Newspaper Page Text
Yot. 40
NOTES FROIVI UNITED STATES SENATE.
The observer who sees what passes here
in Washington, from week to week, must be
impressed by the fact that manners have
changed, never again to be what they were;
methods of amusement, as well as of instruc
• tion have undergone evolution.
The relation between the first Executive
and the law-making power are different from
what they were a few years a^o; and the re
lation between the Federal Judiciary and the
other two departments of the Federal Govern¬
ment have undergone a complete revolution.
A few years ago, Congress would have
rejected with indignation and horror the pro¬
position to surrender to the President the
power to make laws affecting the greatest
property interests in the Union,
On Aug. 11, 1922, by a substantial majority
of Republicans, the Senate voted to ratify
what the House had done, and to give to the
President until July, 1924, the most tremen
dous power ever exercised by any Emperor or
King. it ••
In brief, the law now authorizes President
Harding to name some board of his own choos¬
ing, who will bear evidence in tlieir own way,
at their own time, and of such character as
satisfies themselves.
The general public, which will most be af¬
fected by the law as made by this secret tribu¬
nal, will have no notice of the time and place
of hearing of this tremendous Star Chamber,
erected in Washington City, to he controlled
from Wall Street.
t It will be the nominees, appointed by the
President, without asking the advice and con¬
sent of the Senate, who will pass upon greater
issues than are passed upon personally and
finally by any ambassador, any minister, any
•consul, any tribual whatever, excepting itself.
It will he King: Charles’ Star Chamber,
under a different name, working with a differ
ent organization, and wielding enormously
greater powers in the dark than ever was
known in the days of that. Star Chamber which
caused the revolution in Great Britain; yet the
press of the country has been so completely
subsidized, or ^subdued, that few manly blows
have been struck anywhere against this brutal
usurpation of power by the Executive.
In fact, the people generally do not know
what has happened.
Dozens of speeches have been made against
this rape of our Constitution, and this mang
, ling of our form of Government but those of
us who have written had little circulation as
compared to the millions dnd billions of copies
of papers, circulars, and pamphlets which
i, have gone out from the centers of propaganda
every day for the last six or eight months in
fiVor of this overthrow of our Republican form
of Government.
I thought it was fairly well understood
. that to keep our Government in the class of Re¬
publics, where our forefathers put it, it was
necessary that the three separate branches of
Government should be kept distinct and apart
from the others, each moving in its own qrbit
only.
Tfius, We grew up with the idea that the
legislature was to make the laws, the judges
Were to construe them when there was doubt
of their meaning, that th Governor or the
President was to have these laws executed
after their meaning had been made clear, and
nothing was left except the execution of the
law as made by the legislature, and sanctioned
by the judiciary.
Supposfe you wanted to overthrow the Re¬
public, for which your forefathers fought, aqd
bled, and died.
How would you go.about it?
If some Samson possessed of the demon
of blind wrath had desperatelj r determined to
pull down the temple your fathers buiit, even
though .the destruction of the sacred
' $
I A / \
Price $2.00 Per Year
cost him his own life, how would he start
about it?
In the case of our Government, he would
throw his irresistable. strength around the pil¬
lar which represents the judiciary, and that
which represents the executive, or around the
two which represent legislative and executive,
and by the putting forth of his mighty power,
pull those pillars down, and thus destroy the
temple.
That is exactly what the Republican party
hqs done.
Against the protests of some of its ablest
members, it has committed this great crime —,
the greatest that has been committed against
democratic institutions since King Charles,
2nd, endeavored to unite in his person the
power of the purge and the sword—losing in
the effort his crown, barely escaping with his
life.
In what is called the flexible tariff, the
Presideut is given so much authority to make
aud unmake tariffs that there is no real need
^ 01 Congress to meet-at all.
Those who believe that a few men chosen
by the President without the advice and -con¬
sent of the Senate, can make the tariffs rates,
controlling so many millions of dollars per
year, it cannot seem necessary that there
should be a House of Representatives, or a ’
Senate.
What is the use of our coming here to make
the laws if President Harding is to make them?
Why not adjourn Congress, and leave 3t.
all to Harding and the bunch that surrounds
him?
Last week I listened to the argument of
Senator Gooding of Idaho the gist of which
was,that "the~chi!dreh engaged m rearing tiie
flocks and getting the wool to market in for¬
eign parts of the world were paid such misera¬
ble prices, that we ought to be willing to pay
more for shoes in order that those foreign
children might get better wages.
It certainly did sound strange to me, t,o
sit in the Senate of the United States and lis¬
ten to one of its members boldly argue in favor
of heavy taxes on American children, to bene¬
fit t}ie children of foreign countries.
Such an argument as this grows out of
Hooverism, the very essence of which is to
drain out of America all that is possible sur
plus of everything that Europe can use, and
then let Europe have it.
That was Hooverism after we entered the
war in 1917.
