emulate the example of the Roman emperors and associate another emperor with himself. And why not the Prince of Wales ? NEAR EAST TURNING RED the United States had ratified the peace treaty and stumbled blunderingly into an acceptance of a mandate for Armenia it would be facing the red waves of Bolshevistic battle power sweeping into Asia Minor. Once this battle power avalanches into Armenia and Syria the people there, infected with the communist propaganda, will be ready to join hands with Lenine and Trotzky against the civilized nations of the West. Not all the people of the Near East are Bolshevistic, but there, as in Russia and Siberia, an active, virulent minority will seek to establish its tyranny. The entire United States army, aided by the British and American navies, could barely defend our civil authorities in exercising mandatorial sway over Armenia and parts of Turkey. That region would become a battleground of the nations, if they should decide to resist the Bolshevist invasion. For years our volunteer armies would be waging war without reason for knowing just why they fought and died. fighting would be the mandate to govern these remote regions. We would be there and could not retire in the face of the enemy. Nevertheless the war would be futile unless the people of the invaded regions were sincere in their desire to resist Bolshevism to the bitter IF The-origin- al end. The signs are that these regions, steeped in ignorance, containing a Turkish population eager for revolt and revenge, have already succumbed to Red propaganda. Our civil and military power would be attacked by enemies without and within. We would be carpetbaggers seeking to maintain ourselves in a land where, at best, only a part of the population would favor our rule. The nearer the Red legions approach the Caucasus the more Bolshevistic will Asia Minor become. The Turks will welcome the invaders as rescuers and will make common cause with them against the Armenians, Syrians and other natives of a polyglot population. The British in Mesopotamia and the Holy Land, the French in Syria and the Italians and Greeks in their parts of Asia Minor will face a tidal wave of war as menacing as that which brought Genghis Khan and his hordes out of the heart of Asia in the early ages of our modern times. As that barbaric wave overspread and quite submerged Asia Minor so the wave of Bolshevism would swallow that land again unless all of the nations combined to resist its spread or unless the peoples of the Near East should themselves combine to close the floodgates. What assurances have we that the conquering Reds will not comIlohenzollern. plete a conquest of this character? Apparently there arc no organized armies to stay their progress in Southern Russia or even in And why do we propose Herbert Hoover? Largely on the recommendation of Senator Reed of Missouri, the Caucasus. There is one chance which is not without its encouragement. who, in his speech, showed that the worlds first food dictator, has all When the Seljukian Turks and the other hordes came down out of the qualifications for the rulership of Unitania. who we are, of course, relying on Central Asia into Asia Minor they were united by a common purpose Hoover was the Senator Reed, leaning, as it were, on a Reed carried to Colonel and inspiration. They followed the lead of their chieftains almost as TIouse the wishes of the British delegates at the Versailles conference. one man. These mighty racial migrations had a unanimity which ft was he who created a sort of spiritual Unitania by conveying to Bolshevism lacks. Wherever Bolshevism goes it will be weakened the American delegates the commands of imperial Brittania. by opposition within and by its own inherent defects. Internal hosMoreover, it was Herbert Hoover, who, in an ecstacy of Anglotility will assail it everywhere from its center at Moscow to the perimania proposed the Prince of Wales for President of the United phery of its circle of conquests. Give Bolshevism enough rope and it is apt to hang itself. It is a States. That showed that Hoover had forgoten all his Americanism ami was a true Britisher, and Unitania will be thoroughly British. Of destructive, not a constructive force. In recent months it has shown go-betwe- l en |