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Show WILSON'S INSULTS TO THE SENATE. ! fflj IF PRESIDENT WILSON had set out deliberately to defeat his I I own party he could not have committed greater blunders than he M H has been guilty of in the last eight months. His defenders in the sen- ffl H ate must be on the verge of despair. No matter how gallantly and m H energetically they battle for him he invariably make a false move that hjH places new and almost intolerable burdens upon him. llfl No president ever did anything quite so stupid in a political Hl sense as did President Wilson when, just before the November mlm election, he declared that Republicans must not be elected because ffll they could not be trusted in office during the war. That mistake j brought swift rebuke, for his party lost at the polls. Since then the i president has gone blindly from one blunder to another. -HH Had he been animated by a truly statesmanlike spirit he would NH have had the full text of the peace treaty in the hands of every senator H at the opening of congress. In extenuation of his failure to do this it (! was announced that he had agreed with Lloyd-George and Clemenceau fjj not to make the treaty public until it should be signed or rejected by f j the Germans. It was a feeble plea, inasmuch as there was no com- l ! pelling reason why he should have entered into such an arrangement, m H but hardlYy had the state department made its announcement ilj than the dispatches informed us that Lloyd-George and Clemenceau had been willing to publish tne treaty but had acceded to the Presi- J dent's request to keep it secret. While the president was mouthing his maxim about "open covenants openly arrived at" he was whisper- lj ing to the British and French premiers that they would greatly favor 1 M him if they agreed to suppress the very treaty itself until he gave the word for its release. H There was a special reason why he should have made the full I text public as soon as it was presented to the Germans. lie had in- 1 eluded in it the covenant for the League of Nations, a covenant which I MM was to alter the whole aspect of international relations. It was some- jf thing new in history and the president had insisted that it must be (1 WM incorporated in the treaty. Therefore, he should have given the senate j H a chance to consider the covenant separately from the treaty so that J H in the course of the negotiations they could amend it before the Ger- j mans attached their signatures. It would have paved the way lor an j H agreement with the senate that would have made the early ratification i H of the treaty possible. The president, however, wished to keep the senate in the dark un- IjH til the Germans signed. Why? He had boasted that he would so in- H terweave the covenant and the treaty that the senate could not disen- WJU tangle them. To make his boast good he was compelled to keepthe mm text of the trea'ty out of the hands of the r- nators, for, if he had given i jH it to them, they could have proposed amendments and thus frustrated j M his plan. Moreover, by preventing an agreement with the senate he I JH would have a political issue should the senators reject his covenant, jH M jjijjgi .yprnrwiM iiiffiflVir Ml B lie could' cry out that the senate had nullified all his efforts at Paris. H He could pose -as a martyr and go to the country for indorsement. An H agreement with the senate would have taken away all his ammuni- B Nor did the contingency that the Germans might reject the treaty H justify his course. The covenant of the League of Nations would re- H main even after the rejection. It was the covenant rather than the H treaty that called for change. The treaty, relating as it did to H boundaries and reparations was, for the most part, a European affair. H It was the covenant, not the treaty, that fastened upon the United H States vital and fateful obligations. H In his efforts to keep the treaty from the senate the president H acted like an angry schoolmaster trying to play even wi'th a pupil. He H permitted it to be published in Europe and his own aides in Paris fur- H nished copies of it to banking houses in New York. When Senator H Lodge went to New York he was subjected to Wall Street ridicule H because he and his fellow senators had not been able to get possession H of the treaty. H The war waged by the president on the senate has become a scan- H dal to the whole world. |