SPEECH OF SENATOR THOS. E. WATSON AGAINST FOUR POWER FACT.
THE UNITED STATES SENATE, MARCH 23, 1922,
(The last week of the debate on the Four Power
Pact was filled with dramatic incidents.
Senator Watson had taken a most active part in
the entire. debate, and this speech was the sixth he had
delivered on the subject, A. L. L.)
■EVENING SESSION.
The Senate, in open executive session^ reassembled
at 8 o’clock p. m., on the expiratjon of the recess.
THE FOUR POWER TREATY.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. McNary in the
chair). The Senate resumes the consideration of the
pending treaty.
The Senate, as in Committee of the Whole and in
open executive session, resumed the consideration of
the treaty submitted by the President of the United
States, the British Empire, France, and Japan, relating
to their insular possessions and their insular domin¬
ions in the Pacific Ocean.
Mr. WATSON of Georgia. Mr. President, a lady
of this city. Miss Lillian Scott Troy, placed in my
possession this morning a booklet, which she has caused
to be published. While I v have not had time to verify
her statements, I have no reason to doubt their cor¬
rectness.
Ordinarily, when a subject of one country pub¬
lishes a libelous attack upon all the people of another
it is a matter of which the government of that coun¬
try will take no notice, it being considered an indi¬
vidual affair. In this case the publisher is well known
as the author of several standard works. He is known
to be the personal friend of the British ambassador,
Sir Auckland Geddes. He is known to be a frequent
visitor at the British embassy. He has been decorated
by the Governments of Great Briltain and Japan, as
well as that of Belgium. Therefore what he says
against our people in general—drawing what Burke
said could not be drawn, an indictment against a
whole people—has some significance when we remem¬
ber that we are now- asked to entei; into an alliance with
his country, he the friend of the British ambassador.
It is said that some Senators from the South are
going to vote for this revolutionary departure from our
traditional policy. 1 want those Senators from the
South to hear what this friend of the British am¬
bassador. this honored guest of the British Embassy,
this w-earer of decorations from Japan and Great Brit¬
ain, has said about us as a people. Writing of the
colonizers of Virginia and the South, Mr. A. Maurice
Low says:
In the early days many of them went there
because they had no option, because they were
criminals and paupers; they were transported by
the Government as in later days English criminals
were sent to Botany Bay.
Think of that! The South compared to the slave
colony of Botany Bay! Criminals! Paupers! So says
this friend of the British ambassador, this visitor to the
British Embassy. He further said:
Some immigrants to Virginia were, to some
extent, a shiftless and degraded: set of creatures
from slums and jails of English seaport towns.
Virginia, in whose Jamestown settlement was set
the foundation of American democracy, representative
government, manhood suffrage, trial by jury, while
Massachusetts was making the experiment of a the¬
ocracy which did not work.
He further said:
The men who have made some parts of the
South a dark and bloody ground, where to this
day the only law known is the law of the rifle and
the knife, where dense ignorance prevails and su¬
perstition holds sway, are the legacy of this colo
nfal era and its social system.
And from the South have come so nuny of the
Intellectual stars that light the galaxy of America’s
pride, that one could stand an hour, mentioning their
names and giviug a brief summary of their deeds,
From the South has gone much of the money and the
missionaries which converted Korea to Christianity,
^which. Japan is now trying to stamp out.
Tho negro fastened his own weakness, his
shiftlessness, and Ills slackness upon the Southern¬
er.
In the South, as elsewhere, we have our shiftless
clgS3 of negroes, butHhey are very much in the minority.
The greater number of the negroes of the South have
learned., the ways of civilization and Christianity,
and the tax books, the official records, will show how
rapid have been their accumulation of property. Their
schoolhouses and their churches compare favorably
with ours,- when we consider that" a few years ago
they were slaves. Mere justice to my black constitu¬
ents in tho Sta,te of Georgia, whose good will and con¬
fidence 1 am proud of, Impels me to say that they have
been foully slandered in this book of the friend and
guest of the ambassador of Great Britain, who flow has
an office here in Washington City and a membership in
the Cosmos Club—which ought to expel him.
Blacks corrupted their masters and corrupted
their morals. The effect of slavery was mors de¬
moralizing in Soutli Carolina than in any oilier
colony.
This "friend of the British ambassador says that
slavery demoralized that State to a greater extent titan
it demoralized and debauched and degraded any other
State. I wonder if a Senator from South f’arolina
would dream of voting for this damnable treaty.
