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Show H simply used up the profits of the factory owners by bad management. 1 k When the profits were gone the mills were closed. The Bolshevists thought they could get along not only without m . the owners but without the experts. They abolished all kinds of Hj "bosses'" and turned over the factories to the workingmen skilled and Hi unskilled, but the workers, without the expert knowledge of the H bosses,were unable to conduct the business profitably. The business H simply "ate off its own head" and died. H The Russians decided to take, not merely one day but every H day off "in making profit for tlie bosses." They ended by annihiliating H their own wages. H Under favorable circumstances the workers of Russia could have H taken over the mills and operated them successfully. Granting that Hj economic conditions were propitious the workers, had they made wise Hi use of the profits of the employer and had they employed the special- Hl ized knowledge of the experts, it is quite conceivable that they might H have conducted the factories, for a time at least, so as to produce ade- H q"1? wages for themselves and for all engaged in the various indus- H tries. 'But to them a "boss" was not the genius who creates and H builds up a business, thus giving wages to labor. He was simply a H' hated being of the "exploiting class." And so they were rid of him H ' at the very outset. Within a few months they were rid of the business H' he had created and rid of the wages the business had provided. H At the crisis in our affairs when labor and capital should get to- H gether they are farther apart than ever. This is due, not to any in- H surmountable problem, but to the hell's broth of hatred brewed by ag- H itators and by professional laborites who have grown old in their de- H nunciations of the "bosses." H All this must be changed if the country is to go through the pe- H riod of readjustment safely and attain the goal of prosperity. We H believe that the workmen of the country, in their hearts, have no faith H in socialism and that they want to get along and co-operate with H the employers in carrying our present industrial system to higher and H safer levels. The only way this can be accomplished is through the H medium of the spirit. If labor and capital will strive to work to- H gether in a spirit of friendliness and understanding the worst difficul- H ties will disappear at the very beginning and all that will remain will H be the little problems. H t 1 1 1 H GERMANY BEATEN AT LAST. FQR the first time since the armistice terms were signed it looks as if Germany were really defeated. The original armistice left H the world in doubt; so, too, did later arrangements, but the latest 3 terms place the German people in a position of feebleness and in-H in-H feriority that would seem to make the revival of militarism imposes impos-es sible. That is why the militarists are more fiery than ever in their M denunciations of the government at Berlin. m The new terms require the Germans to diminish their army until 1 fhey have only 250,000 armed men and only war supplies for that m number. Moreover, the allies will supervise the production of Ger- Hj many's munitions factories and thus render it difficult for the Ger- H mans to maintain a military force greater than is stipulated in the M covenant. m When the militarises heard of the arrangement they began to H foam at the mouth. After all, Germany was defeated. By no treach- H cry would she be able to free herself from enemy fetters and strike H a deadly blow before or after the signing of the treatry of peace. H The military leaders of Germany had looked forward craftily and hope- H fully to the round table conference. They anticipated that at some H time during the discussions there would be a line of cleavage and then H adistinct split in the entente bloc. Or, if not at the peace table, then i later some nation say France would be isolated because no longer HI in alliance with Russia and because the United States and Great Hi Britain would be loth to resume hostilities, especially if, in the me n- H 1 time, they had come to be on more less unfriendly terms with Fra4 . Hi Nor had Germany given up her ambitions for a Mittel Europa Hi aqd a road to the east. Her parliamentarians talked of annexing Ger- H i man Austria. Hun troops waged war against the Poles. On the other H ' side of Poland were the Bolsheviki, a German creation, launched with H I German cash and still fostered for German purposes. With Poland crushed between the upper and nether millstones the road to the e&t, by way of Russia and Siberia, would again be open. Ukrania, too, is a German creation. The population of that region is largely German. Ukrania, the Bolsheviki and Germany have been waging war against, the Poles for months. Although the. war was supposed to be at an end Germany has been trying to crush her neighbor immediately to the cast as she had hoped to crush France. y By the new terms Germany must withdraw hefetroops and cease to fight the Poles. No wonder the Huns winced pd cried aloud in rage and grief when they were required to give up, some of German Poland, although they had less right to that parJt..pf old Poland than they had to Alsace and Lorraine. At a robber's division of spoils with Russia and Austria in the eighteenth century Germany obtained what is now described as "German" Poland. The Germans are still in possession of most of that region, for it includes not only the province of Posen, about which we hear so much, but also Wej Prussia. The province of West Prussia was old Poland's outlet to the sea. It probably will be detached from Germany and added to Poland, and inasmuch as East Prussia, in that case, will be isolated it might be well to give that region also to