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Show THE 4 CITIZEN although hundreds of thousands of them fought heroically for Amerthemselves an issue and can see a swirling tide of ica. The Irish-finhateful passions sweeping about them. The Italians and Greeks are-ahate the Italians and the Greeks loggerheads. The Yugo-Slav- s and are hated in return. The Poles, who managed to live at peace with .the other races of the Melting Pot, are regarded with furious detestation by the Germans and Russians. English and Canadian folk, who are citizens of the United States are sore and angry and are adding to the bedlam of conflicting interests. That is what the mere preliminary maneuvering for the League of Nations has done in the United States. And that result in the United States does not displease the English, the French or the Italians across the water. The more disunited and disorganized we are the easier it will be for them to seize the trade of. the. world, including, by the way, the trade of Germany, for at a time when the races in America are in discord and when the German, of the Fatherland is held to be too vile for Americans to deal with commercially, British salesmen by the hundreds and thousands are in Germany competing for the trade of a people with whom, technically, they still are at war. The League of Nations is already a failure. Europe has been under the supervision and management of a supreme council of the nations sitting at Paris for a year. Europe is still torn by warfare. The one big war has given way to innumerable small wars. Great Britain has vast armies in Ireland, Indian and Egypt holding the people in .subjection. Japan has armies in Korea and Shantung. France has armies in Russia, Hungary, Germany and Asia Minor. Italy, infuriated by her failure to get all she wanted while Great Britain and France were being given most of the spoils of war, is supporting, at Fiume, against the League of Nations, and has armies in Africa, Albania, Epirus and the island of the Mediterranean. These great nations, almost bankrupt and bled white, are unable to support the burden of their imperialism and they look to America, the last reservoir of wealth and military manpower, to guarantee to them their possessions. A Senate committee asked General March how many soldiers the United States would require to fulfill her obligations under the League of Nations. He replied that if the other nations of the league fulfilled their obligations we could get along with the army of 500,000 proposed League by the secretary of war. In other words, under this of Peace, we would be compelled to support a greater army than ever before when not actually at war. And what if the other nations do not do their share? Granting that they may be eager to' fulfill their obligations; are we not justified in asking how they can do their part now that they are impoverished and without sufficient manpower even to keep order within their own dominions? Does it not look as if we would be called upon to shoulder burdens which our fellow members of the league would naturally be expected to bear? Sacrifice ? Why should America, almost untouched by the war if we make comparison between her and her allies, sacrifice her strength to uphold, not the idealism we fought for, but secret treaties dividing up the world? Why should we sacrifice to uphold British imperialism, or French, Italian or Japanese imperialism? We recall that, during the war, when Mr. Roosevelt and others, declared bluntly that we had gone to war because we had been insulted and outraged and not for any of those fine reasons which our allies put in our ipouths and which were so beautifully phrased by President Wilson, the writer of this article argued that we necessarily went to war for liberty and democracy because the other nations were fighting for liberty and democracy and we could not do anything else. Mr. Balfour, Bloody Balfour, stood in the Senate of the United States and told us that we had joined in the fight for liberty and democracy. Rank tory that he was, it is a wonder that, despite our war fever, we did not see through his mockery ; but wc threw up our hats and cheered for Balfour as a great exponent of democracy. And . while he was' using with extraordinary facility the unfamiliar language of liberty and democracy he was concealing from us secret -- t - so-call- ed . treaties dividing up the world according to the old game of imperialism and despotism. . . ' he could not change those secret treaties, or thought that he could not, our President submitted to democracy and told one delegation which questioned him in Paris that It seemed that the war had been fought to establish the sanctity of treaties. As if it were possible to establish the sanctity of anything so unholy as a secret treaty enslaving 36,000,000 people. Let .us be for Englishmen, Frenchmen, Italians, Belgians and all our other great and brave war associates ; let us help them whenever we can without sacrificing our heritage of liberty; let us do everything we can to promote peace and good will among men, but let us, for the safety of the greatest. nation in' the .tide, of time and for the happiness of generations yet to be born. in our. land, aye, for the. of the world itself, be for America' first. And because them-aban-- doned t very-benefi- i, CONFERENCE COLLAPSES s the President blundered when he called the Industrial is becoming manifest. The purpose was benevolent, but the obstacles in the way of an agreement were insuperable. The fundamental mistake, in our opinion, was in attempting to forestall a natural evolution in the relations of labor and capital. We have not the slightest doubt of the generous good faith of everyone at the conference, of the broad humanity of the delegates and of their desire for peace and justice in our economic life, but they were gazing as through a glass, darkly; they could not formulate a modus vivendi between capital and labor that would have any validity under changing conditions. They could only cling to broad, general principles if they wished to be on sure ground, but what was demanded of them was something entirely different. They were asked, not to proclaim the rights of man, whether capitalist or laborer, but to establish a working agreement of some kind, The split came to decide upon a specific measure of when the representatives of the workers insisted upon the right of outsiders to bargain with mill and factory owners concerning the demands of the employes of those mills and factories. Surely this was not a right in the sense that we speak of the right of contract or the right of the laboring man to be dealt with as a human being and not a commodity. It was simply a particular method of industrial dealing. Had the Capital group accepted it they would have knowingly weakened themselves in their negotiations with labor, and yet so eager were the members of the group to come to an agreement that they defeated the proposal by a majority of but one. The failure of the conference is apt to do immeasurable harm, for it will create the false notion that the interests of Capital and Labor move is apt to are irreconcilable. Thus the Presidents end as have many other of his altruistic and idealistic ventures. Labor will be enraged and Capital, harried on all sides, will be a constant state of irritation. It will be argued, of course, that some move had to be made to adjust the differences between Labor and Capital before the situation became so acute as to verge on revolution. The very crisis sought to be avoided is the crisis brought nearer by the failure of the con- THAT co-operati- on. well-intention- ed ference. It can be said, at the very least, that had no conference been called, there would have been a good chance of meeting successfully each problem as it presented itself and working out in the crucible of between Capital experience the methods best adapted to and Labor. co-operat- ion RESERVATIONS WIN the United States, as a member of the League of Nations, have adequate protection through the medium of reservations bgins to take on the aspect of certainty! A revolt in the Democratic ranks has apparently shattered the program which called for ratification without changes. The perils of the league covenant, as written at Versailles, grew more obvious with analysis and Democratic senators who placed their country above party and above a THAT |