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Show THE CITIZEN 6 their object. We know what a man is called who betrays his own army. That name can be applied with justice to the Bolsheviks who, while preaching the destruction of the United States government, accept its pay. WILSON'S RESPONSIBILITY r last the great secret, of Shantung is out. The President assumes full responsibility for the Shantung award 'and it is an odious responsibility which no American should wish to bear. Gradually the President has allowed the shocking facts to be made public. Premiers Lloyd George and Clemenceau did not even take part in the final negotiations with Japan. We are informed that they left it to President Wilson to placate Japan and that he fatuously, pulled the British and French chestnuts out of the fire. After making secret treaties with Japan the British and French premiers grandly left it with our President to placate Japan. And he carried out the terms of the secret treaties. He agreed to everything that had been agreed to in the secret treaty. No wonder that in Egypt, as Dr. Ellis tells us, they call our President Lloyd Georges A sheep. At the very least the President could have washed his hands of the affair. If he had been inspired by real American spirit and courage he would have denounced the secret compacts and refused to give his assent to the Shantung infamy, but, failing of that, he might reasonably and respectably have refused to share in the negotiations at all. With that blindness of vision which impelled him to go abroad in the first place, he succumbed to the wiles of Lloyd George and Clemenceau and entered into a perfidious compact with Japan. The Presidents excuses are that Japan, being unwilling to participate in the war, was bought into it by Great Britain and France, they agreeing to give Shantung and its 36,000,000 inhabitants and all its commercial and economic rights into the power of Tokio. The President, we are led to infer, felt that he must consent to the deal, must sanction the purchase price. In fact, he even defends it , arguing that had Japan failed to enter the war and had Germany retained Shantung, the transportation of British troops from Australia and New Zealand would have been interfered with seriously. In a word, Japan having driven a hard and shameful bargain with Great Britain and France for a price, President Wilson felt bound to close the deal in all its hardness and shamefulness. He went deal despite a note from the chief through with the members of his peace delegation condemning the Shantung pact and declaring that the United States ought not to adhere to it. We are confident that the American people agree with Secretary Lansing and his colleagues in condemning the agreement. We know that the American people will see no good in it for the world or for un-Ameri- - can themselves. If it be said that the President gained a concession when Japan promised to return the sovereignty of Shantung to China at some indeterminate date the answer is that Germany claimed no sovereignty in Shantung. The Germans leased the commerce and resources of Shantung and left the sovereignty to China. When Japan claims even temporary sovereignty as a part of the German right which falls to her she is claiming something over and above anything claimed by Germany. Virtually, of course, sovereignty is in abeyance and amounts to nothing when one nation invades another and seizes all the commercial and economic resources. But in a legal sense Japan did not acquire sovereignty and could not claim it in the negotiations with the President. When the President obtained Japans promise to return the sovereignty to China he secured nothing whatever by way of a concession. Japan showed its usual boldness in claiming so much for so little. She took Shantung and the German islands for herself and, in return, simply helped to drive a few German warships from the Pacific and to combat warfare in the Mediterranean. In comparison with what the United States did to win the war Japan did practically nothing. And what we did entitles us, at a minimum, to protest U-bo- at against the Shantung arrangement. TAFTS STARTLING ADMISSIONS with the President in an attempt to camouflage the league covenant with interpretative reservations which are to have no binding effect, former President Taft, instead of allaying our fears, makes disclosures that alarm. Evidently he knows much about the Presidents mental processes that has been concealed from the public. He refers to the Presidents n antipathy to courts as the sufficient cause for the leagues present form of a police force. assumes that Mr. Wilsons hostility to. courts The is well known and we must take it for granted that in certain circles that bias is a matter of common knowledge. The disclosure is most suggestive. Many of us have wondered why the familiar proposal of an international court was rejected at the peace conference and why the league took on the aspect of an international police force. Mr. Taft describe the league as a police force and declares that the police function is essential to the peace of the world. Having insisted on the essentiality of an international police force, Mr. Taft opposes the elimination of Article X. Inasmuch as this is the article which is most offensive to opponents of the covenant, Mr. Tafts plan is not likely to prove acceptable. If President Wilson and he insist that Uncle Sam shall join the police force to keep a refractory world in order, the opposition senators probably will remain firm in their hostility. They will be even more opposed to the police force than the President is to courts. force to control the world will intensify popular antagonism, for the people generally will get a clearer idea of what the Wilson covenant means. We have but to follow out the analogy of a police force to obtain an' illuminating view of the purposes of the league. A police force is designed to preserve law and order by the use of might. The word force is an indication of a police forces character. Back of the. force are laws and judges, but primarily a police force has nothing to do with the arbitration or adjustment of disputes. Its purpose is war. It makes war on those who break the laws. A policeman does not patrol his beat with an olive branch, but with a club and a revolver and, perhaps, a pair of handcuffs. Such is the nature of the Wilson league. It is to keep the world in order by force. The powerful nations necessarily will dominate and direct the use of force. The small nations can do whatever they please so long as the big nations do not disapprove. The big nations can do whatever they please all of the time unless one of them happens to find itself opposed by all the other big nations. But if the big nations stick together they can rule the world. They can make might right. They can call injustice justice and enforce injustice. There will be no supreme court such as Mr. Taft favors to define., and proclaim the injustice. The big nations, therefore, are forming themselves into a warlike alliance to protect their existing political independence and territorial integrity against any aggessors that may form a counter alliance. Little nations will be told just what they may do. Consequently they will be free only insofar, as they obey. Poland has been told in detail just what laws it must pass to regulate its domestic affairs. If it disobeys orders the international police force will find an excuse to suppress the new nation or to dominate it. The league creates a ruling class among nations. Just as the junkers and other nobility of Germany ruled that land so the new aristocracy of nations will rule the world. There is nothing democratic about the formation of the league. It is saliently aristocratic. The officials are not elected, but appointed. There is no such a thing as a referendum to the peoples of the various nations. It is a league of sovereign rulers which, by right of Article X, will rule, and can tyrannize, over the world. If the Ameican people want the league to take such a form they will support Article X as loyally as does Mr. Taft. If that article remains unmodified the other reservations will amount to nothing. G CO-OPERATIN- well-know- ex-presid- ent . . The state departments files have been robbed again. senators use a jimmie or dynamite? Did the |