Mr. SMITH. Not this Se.nator.
Mr. WATSON of Georgia. 1 know that.
Mr. SMITH. The Senator from Georgia said “a"
Senator.
Mr- WATSON of Georgia. I said I wondered if a
Senator would vote for the treaty; yes. I know the
Senator's position.
Again, another British writer, Mr. P. »A. Valle, in
bis book Yankee America's Peril, said:
Quite a few men in America are effeminate '
looking. Many of tho young men have quite nice
waists, and then aro developed not quite so sturdily
as one who has the «elfare of the Nation at heart
might wish; in fact, not to put too fine a point on
it, their development beneath the waistline is dis¬
tinctly feminine. i
THL COLUMBIA SENTLnLL, THOMSON. GEORGIA.
He then goes on to say:
It simply means, of course, that from the tjpy
who shines your boots to the Senator they are a
nation of ‘'boodlers.”
From the boy who shines your boots to the Sena¬
tors here in this Chamber, they are boodlers! That is
not a pleasant thing to read from the bosom friend,
the constant guest of the British ambassador, the man
who belongs to the Cosmos Club, and who has entree
to the British Embassy. Boodlers, bootblacks, and
Senators! I see ope of them standing before me now'.
Mr. REED. I will sit down after that.
Mr. WATSON of Georgia. I read further:
Yankee! Yankee! Yankee! Have you anything
in your land that is not hollow?
Tomorrow’s vote will begin to show. Tomorrow’s
vote will show whether we have anything in the land
that is not hollow. I am not drawing the inference
myself. He is doing it.
A little further on he said:
The population of America consists to a large
extent of offcasts from every land on the face of
the earth.
Now listen to this:
By the time I had been in the States a month
I began to ask myself was any woman in the land
to be trusted.
No virtue in these United States! An insult to
your mother, if she is alivef an insult to your wife, if
she is alive; an insult to your daughter, if she is alive;
an insult to your granddaughter, if you have one;
an insult to your sister; an insult to American woman¬
hood, for which every American man has been ready to
risk and lay down his life if accusation were brought
against.it, impugning its honor, its splendid elevation.
No American woman pure, says this prominent
English writer, who writes in the same way as-does the
friend of the British ambassador, this man who is the
welcome guest at the British Embassy and who we^rs
the imperial decoration of Japfui, of Great Britain, and
of Belgium.
They may say they did not know he had said it or
had written it or had published it. They will know it
in the mojning.
Mr. President, the junior Senator from Ohio, my
good friend Mr. Willis, placed in the Record two edi¬
torials, one by Mr. Clark Howell, Georgia’s member of
the National Democratic Committee, the other by Mr.
William J. Bryan, often the nominee of the Dem¬
ocratic Party for the Presidency, now a resident of
Florida.
As to Mr. Howell, who edits, perhaps, the most
widely circulated daily newspaper in the State of Geor¬
gia, I will simply say this, which the Senator from Ohio
(Mr. Pomerpne) could have been supposed to know:
In the campaign of 1920 Mr. Howell placed in the race
for a seat in this body-the governor of Georgia, and he
ran on this issue. He was not elected; he was over¬
whelmingly defeated, in spite of all the valiant service
which could be rendered to him by my personal friend,
Mr. Clark Howell. Had he been elected he might nave
been, making a different speech from which I am try¬
ing to make tonight.
As to Mr. Bryan, I would not want to say anything
that is at al! malicious, although I have no cause tp
love him. It will be remembered that he opposed the
Spanish-American War, and then came, in his grand¬
stand manner, to offer his services as a ■ soldier to
President McKinley, He went to the White House to
do it, instead of enlisting as the others did out in Ne¬
braska. President McKinley made him the colonel of
a regiment, but another man had to drill it for him.
He was sent down to Tampa, Fla., where he fougnt
sand flies and mosquitoes in the most heroic manner.
There are no audiences down there to speak to, and
President McKinley did not want him to get to Cuba,
lest he spoil the plans of the campaign. He was kept
at Tampa until he got tired of it. He wanted the war
to close so he came to Washington City, wearing his
i
uniform, and implored several Democratic Senators to
lend their votes to our Republican friends on tho other
side of the Chamber to ratify the treaty of Paris by
which our taxpayers invested $20,000,000 in buying
property which our soldiers had won with their blood.
He succeeded in .lending our Republican friends a suffi¬
cient number of Democratic votes to ratify that treaty.
