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Show DON'T LET'S LOSE OUR HEADS. TEADY there everybody ! We are in danger of going off in an y explosion of hysteria over traitors. We are drifting into persecution per-secution for opinion's sake. All this talk of standing senators up against walls and shooting them for their actions and utterances is mere frenzy. All the legislation providing for bureaucratic suppression suppres-sion of publications is but a case of nerves. We can be loyally patriotic patri-otic without making an insanity of our patriotism. Let the pacifists and others talk and write as much as they please, short of agitating and organizing resistance to the laws for the carrying on of the war. Of course they are exasperating in their logicality that is not reason, but it's a pertinent suggestion that we should reflect upon the situation situa-tion as it would appear to us if we were in the minority. I think Senators La Follette, Reed, Stone, Gronna, Hardwick, Vardaman and publicists like Harris and Eastman and Viereck are all wrong, but I don't think the way to deal with them is by the method of the firing squad. It is absurd to damn Germany for imprisoning im-prisoning Liebnecht and silencing Harden and then to deal with our opponents of the war in exactly the same manner. I doubt if it would be wise for the Senate to expel members who are in an obstructive minority. We must not throw freedom overboard here to make the world safe for democracy. The people of the country are stronger for the war every day and the irreconcilables are diminishingly dangerous. By holding fast to our tolerance of dissent we will justify our professions of purpose in the war. Let the opposition oppose and it will expose its shallow folly. Talk like that of Federal Judge Burns at Houston recently, only makes the country rediculous. Let reason prevail, not passion. Let us not be as crazy as the folk who prefer peace to liberty and free institutions. institu-tions. Let us keep the free institutions free. And let us get on with the war. Reedy's Mirror. THE GOVERNMENT AND THE UNIONS. , VHE nation is fighting for its life. In this time of war, the gov-fLfcJ gov-fLfcJ ernment demands of all the people two forms of full patriotic service military and industrial. Without the military, the nation is lost; without the industrial, the military is sacrificed. In this crisis, a large element of organized labor, declining to render ren-der military service on any terms, refuses to give industrial service on any but its own terms. The Central Labor Council which today has called a strike in our (Portland, Oregon), shipbuilding plants, but yesterday declared -that if Congress passed a conscription bill, the unions would start a war that would drench Oregon in fraticidal blood. The terms on which the unions agree to return to work are these : '" None but union members shall be allowed to work in any industry ; the unions shall be permitted to arrange the hours of labor, the rates of pay, and the output of factory, workshop, and foundry. That is the closed shop rule. -' Whether or not the closed shop shall go into effect, is the only matter at issue between the strikers and the employer. A government mediator has been here .for some time trying to compose this difference'; differ-ence'; other government mediators are on the way to Portland to try 'to do what Mr. Harry could not accomplish. It cannot be accomplished. accom-plished. It is declared that in practically every strike in the Eastern munition factories, investigation disclosed unholy alliance between traitorous labor leaders and the dispensers of the German slush fund. It is not alleged against the labor leaders who have called the strikes on the coast that they are in the pay of the Kaiser ; it may, however, be stated that in tying up the shipbuilding industry and preventing the shipment of supplies and ammunition to our soldiers in France, they are doing his work as efficiently and efficaciously as it was done by those who took his orders and received his money. Through the closed shop, the unions are seeking to create a monopoly mon-opoly of labor, which would drive out of the industries every manSvho refuses to exchange his loyalty to his country for allegiance" to the walking delegate. It would give us a privileged class, that would fix its own pay, regulate its hours of labor and production, and-enjoy such exemptions and immunities from service at home or obroad as it cared to exact. In the army and navy is no closed shop rule. No walking delegates dele-gates stands at the recruiting offices demanding that none but union members shall be permitted to work for their country in that branch of the government service. Shall the walking delegates have the right to say that the fathers and brothers of our soldiers shall not be permitted to work in the industries of the country? Portland Spectator. re' ' sH "WHERE ARE OUR BOYS?" aNDER the above caption a contemporary pens a scathing criticism criti-cism of the War Department for its persistence in covering up the whereabouts of the American troops in France. That there is need for a rigid censorship respecting the movements of our troops, there is no doubt, but it does seem that the department could employ a more sensible policy. What possible harm could arise from announcing the safe arrival of the various units, or their general location? All the British colonies do this and with satisfactory results. Something should te done to relieve the anxiety of the folks at home, butit is idle to appeal to those in charge of thexensorship at Washington. All newspaper men, and sound-thinking citizens as well, are agreed that the1 Creel publicity bureau is pretty much of a joke, and that the administration must sooner or later resort to some suitable agency for furnishing the people peo-ple with at least the bare routine facts relating to the progress "of the war. "The ship is resting easily," said the report of Josephus Daniels. Meaning that one of our battleships is rocked in the cradle of the rocks. " " Owing to the shortage of leather, government investigators are experimenting with tanning of the hides of denizens of the sea. This might be an opportune time for sheep men to suggest that experiments experi-ments be made with the hides of a few worthless dogs. German air-fleet has raided east England again. Little premature Wihelm; the women and children are not yet at the beaches. Philadelphia North American. |
