| OCR Text |
Show m DEMOCRATS AND THE LEAGUE To obscure the significance of their defeat de-feat and discomfiture the Democrats are vociferously poclaiming a change of front on the part of .the thirty-nine Republicans who signed the round robin warning President Pres-ident Wilson that tha League of Nations covenant would not be .ratified in the form to which he has given his assent. The senators are represented as returning to Washington in a chastened mood because they have heard from their constituents and have begun to realize that the League of Nations is supported by a great majority major-ity of the people. Every day's news from Paris demonstrates demon-strates the triumph of the Republican sen ators. Apparently it is President Wilson who is in a chastened mood, for he went away vowing to drive his senatorial' opponents op-ponents out of public life and now he is humbly announcing that some, at least, of the amendments they proposed are being be-ing incorpoarted in the covenant. It is quite true that a few senators urged the rejection of any treaty which should make the United States a member of a League of Nations. Virtually all of the Republican senators, however, limited limit-ed their objections to certain specific and glaring flaws in the covenant. They pointed out these flaws so luminously that everyone except the. President saw them. A mjghty wave of protest went 'through the nation like a prairie fire. Former President Taft, who had taken the position at the very outset that the cov enant was sacred and not to be changed except with reference to the Monroe doctrine, doc-trine, gradually saw the light in the east as he moved toward the Atlantic and became be-came more and more patient with the critics of the covenant. It was to Democratic standpatters who met with defeat. They declared the president impeccable and his covenant infallible. They demanded that the United Unit-ed States senators close their eyes and blindly vote as the President commanded. The Republicans, however, insisted upon up-on perusing the productive paths of constructive con-structive criticism. Wherever they went they found the people open to conviction. On every salient point they won the people peo-ple to their side. Soon the reaction began to be felt at the Quai D'Orsay and the European delegates, including the British, Brit-ish, who had hoped to bhid the Unjtted fcSittesby a compact which provided-for-,, perpetual membership, cbliuiienccaflt6 show a spirit of reconciliation. The authors of the covenant could no longer defend it as an inspired document eprufig full-fledged from t he brain of Jovian Jo-vian wisdom. The thirty nine United States senators had made it look like a , sieve. Hastily the covenant commission began to revise its work and consider the amendments of the Republican senators. Whether all of them will be adopted we ' do not wish to prophesy, but it is safe to say that the new covenant will contain an explicit provision for 'the withdrawal of member nations from the league, a provision provi-sion as to the exact powers and limitations limita-tions of the executive council, a provision safeguarding the Monroe doctrine, a provision pro-vision that no member shall become a mandatory without its consent, and a provision pro-vision which shall modify Article 10 requiring re-quiring the "high contracting parties" to preserve against external aggression the tentorial integrity and existing independence indepen-dence of all states, members of the league. The Democrats shut themselves up in an impenetrable fog and cried out that the ways of Wilson were just and that no fault was to be found in him. The Republicans Repub-licans on the other hand,.at once set about the task of intelligent criticism. The result has been the enlightenment even of Democratic sunworshippers. Goodwin's Weekly. |