Poland. . FALSIFYING HISTORY. I GENTLEMEN, let us be seated and say mean things about the i English. We issue this invitation not because we have any feeling against the English but because we wish to prevent the perpetration of a crime the falsification of history. Moreover, we believe with Rippling, Rip-pling, that it is necessary to sing a recessional over the English every little while "lest they forget." The English are blinding themselves to the facts of history in order to burnish their own halos and in the hope that we will alter our histories to spare their sensibilities and pamper their pride. So many good things, and as true as good, were said about the British on and before the celebration of British day that an antidote is needed. The Englishman took all of those good things unto himself, him-self, for though the empire is not wholly English, the Englishman is at the top of it and means to stay there. And the more adulation you offer him the better he will like it and sometimes he will condescend to say you are not "a bad sort what?" Right or wrong the Englishman desires your praise, but especially especial-ly he feels in need of it when he is wrong. Lately he has been so dead right and we have been so eager to extol him that now he wants us the American people to change our histories to suit him and his purposes. pur-poses. So easily has he wheedled us that there is a propaganda all over the country to have our school histories rewritten to picture John Bull in celestial raiment, smirking piously in the way Macaulay so abhorred and wearing a halo of the first magnitude. One of the favorite methods your Englishman has of easing his historic conscience is to blame the war of the revolution on his more or less Germanic majesty, George III, and to describe the war as u popular among the English of that time. You remember that poem of Emerson's in which he says : "I like a monk, I like a cowl" and proceeds to say that he doesn't like the cowl well enough to be the monk. We feel that way about the English. We are fond of the English and the greatness of the British empire makes the goose pimples of admiration and enthusiasm chase one another an-other up and down our editorial spinal column, but we do not like them well enough to falsify American history. We are willing that our school histories should tell the exact truth about the English of our colonial and early national days, but we want them to stop with the truth and not add gilded lies to please John Bull or any of his wor-, shippers. If men could sink England in the sea and obliterate the memory of every Englishman they would cause the world a loss that might be compared with the world's loss if Greece never had existed. Its institutions, its common law-, its Shakespeare, its Dickens, its Thackeray, its Newton, its Milton, its Sir Thomas Moore, its Sir Philip Sidney, its principles of liberty anft its pver forward-looking policy in MKBHHHI the struggle of civilization these the world could not lose without losing a great part of its most priceless heritage. v , The tiuth about the English is so good that even they ought to U'" be able to endure with patience the bad that is said of them. $ . Let us not say in our histories of the revolutionary war that the English people did not approve of it, for that would be a lie. Their , greatest statesmen did not approve; they did not try to conceal their antipathy to it. Chatham, Pitt, Fox, Sheridan and Burke denounced it, but among the people it was popular. In "The Four Georges," on page 76 of the edition published by lY Smith, Elder & Co., in 1879, Thackeray has this to say about the at- titude of the English toward the war: S? "Without doubt the American war was popular in England. In 1?75 the address in favor of coercing the colonies was carried by 304 m to 105 in the House of Commons, by 104 to 29 in the House of Lords." f We have not the slightest notion that the big men of England, ' &me11 wh0 aPProxnriate to the great and good Thackeray, would have J 'J anything to do with this puerile propaganda to distort American history. his-tory. ..And on this side of the water the nonsense about the war's f f having been forced upon an unwilling people by a German despot is no doubt being uttered by the smallest 01 our human insects. But - thiSfcUtterance will gain volume and even fair-minded men, who have $ not read the history of their own land closely, may be deluded into believing that, after all, the colonies were in some way to blame. Let us, therefore, tell the truth in our histories. Wherever the truth requires it, let us change our histories. And that truth does require some, changes is beyond question. If we take for our text the war of 1812 we shall realize that our school histories have been, to say the least, misleading. They do not tell us or rather they did not a few years ago that we were wretchedly wretch-edly beaten during most of that struggle, that our coasts were so tightly blockaded that we could not get to the open sea for seyeral years without dodging through loopholes in the walls of British oak. But perhaps the most misleading aspect of the histories lies in the false perspective. We are told much about the impressing of American Ameri-can seamen by the British navy and about other undoubted injustices but it is not made clear that Great Britain, at the time she was fighting us, was fighting the despotism of Napoleon, a despotism no less odious than that of the Germans of our own day despite the fact that it was tricked out in all the glories of the French revolution. Therefore, let-us tell the truth, shame whom it may. CHEERY MR. BAKER. CHEERY, chirping little Mr. Baker, our secretary of war. Neither death nor wounds, defeat nor epidemics can chill the merry spirit , of this godlet of Mars. If our soldiers suffer