Newspaper Page Text
6
April, 1922
THE ATLANTIAN
future reference? Now comes the opportunity to see that
the Bumble Bee is nourished and cherished and propa
gated and improved until the fields will resound with their
buzzing and their store houses be much enlarged. Had he
not in those same youthful days tried to ingratiate himself
with the industrious honey bees, and in the effort, at the
expense of sundry and divers hurts, inflicted upon his body
by their sharp little spears, he had learned enough of their
ways, especially their pugnacity, to feel that his life would
be incomplete until he should be placed in a position of au
thority where he might regulate the little creatures and in
crease their ability to gratify our sweet tooth, or more ac
curately our sweet teeth.
Like Shope, of the Dalton Citizen, we would like to go
with the Bee inspector on a trip, provided no active inspec
tion was called for on our part. However, we are disposed,
to go to the Bee Inspector’s help. Our idea is to invent a
combination tickler and pincers which will first put the bee
in a good humor, and then with these velvet-lined pincers,
hold him, or her, in the proper position, while the chief sci
entist, the Inspector, does the inspecting, and the sanitary
assistant at the same time can make his notes as to the best
methods of treating hives among bees.
Speaking soberly, brethren, isn’t it about time for us to
shake this audacious freak who evidently considers public
office a private snap?
CONGRESSIONAL MISFORTUNES
When legislators are confronted by an opportunity to
use plain horse sense in the solution of some simple prob
lem, they get rattled. They are a little like the old-fash
ioned diplomats who are thrown into a panic by a bit of
straight truth-telling and plain-dealing. Subtlety is sus
pected. Then they refer the bit of plain work to a com
mittee and the committee holds “hearings” 1 to which every
body who is supposed to know anything about the subject
under consideration is summoned to contribute out of “ex
pert” knowledge or out of vast funds of misinformation.
Having in this way tangled and twisted the plain
matter out of all semblance to its original aspect, the
members o the committee discuss the measure among
themselves, damning it up hill and down dale until it is in
volved in a tortuous maze of contradictions. Sometimes,
the committee at the last is content to wash its hands of
responsibility by making majority and minority reports,
one as incomprehensible as the other. Of late, the persis
tent legislative effort to make confusion worse confounded
goes still further, and it is sought to escape the pernicious
ly manufactured problem by creating a special commission
to deal with the whole subject. So marked has become the
recent trend to the creation of these commissions to do the
things that members of Congress in either House are elect!
ed and paid to do, but dodge doing, that “government b;
commission” is likely to become as justly obnoxious as w,
“government by injunction” a few years ago.
In the vernacular of the Capitol, every such commissiq
is a “plum tree.” It means another suite of offices and
clerks and stenographers and traveling and other expenses
and salaries and salaries and salaries, that is to say, jobs
and more jobs for political henchmen. Circumlocution and
procrastination are of the very essence of the legalistic
mind and its methods. Some day we may get tired of gov
ernment by lawyers and send a few men of action to Con
gress-business men and “dirt farmers," for instance.—
(Exchange.) .
Democrats Have Nothing
To Be Ashamed Of
EXCEPT REPUBLICAN MAJORITY
IN CONGRESS
Review of the Work on Four-Power
Pact.
BY RICHARD LINTHICUM
Special Correspondent to
The Atlantian.
Washington, April, 1921. —Now
that the treaties negotiated at the
conference on the limitation of ar
maments have been ratified by the
senate with practically no opposition
except to the four-power pact, a calm
review and assessment of the facts
relating thereto places the Demo
cratic party in a favorable and al
most enviable attitude when com
pared with the attitude of the Re
publican senators toward the treaty
of Versailles.
As was said by Senator Harrison,
Democrat, Mississippi, there was no
partisanship in the consideration of
these treaties nor was there any in
the conference on the limitation of
armaments. It will be recalled that
while the conference was in session
there was no word of Democratic
criticism of its work. No round-robin
was presented to President Harding
to the effect that any treaty grow
ing out of that conference would be
rejected, such as was presented to
President Wilson at the time of the
Versailles conference.
While the debate on the four-power
treaty was extensive it was not for
the purpose of unnecessarily delay
ing action. The Democratic senators
who opposed that treaty did so with
regret, as Senator Harrison so frank
ly stated. They opposed it because
they believed it to be an alliance, and
the reservation offered by Senator
Robinson, democrat, Arkansas, would
have relieved the treaty of this ob
jectionable feature. If the Robinson
reservation had been accepted by the
Republican proponents of the treaty
there would have been no further ob
jection to it.
made the‘point
for the confer-
said about a
also read the
he conference
on Septem-
among) othter
HON. A. O. BLALOCK
Candidate for Commissioner of
Agriculture.
“Resolved, That it is the sense of
this conference that the fullest meas
ure of success attend the disarma
ment conference called by President
Harding to meet in the city of Wash
ington on November 11, 1921.”
He reviewed the history of the dis
armament sentiment, telling how in
1916 a Democratic representative
from Missouri, Mr. Hensley, offered
a disarmament resolution which was
incorporated in the naval appropria
tion bill; how President Wilson had
incorporated a plan for disarmament
in the league of nations covenant;
how- the distinguished Democratic
senator from Montana, Mr. Walsh, on
December 11, 1920, four days before
the Borah resolution was introduced,
had introduced a disarmament reso
lution; how the Republican members
of the naval affairs committtee had
voted unanimously against reporting
the Borah resolution and the Demo
cratic members had voted solidly for
it.
And then he told dramatically how
Senator Poindexter (Newberry Re
publican), of Washington and Sena
tor Hale (Newberry Republican), of
Maine, fought for days to defeat the
Borah resolution, and how it was sup-