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Show SAFE FOR AUTOCRACY The present president came to office with matured ideas touching the'preroga- tives of the executive. He worke accord- B ing to a fixed plan in small matters as M well as in big. Executive and legisltive power should be, he held, in the same 9 hands to secure an efficient and coordiiiv m ated government. This integration is at- fl tained in other countries by the Cabinet If system. A committee of the legislature, ; m under the leadership of a prime minister ? j makes the laws that it enforces. Pesi- M ent Wilson saw himself as a prime min- , ister, but without the limits by which a prime" minister is bound that is, without fl responsibility to a Parliament. A Presi- dent cannot be voted out, yet the Presi- dent assumed that the executive should l enjoy the privileges, while he escaped the m obligations, of a prime minister. ' 1 The purpose to reduce Congress to I practical impotency is now conceded. The i White House has sent bowstrings to Con- S gressmen who dared to be independent. 1 One can hear in imagination the words of 1 Cromwell, "Sir Henry Vane, Sir Henry mM Vane, you will rue this day!" Not only VTf have particular districts been told whom , mg to elect, but the whole country has been T instructed to listen and obey. The query fc- has risen in thousands of mincls: "Why CnnPTPSs nt all. with ifs orpjir. ovnpnsp?" B Republics have gonedown in two ways If the Athenian, way of making life intol- 1 erable to the average man by universal l disturbance and general wrecking, a V "3 method Russia is now applying. Theoth- v 1 er way is Roman the way employed by m Augustus when he centered all authority II in an Imperator. At Washington there is t jM imitation of Augustus rather than of the ' QI Athenian demagogues. Congress is to 9 continue, but as a body of automatens. M The undertaking moves rapidly. A m treaty which is not only to end'a particu- I lar war but to bind the future with re- I 'spect to most vital political mattes is be- incr desiemedlv drawn to mafcp ratifinn- 1 tion by the Senate a mere form. The 'President seems to propose nothing oth- er than aseizure of the, entire manage- ment of foreign affairs. I The world recently resounded with the W demand for democratic control of interna- W tional affairs. The various peoples, it was 1 said, through free parliaments, must be re masters in .their own households. If we remember aright it was declared no peace , 1 would be made with Germany until her I Parliament had power But alas, com- I plete is the reversal. Germany is to have R a Parliament, while we, it would seem, I are to have only a Reichstag. New York x I Tribune. ttikMMSt I |