We thereby obtained the Philippines, and the Philip¬
pines are now being used as the excuse for going into
this four-power pact.
One of tile Senators who was persuaded by Mr.
Bryan to vote for that treaty was Mr. Clay, of Georgia.
I was a,t Mr. Clay’s house a short while before his
death. He knew that he was afflicted by an incurable
disease. !«[ his house and at his table he told me that
his vote for the Paris treaty wgs th,e one act of his
political life that he most regretted; that he had been
persuaded to cast that vote by Mr. Bryan. The widow
of Senator Clay still lives, and by the magnanimity of
this Republican administration the widow of that
Democrat remains the postmaster of her home town at
Marietta, and I am sure if she were asked fo do so she
would corroborate every word that I have said. With
the solemnity of a dying confession Senator Clay ex¬
pressed his profound sorrow that lie had allowed Mr.
Bryan to overpersuado him. Any -Southern Senator
who now allows Mr. Bryan to persuade will carry
similar regret to the iasrt day of his life.
The other Senator from Ohio (Mr. Pomerene), who
is also personally my very good friend, spoke of George
Washington as being obsolete, out of date, old fogy,
behind the times; that he had not dreamed of railroads,
telegraphs, telephones, radio stations, airplanes, and
submarines, or any of the new adjuncts of modern
clvlUz ft tlon - antl therefore what he said about the fatal
consequences of foreign entanglements did not apply.
The natural consequence of the Senator’s, logic was that
if he had known of the railroads, telegraphs, tele¬
phones. radio stations, airplanes and submarines he
would h,ave withdrawn his farewell address. I wonder
what the voters of Ohio will say about that matter in
a few days?
Mr. REED. Mr. President—
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator
from Geo’-gia yield to-the Senator from Missouri?
Mr. WATSON of Georgia. With pleasure.
Mr. REED. 1 think it is very true that when Wash-
ington wrote his farewell address he had not heard of!
the airplane or of the automobile; he had not even
heard of a Ford. If the argument is good that because
he had not heard of these instrumentalities of modern
locomotion, the principles of government which he an¬
nounced are thereby destroyed. I wonder what my
friend, from Ohio would say of the Sermon on the
Mount. At the time it was delivered, or shortly before,
Christ had ridden into Jerusalem on an ass and He had
never heard of a "Tin Lizzie," or of any of the modern
appliances and yet some people think that the principles
of the Sermon on the Mount live, notwithstanding mod¬
ern inventions.
Mr. KING. The Senator might also mention the
Ten Commandments.
Mr. WATSON of Georgia. The line of argument
pursued by the senior Senator from Ohio would, first
of all scrap the Constitution itself, then, of course, it
would scrap the golden Rule, and, of course, it would
scrap, also, the Sermon on the Mbunt.
Mr. REED. And also the Ten Commandments.
Mr. WATSON of Georgia. Oh, yes; and also the
Ten Commandments.
We heard an eulogy- delivered here on Mr. Elihu
Root, who is said to be a great man actuated by pure
and lofty motives. Mr. President, I think that a lawyer
who has consciously devoted his whole life to showing
law-breakers how to escape the penalty of their crimes
does himself become morally warped because of having
done that. Let us see. When Mr. Root was Secretary
of State under President Roosevelt he violated the
honor and the contract this Government pledged to
Korea in 1882; and, after having done that and drawn
his friend, the President, into it, he went to Chicago
and drove a knife into his back; he steam-rolled his
delegates, and nominated Mr. Taft, who has placed his
brother’s law- partner In the Cabinet, in which position
that law partner of Henry Taft surrendered to the
Sugar Trust of the Philippine lands, for which this
Government had paid the friars $7,000,000, and he
sold them to the Sugar Trust for less than our tax¬
payers had had to pay for them.
Mr. President, it is a small matter to mention, but
the four-power pact and its supplementary treaty show
the punctuation of a lawyer, and not that of a literary
mat). Having been both a lawyer and a literary man,
1 know the difference between the one system and the
other. So I say a lawyer wrote that document, as it
has the punctuation of a lawyer. It is not necessary
to impute corrupt motives to Mr. P.oot. He is a lawyer
representing his client, and his client Is the Anglo
Japanese aliance, and he wants to change that contract
in the interest of his client, and to give that client two
more allies which will contribute to Japan’s military
strength an lrresistable force already in existence.
