OCR Text |
Show H MR. LANSING WAS WRONG In their respective questionings before the Senate Foreign Affairs committee, H Secretary Lansing and the President flat- ly contradict eacli other. Mr. Lansing, M being questioned by Senator Johnson, B said without hesitation that the signa- ture of Japan to the League of Nations m would have been obtained even if the de-I de-I mands of Japan with reference to Shan-H Shan-H lung had not been granted. j The President, on the other hand, said j with equal positiveness that without m granting the Japanese demands concern- H ing Shantung, Japan would not have M signed. The questions and answers of ' the Lansing examination were read to B President Wilson as follows: 1 Senator Johndon. Would the Japanese m signature to the League of Nations have been obtained if you had not made the fl Shantung agreement? H Secretary Lansing I think so. H Senator Johnson You do? H Secretary Lansing I think so. 1 Senator Johnson So that even though 1 Shantuhg had not been delivered to Japan B the League of Natinos would, not have M ' been injured? H Secretary Lansing I do not think so. I Senator Johnson And you would have M had the same signatories that you have m now? m Secretary Lansing Yes, one more m China. After reading this testimony of Secre- M tary Lansing's to the President, Senator H Brandegcs asked: H Senator Brandegee Now I wondered J M -whether Secretary- Lansing was well in- H formed about this question? M . The President Well, my conclusion is B different from his, sir. H Senator Brandegee You ' could not M have got the signature of Japan -if you m had not given Japan Shantung? m The President That is my judgment. M Senator Brandegee You say you were notified to that effect? ssl The President Yes, sir. H Senator Swanson As I understood, m you were notified that they had instruc- H tions not to sign unless this was included ? B The Presidents-Yes. H Of course Secretary Lansing is wrong; H primarily, because his statements are a H' flat contradiction of those of a President i i of the Uijited States, and secondarily, be-B be-B ' cause according to his own prior admis- H. sions the Secretary of States of the Un- H ited States was deliberately excluded H from all save quite unimportant deliber- Hs ations of the Peace Conference. The H' President of the United States was the H' sole, self appointed negotiator on the part H of this country. The President of the H United States shared no confidences with H other members of the Peace Commission, H all personally selected by him as merely H perfunctory associates. While not explic- H itly forbidding the intrusion of advice H from his associates and his multitidinous H experts, Mr. Wilson paid no heed to any- H body's opinions save his own. H All this was made so clear in Mr. Lan H sing's own testimony before the Senate H Foreign Affairs committee so far, at H least, as he personally was concerned H that we confess to some degree of sur- H prise that he should have undertaken to H give even an opinion as to what went on B behind those tightly closed doors where H the open covenants were being openly ar- H rived at. D Naturally, the President's denial of the B Secretary's positive assertions is more or H less humiliating to Mr. Lansing. Yet Mr. H Lansing must feel that he has only him- H self to blame. He knew nothing about H what was going on at the Peace Confer- H ance. He was not 'brought along to have H any such' knowledge. He was not ther i B as Secretaryiof Statesof the United'States ssssi ' He was there as a dummy figurehead, as were all his fellow members of the American Amer-ican Peace Commission. His position was humiliating, we grant; humiliating to the point of being ridiculous. ridicul-ous. But surely the humiliation is not diminished dim-inished by the sharp rap over the knuckles knuck-les from the schoolmaster's ferule which his presumptuous assertion of knowledge has brought down "upon him. Harvey's Weekly. HJ fa 01 CLEARING THE AIR Senator Walsh, a leading Democrat of Massachusetts, reports that the people of his state are more interested in the high cost of living than in the League of Nations. Na-tions. Mr. Louis Seibold, the well known political correspondent of the New York World, finds the same condition of affairs in his visits to industrial centers throughout through-out the country. The A.mercan people as a whole concur in thejudgment of President Wilson when he said on October 11, 1915: "America ought to devote itself only to the things that America believes in and, believing that America stands apart in its ideals, it ought not to allow itself to be drawn, so far as its heart is concerned, into anybody's any-body's quarrel." The people are interested in one question ques-tion which has arisen regarding the League, and that is whether if we accept its covenants, we are bound to send American Am-erican soldiers across the sea to any part of the world where a disturbance may arise ar-ise Under provisions that call for the use of force. There can no longer be any doubt as to the answer. President Wilson, in his entertaining en-tertaining discussion with members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the White House, said, in reply to blunt but courteous inquiries from the senators that this nation, if it accepted the league, would be "morally bound," to join with its associates in securing the preservation preserva-tion of peace. The President holds that "a moral obligation is superior to a legal obligation and has a greater- binding force." In answer to a direct question by Senator Sena-tor Johnson, the President admitted that our "moral obligation" under the terms of the League would compel us to maintain main-tain American troops in Europe "in such small bodies as are necessary to the car-I car-I rying out of the Treaty." He conceded that we might be maintaining American troops upon the Rhine for the next fifteen fif-teen years. Do the American people, now that they know the "moral obligation" of the League, favor its acceptance, as submitted, submit-ted, or do they prefer reservations which have the endorsement of ex-President Taft, Justice Hughes, Senator Root and William J. Bryan.. That is the question that vitally interests inter-ests them. Leslie's. n as WHAT WE MUST LEARN By Louis K. Liggett, President United Drug Company The people of this country must learn that in addition to the fact that the country coun-try owes them a living they owe to this country and to their fellow men their support sup-port by giving the proper amount of time and effort toward its -sustenance. This is something that .many of the laboring men of this country seem to forget when they demand a forty-four hour working week as the carpenters in Fall River did, and even some a thirty-six hour working week, as the plumbers of Chicago have done. We' cannot work 'thirty-six huura 'a week and produce enough to feed, house and clothe the people of our own nation, to say nothing of doing our share toward feeding, housing and clothing those unfortunates un-fortunates beyond the seas. All wars bring speculations, but the profits from such speculations tinder our tax system are going to pay for the war. The storerooms store-rooms of the world have been depleted. Store rooms must be filled; conditions must go back to normal stocks, and it will take years of production to do this. If we were to shorten the hours of production, pro-duction, no matter with how much skill Ave may employ our newly devise i machinery machin-ery to cut costs of production, we will be many years in getting the world back to a normal basis, and during thac period inflation must continue. Pi fu m |