from lack of care, from inadequate supplies or from the insanitary conditions of some hellhole hell-hole in Europe little Mr. Baker can endure it all with equanimity and can continue to chirp and twitter blithesomely. Returning from France, where he studied the reconstruction pro- Ivgram of the American army, Senator Robert L. Owen of Oklahoma declared that Brest, the embarkation port for our troops, was "not fit for cattle to live in." He found the soldiers, amid foul and insanitary insani-tary conditions, suffering from melancholia and he recommended to the senate military affairs committee that they be brought home as soon as possible and every care given them. "It is a horrible hole," he said, "and yet they told us over there that it had been worse. If that is so, God help those' who were there when it was worse." When the senator's words were repeated to little Mr. Baker he twiddled his thumbs gaily. He was delighted that Senator Owen had , been to France and he trusted that the senator would call on him and Ttell him all about it. The secretary whose business it was to know all about conditions at Brest was in a state of even deeper ignorance than he normally registers below the zero of knowledge. "Of course he knew that Brest was rather damp in fact a very wet place is Brest. Ever been to Brest? Oh, dear, quite rainy and wet there. Oceans of mud. Yes, yes, oceans of mud. But insanitary? Did the senator say insanitary?" Here a look almost of gravity crossed the sunny features of the little secretary and, for a moment, H he ceased to twitter, or if he twittered he twittered softly to himself. H "Surely the senator could not have used the word insanitary. He H did? Well, well. Of course it is very wet at Brest. Oceans of mud, HH you know. And it is growing quite crowded there, too, because we always make sure there are enough men there to fill any possible ships we may land at Brest. The transport service is rather uncer- H tain. O yes, very precarious. Have you eVer been to Brest? Very H wet there. Oceans of mud, but a place in the mud for every Ameri- HH can. In fact, France is quite a wet place. Oceans of mud. But insan- H itary? I do not think he means insanitary in the sense of unclean. I jH think perhaps he means soiled." J And so the secretary twittered and chirped and chirped and H twittered to his interviewers. But he was very sympathetic and he H could quite understand how American soldiers, weltering in the mud, H might feel a little uncomfortable now and then. H Oh, yes, it's quite wet at Brest. Oceans of mud. H Dear chirping, twittering optimist. Such a sweet bird for secrc- H tary of war ! jH EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE TO RUN THE WORLD. H AT last we are to have a government of the world by an executive M committee. The whole world will be just like a commercial club M or a social club. The executive committee will felieve the members M of the burden of government. H Article III of the constitution of the League of Nations unfolds to H us the pleasant plan. "The executive council shall consist of repre- H sentatives of the United States of America, the British empire, France, H Italy and Japan, together with representatives of four other states, H members of the league. The selection of these four states shall be H made by the body of delegates on such principles and in such manner H as they think fit." H The body of delegates is a more general body than the executive H committee or council. How the delegates are to be chosen is left in H a mild obscurity, but much pains are taken to define the make up of H the executive council, which is to meet at more frequent intervals H than the body of delegates. The executive council will consist of the H "big five" nations and four other nations selected by the body of del- H egates, whatever that ill-defined body may be. Provision is made for H admitting to the league nations other than the fourteen which unani- M mously agreed to the covenant, but the assent of not less than $wo- H thirds of the delegates of the states represented in the body of dele- M gates is required. H Let us say, in the first 'place, that we hope for the success of the M league while gravely feeling that it will meet with disaster. Its M makeup, as we understand it, provides for an "entangling alliance" M of powers which have set out to regulate the world according to their M own will. It is a world trust. It is a concert of certain powers, espe- M daily of the five great powers named in the protocol. These five H powers will dominate the executive council and this committee of M clubmen will regulate as far as they may the destinies of continents, H nations, dominions and peoples. H In appearance it does not have the form of an offensive and do- M tensive alliance, but in operation it can hardly be anything else. We M should not permit ourselves to be deluded by the refusal of the sig- H natorics to provide an international army and navy. The dictates of M honor would require any signatory nation to furnish warships and M troops whenever it became necessary to employ coercion on a grand H scale. If economic boycotts and other means of duress fail and null- tary operations become necessary the signatory nations and partic- H ularly the "big five" will be compelled to make war. A refusal by any H nation will split the league and eventually destroy it. How a league formed at this time could be anything other than H an alliance we do not know. The side which won the war could not M afford to let the reins of control out of its hands by adopting a con- H stitution which would permit Germany and any new-found friends to H violate the forthcoming peace treaty. The French are by no means secure members of the league. M Without an alliance they wight soon again be. at the mercy of the H |