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Show Published Every Saturday BY GOODWIN'S 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 $1.50 for six months. Subscriptions to all foreign countries, within the Postal Union, $4.50 per year. f Single copies, 10 cents. Payment should be made by Check, Money Order or Registered Letter, able to The Citizen. pay- Address all communications to The Citizen. Entered as second-clas- s matter, June 21, 1919, at the Postofflce at Salt Lake of March 3, 1879. Act under the City, Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah. Ness Bldg. Phone Wasatch 5409. 311-12-- 13 SHALL WE BE HESSIANS OR AMERICANS? 9- - The weakness of the fight on the Knox peace resolution lay in the fact that the Democratic senators represented repudiated president. They closed their broken ranks and battled in support of ' position which had been rejected by some of the chief leaders of their own party. Had not partisan loyalty swayed them, had they not seen the political necessity of standing by the president for to have deserted him would have been to admit every Republican contention regarding the treaty many more than three Democrats would have voted for the Knox resolution. Manifestly the Democratic senators were more engrossed in their desire to gain political advantage or, perhaps, it would be more correct to call it a desire to prevent political disaster than in their desire to demonstrate the correctness of the presidents attitude. Their arguments were constructed to show that the delay in securing peace was ascribable solely to the Republicans. Necessarily they were forced to defend the presidents entire course relative to the peace treaty and this led them into some absurd arguments. Senator Hitchcock contended that no one had objected when the president announced his fourteen points and that, therefore, the country indorsed the presidents going to Europe to negotiate the treaty in person. If the president was so sure that the country had indorsed his fourteen points, Senator Knox inquired, why did he abandon thirteen of them when he arrived in Paris? It is recorded that Senator Hitchcocks answer was lost in laughter. The facetious fling of Senator Knox had a deeper significance. Whatever justification the president had for negotiating the treaty without the advise of the senate he had no justification for bartering away American rights. That is the real issue and no attempt of the Democratic senators to disguise it will beguile the American people. For a year they have used all the arts of camouflage to persuade the people that the Republican senators were prompted by political aims in their opposition to the present covenant, but the more they sought to hide the truth the more apparent it became to the members of both parties. It was because the president had bartered away American rights that some of the most conspicuous leaders of his own party abandoned him. Among the insurgents was William Jennings Bryan. It has been reckoned, and no doubt, with some approach to the truth, that has controlled at least 4.000,000 Democratic votes for twenty Bryan 0 years. If so. it is clear that the Democratic senators, in standing by " the president, do not represent their own party accurately. To the 4,000,000 who adhere to Bryans ways of thinking we must add countless numbers of Democrats who stand with Reed of Missouri, Walsh of Massachusetts, Thomas of Colorado, and Shields of Mississippi. Throughout the debate on the treaty the Democratic senators have not reflected the state of mind of their own party. True, the majority of Democrats probably are for a treaty without reservations, but the votes in the senate have shown that the Democratic senators, by much more than a majority, repeatedly voted to sustain the presidents position. The point is that the Democratic senators were playing politics. They were not interested in reflecting the divided opinions in their party because that would have hurt the party. They felt that party advantage dictated their adherence to the president, for to repudiate the president openly would have been to enter the presidential campaign in a hopeless plight, especially if it should so chance that the Democratic convention should renominate the president. Right or wrong the Knox resolution was the only way out of the situation in which the president had placed the country. There muck reason to believe that the Knox resolution really established by constitutional methods peace between the United States and Germany. In any event, Senator Knox and those who supported hir were doing all that they could to rescue the country from the control of a czar. There was only one alternative and that was to permit the president to have his way to permit the country to become the vassal of a foreign to make Hessians out of American soldiers to fight for all the wrongs established by the treaty of Versailles and made possible by the covenant of the league. super-sovereignt- y, TEARS OF A STATESMAN On more than one occasion wc have expressed the keenest sympathy for Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer in his unequal battle for the Democratic presidential nomination. Some have been amused by the efforts of the public prosecutor to popularize himself while others have seen in his Herculean struggle the tears of things. Just when the attorney general is sailing through the empyrean gallantly, buoyed with iridescent hopes, some unfeeling antagonist punctures the gas bag and down comes the candidate with stunning thud against terra firma. The latest pathetic incident occurred in Pennsylvania where Judge Eugene C. Bonniwell. leader of the opposition forces, charged Mr. Palmer with having spared profiteers while prosecuting labor. |