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Show Published Every Saturday BY GOODWIN8 WEEKLY PUBLISHING CO., INC. L. J. BRATAGER, Business Mgr. F. P. GALLAGHER, Editor and Mgr. SUBSCRIPTION PRICE: In United States, Canada and Mexico $2.50 per year, the Including postage A V$1.50 for six months. Subscriptions to all foreign countries, within the Postal Union, $4.50 per year. Single copies, 10 cents. Payment should be made by Check, Money Order or Registered Letter, payable to The Citizen. Address all communications to The Citizen. Entered as second-clas- s matter, June 21, 1919, at the Postoffice at Salt Lake City, Utah, under the Act of March 3, 1879. Ness Bldg. . Salt Lake City, Utah. Phone Wasatch 5409. 311-12-- 13 PARAMOUNT ISSUE IS SHAPING FOR CONVENTIONS With the dramatic and picturesque struggles of the national political conventions almost at hand the American people find themselves enthralled as never before by the possibilities. The very uncertainty regarding candidates and policies lends an air of portentious mystery. The decisions of the conventions, it is conceded, will affect the country for many years, perhaps for generations and centuries. or thirty In the comfortable campaigns of the last twenty-fiv- e years we have been accustomed to look only four years more into the president or placed a new the future. Whether we party in power we did not regard our action, except in one or two campaigns, as involving the future of the land beyond the limit of four or, at the farthest, eight years. Both sides entered the campaigns with the happy inconsequence of spectators swarming to a ball game or a horse race. Not that the issues were trivial or that the welfare of the country was lightly regarded, but there was no feeling that the voters might render a decision which would change the whole course of the nation irretrievably. There is such a feeling now. However gladly all of us would confine the contest to domestic issues, such as the tariff, the trusts and taxes, we find the current of events quite out of our control. Even the old questions look strange to us because of their unwonted magnitude. Take the question of taxes, for example. When one tries to compare it with the internal revenue questions of a dozen years ago one feels like the visitor to a museum who looks upon the skeleton of a tiny reptile and then upon a prehistoric reptile a thousand times as large. To change the simile, it is like passing from a region where the flora is stunted to a region where all flowers grow to gigantic proportions. Moreover, questions which once were purely, domestic have now taken on international aspects. We Cannot alter tariffs, modify jtaxes or adopt a labor policy without considering how the domestic adjustment fits into the new world order. But however big the domestic problems bulk they do not affright our vision as much as the questions of foreign relations at a of a violent and rcvolution- time when all the world is in arv transition. 8' We discover to our dismay that we must commit ourselves to a And when choice between' internationalism- and nationalism. we attempt to make up our minds as to our choice we find that the re-elect- ed mid-care- er - question has perilous complexities. Internationalism is not as simple as the word implies. There arc, in fact, several dominant kinds of internationalism. In Europe there are two types widely dissimilar British imperialism and One is an internationalism based upon Russian Bolshevism. the old despotic plan of powerful races ruling weaker races. The other is an internationalism which seeks to extend the domination of a class to the whole world. Both involve despotism on the one hand and servitude on the other. Each system invites the United States to join hands with it. Our president decided to cast the lot of his country with imperialism and formulated a constitution for a league of nations that would rule the earth in conformity with the. will of the Anglo-Saxon- s. Each nation in the league agreed to maintain the territories and the existing political independence of all the other members of the league. As Great Britain had acquired dominion over more than a third of the people of the globe the alliance was chiefly in her behalf and the value of the alliance to her was immeasurable because the contract promised her the military and naval support of the United States. The league of nations really existed during the last two years of the war and it continued to operate during the armistice. In a sense this was most fortunate. It gave the American people n chance to see how the league would function when it should be clothed with full powers. Despite the efforts of the administration to minimize our military enterprises abroad after the armistice had been declared, we saw our soldiers fighting and dying amid the ice fields of northern Russia and the steppes of Siberia while their comrades helped the British and the French to hold the Rhine barrier. Our soldiers were sent to police European plebiscites and we were asked to take over the administration of Turkey and Armenia. We were appalled when it dawned upon us that our soldiers were not supporting the cause of liberty. In Russia our men were helping the monarchies of Great Britain and Japan to promote the cause of the czarists and, for a long time, vc did not fully understand the situation because we had become involved in the Russian campaign at a time when the reds were the allies of Germany. And even when the reds ceased to aid the junkers of Germany they began to establish institutions which had nothing in common with our own. In a word, we found ourselves apparently committed to an endless military adventure in Europe and Asia. It was an illuminating experience, but one from which we drew back in horror. The administration, realizing that our Russian affair was becoming a scandal, yielded to congressional pressure and to publicity and withdrew our troops, thus causing Great Britain to quit |