’ We are told that this pact will exist only for 10
years. Of course, on its faco it is plain that it will
for . _ il years. ... It is said ..... that nothing ... can . happen In
„ Russia . in . 11 years. How does , anybody . , „ know that? A „
good deal is happening in Germany „ right , , . now. With
, her abundance . . of . paper money she . is . industrially . . , . „ on
,,,,,, her feet, and she is again . competing ,, with American and ,
T iMiglish . . manufacturers , , , in nearly all the marts .... of the
world, v. n deprived of paper money, deprived , . , of . cir- ,
eulatiem , ,. to . the extent of $2,000,000,000 „„„ ... ... , In two . years,
are on the very brink , . , of , economic , ruin, . and , unless , our
financial . . , policy ,, , is reversed . and , the money put back in- .
to circulation there will ,,, be , no rehabilitation , , .... . of . our
industrial and economic system.
Mr. REED. Mr. President--
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator
from Georgia yield to the Senator from Missouri?
Mr. WATSON of Georgia. Certainly.
Mr. REED. Since the Senator lias been speaking
about Mr. Root, I should like to ask him if he saw this
article in the Chicago Herald-Examiner of Friday, Oc¬
tober 28, 1921? It is very short. It is by Osw-ald F.
Schuette, a writer of prominence:
Washington, October 27.—A prominent Amer¬
ican who returned recently from 'London and who
had access to the highest British and American
officials brought back the following account of
British interest in, the American delegation to the
Washington Conference on armaments.
When President Harding made public his plans,
the British Prime Minister sought to learn de¬
tails of the plans from an American in London
who is known to sustain exceedingly intimate
relations with the White House. .
‘‘Do you know whom your President is likely
to name as delegates to this conference?” asked
Lloyd-George.
“If he follows the usual custom,” was the re¬
ply. "he would name Senator Borah, because it
was Senator Borah whose resolution for an arma¬
ment conference really started the whole matter.”
“But he is a fanatic,” was the complaint of
Lloyd-George. “We never could get along with
him. Is there anyone else wLo is likely to be
named?”
"Senator Knox,” was the second suggestion.
"He is a former Secretary of State, a leader in the
Senate, and an authority on international affairs.”
‘‘He is too . pig-headed,” was the explosive
comment of the British premier. "Why does not
President Harding name some one like Elihu
Root? We could deal with him.”
In this connection, 1 call attention to a fac simile
letter which was printed on March 19 in the New York
Amorica.n, on the letterhead of the United States Senate,
Committee on the Philippines; in the upper left-hand
corner "Warren G. Harding, Ohio, chairman.”
June, SO, 1919.
Mr. William F. Brewster,
Edison Building, Chicago, III.
My Dear Mr. Brewster: Permit me to make
grateful acknowledgment of your gracious letter
of Juno 28.
We seem to be in essential accord about the
League of Nations, and I quite agree with you
that It has been helpful that we had pioneers In
attacking the plan which has been negotiated by
the President.
I have been very much interested to note the
contents of your letter to * * * What especially
attracted my Interest was your reference to Mr.
Root. I join in paying very high tribute to Mr.
Root's commanding ability, but I agree with you
that he is not infallible and bam perfectly frank to
3
say he has not been so helpful as he might have
been in dealing with this matter, if lie had been
free from professional entanglements whicu have
committed him more or less to the League of Na¬
tions plan.
Very truly yours,
W, G. Harding.
I think the two statements lit somewhat into the
Senator’s remarks.
Mr. WATSON of Georgia. Mr. President, they do.
I had a photographic copy of that leter in my hands or
on my desk when I spoke here the other d a v: but. it
had not then been made public property, as it has now
been, and it has always been my conception of propri¬
ety to not use a private letter in public without the
permission of the person who wrote it; and not having
that permission, and the letter not then being public
property^ ns it is now, I did not feel free to comment
upon it. What the Senator from Missouri has read in¬
to my remarks exactly tallies with what I was saying.
The English Government wanted .Mr. Root because ha
is their lawyer. He is the attorney for the Anglo
Japanese alliance, and he is the attorney for the J. P.
Morgan banking house. He is the attorney of the in¬
ternational bank, and behind all of this drive are the
international bankers who mean to exploit China, Si¬
beria, and that island which, it is said, has as much
mineral wealth as Mexico—Sakhalin. It is virtually a
part of the mainland of Russta, but our negotiators
said it was six or eight hundred miles off.
Mr. President, the Senator from California (Mr.
Shortrldge), answering a question put to him by the
senior Senator from Missouri (Mr. Reed), stated to the
Senate that he had run on the issue of the League of
nations but he considered this nothing of a league
(
and that therefore there was no inconsistency in his
supporting this while he opposed the other. To show
you how careless have been those who wrote this treat'
and who have spoken about it, he put into the Record
a clause which states that the United States do not. as
sent to the mandates given to Great Britain and to
Japan at Paris—mandates over those 25,000 islands in
the Pacific Ocean. Why, Mr. President, the Yap treaty
contains the express language “The United States con¬
sent to those mandates.” Which of these was written
first? Here is the supplementary treaty, tUo declara¬
tion accompanying the above four power treaty. It says
the United States do not assent. The Yap treaty declares
that the United States do consent. Wliiqh was written
first? Were they written by the. same man? Why
could ho not remember what lie wrote?
The Senator from California asked, “What is mys¬
terious about this?” Well, I think that is mysterious.
the one, where we are told it is-merely a matter of
laying a cable on the way to China, the United States
.■are made to consent to those mandates—to consent so
far as Japan is concerned in express terms, and By 1 lm
plication ,, to consent to Great Britain because we can
not consent , to the , one and deny the other. , That must
*
_ he manifest . to every intelligent mind. Yet here wa
, have these , two treaties. , , The cable company Japan
may J
control , , , by buying up a majority of the stock, anti cen
•
sor all ,, the , news that , , we send to Uio East, , ’ and all that
tno .. Last sends to In the Yap treaty , to
us. 1 J we consent
those , mandates , which carry out the secret agreement
which Mr. Balfour denied, . and which, if we had known, ’
we would ,, , have required , to bo abrogated before
ever
T Gr ®f ^ Br „ ' ° tain U ( r boys T “ the abroad 0110 wc t0 say dio for we wiU * „ rance not consent; and for
’ >
m 6 0t ier w ° d °’
And whispering I'll ne'er consent—consented.
What sort of attention was paid to our national
honor and our interests when Singapore, at the end of
the Malay Peninsular on the China Sea, was classed as
a Pacific port—a port of transit'through which passes
the commerce of 500,000,000 people on the one side
and 500,000,000 on tlie other, one-third of the human
race? <« i
Mystery? Why, thero is mystery after mystery
in this treaty. The Borah resolution did not call for
anything but disarmament, and the whole country gat
the idea that we were going to have peace, peace, no
more wars. and there was a grand floudsi and a fan¬
fare of trumpets at the opening of the conference in
the hall, as I understand, where they were guests of
the Daughters of the American Revolution. I wonder
if those noble patriotic women dreamed that as their
guests these men were going to conspire to surrender
the independence, the glories of the Revolution, which
that order was founded to keep fresh in tho memories
of succeeding generations!
We heard about the naval ratio, 5-5-3. We heard
about the tariff that China was to be allowed to in¬
crease slightly. We heard about the submarine, tho
poison gas. and all the rest of R. The one thing wa
heard not one whisper about was this surrender of
American freedom;- because you do surrender freod-qni
when you tie your hands in a four-power pact or a pact
with any other number of powers. It. cannot be denied. It
you go into any kind of organization, church or lay,
you surrender part of your individual independence.
In becoming members of society the individual is as¬
sumed to have been willing to surrender a pari of his
individuality to get the protection of the whole. That
is the very basis of society; and what is tra-3 of society
composed of individuals is necessarily true of a society
composer] of nations.
' With whom are we going into a combination and
against whom? We are going into a combination with
a pagan Empire which is now waging war upon a
Chrlstian-coiiverted country Korea, and is making war
(
upon a Greek Catholic. Empire, Russia. We are pa¬
ganizing ourselves to assist the Buddhists to rob the
Christians of Russia and Korea, Can that, be de'ended
in any forum where reason prevails?
Mr. STANLEY. Mr. President, will the Senator
yield?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator
from Georgia yield to the Senator from Kentucky?
Mr. WATSON of Georgia. With pleasure.
Mr. STANLEY. I have heard much of this pagan
alliance with Japan in answer to the beautiful beati¬
tudes connected in a smoky and vague way with tha
treaty. The inference is that we are united with our
Christian brother England, in the spread of the spirit of
the Redeemer throughout the world. I wish fo ask one of
the greatest historians who has ever adorned this body
.(Continued ou rage Four.)