• No American could have more than so
much meat, or meal, or flour, or sugar, or any
other thing that Hoover thought he o^ght not
to have;
Hoover ordered into the control of the
Government and into that of Europe all sorts
_
of foodstuffs and clothing;' 1 and the result was
that when the war closed on November 19tb,
1918, it was a puzzle to get rid of the surplus
stocks in this country, and. everybody knows
that the surplus stocks were given to the Gov¬
ernment of France.
In both this country, and in France, our
own people were suffering for the lack of
those enormous accumulations of food and
clothing, but instead of getting tjie benefit of a
redistribution, or a sale at the prices paid by
the insiders, our people were left to do the
best they could with barren homes, swept
fields, ill clad persons, and badly furnished
larders.
It is difficult to believe that only half a
dozen years have passed, since those who look
on the bright side were telling us that, the
World was getting better; that the darkness of
sin was slowly but surely passing away; and
they judged the goodness of these good men
by the amount of mon$y which they, by vul¬
pine instinct, had torn from the great unpro¬
tected common people and thrown sanctimo
into the charities funds of chu{ches
Thomson, Georgia, Monday, Aug. 21, 1922.
and other organizations.
We were told, in figures which could not
lie, that greater sums of money were being
devoted to church buildings than ever before:
that larger sums were given to the poor: that
philanthropy had spread its wings until they
reached from earth to heaven and from the
uttermost boundary of the horizon to the re¬
motest place in which dwelt human beings.
We now know that during the whole pe¬
riod covered by this paean of peace the whole
world was preparing for universal war with
the ferocious energy never before manifested
by that warlike human creature, the man who
fights.
Just before the enraged student at Sara¬
jevo took the life of the heir to the Austrian
throne, and thereby flung his torch into a civil¬
ization undermined by powder magazines, we
heard such sermong on peace as Christ himself
never excelled, as he wandered homeless, bare¬
footed, moneyless, and almost friendless,
through the mountains and the plains of Pal¬
estine. b
As you look back upon those years pre
coding i! World War, your eyes rest upon
the brilliant dome of the Peace Palace, reared
by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, in which
were assembled the invited potentates of the
world, gathered there to inaugurate the era
of brotherly love. J
Not so very long afterward, followed the
foolish, causeless, and bloody war of the Eng¬
lish and the French, in which tens of thousands
of men died on the battle line, or in the hospi¬
tal, in order that the Turk might continue to
bestride the most marvelous straits that di¬
vide the East from the..West, and make easy
passage from the North to the South.
Within a few years of this Crimean War,
came that of France against Italy; tlion came
the spring which Prussia made upon the Dan¬
ish duchies;' then followed, the quarrel between
the two robbers who had despoiled Denmark;
and then came the sudden blast of war which
swept from the earth the putrid monarchy of
Napoleon III.
The world had learned nothing from those
talks about peace, and those signatures to con
tracts which pledged the honor of each nation
to respect the rights of the other.
England, particularly,men saw no danger
in the rapid rise to power of the House of
Hohenzollern, which so lately as the Seven
Years’ War bad bought from the Austrian
Emperor the right, to call its ruler by the title
of King.
England saw ho danger when the Kaiser’s
diplomats blandly proposed that the Island of
Heliogoland in the North Sea, and so near to
the German coast, he exchanged for a vague
claim which Germany held to a portion of un
conquered Africa.
When some mere negligible nobody rose
in Parliament and asked the Premier, Lord
Salisbury, whether there were not a possibility
that at some future time a war might break
out between Germany and Great Britain, in
which the English would discover that they had
given the Germans a fortress almost as im¬
portant as Gibralter, the well-meaning nobody
who asked the question was put aside with
scorn by the British Premier, and Parliament,
as blind as Lord Salisbury, refused to listen
to a warning which was so soon to cost Eng¬
land so many ships, and so many men.
Again, when Prussia sprang upon Austria
in 1866, to rob her of her sh&fe of the common
spoil of thej war which they together had made
against Denmark, England took no alarm.
Everything was serene: there ^jueen, was nothing
in the outlook to disturb the or her
Prime Minister.
Even the evident approach of a collision
between Prussia and France apparently caused
no apprehension in the minds of British states
men. *
Issued Weekly
It is one of the most amazing examples of
diplomatic stupidity which the world can fur¬
nish.
Before Bismarck dared to change the tele¬
gram of his Emperor, and thus make the war
absolutely a certainty, the neutrality of Aus¬
tria had been obtained by Bismarck, that of
Italy had been made certain, and England bad
agreed not tq interfere.
Therefore, quite assured of victory, Bis¬
marck hurled against the unprepared French
irresistible legions which for years and years
the Prussian military High Command has been
drilling into a high state ofi the utmost effi¬
ciency. !
What followed is painfully known to all
the world.
The French, who always fight bravely,
never displayed better courage than in the
brief campaign in which they suffered such
staggering losses.
The commissariat had not been organized:
the soldiers had not been properly supplied
with guns and munitions: their officers had no
maps of their own country —their maps showed
them the German soil which they were expect¬
ed to conquer and hold.
When tlie close of the war was followed
by the annexation by Germany of the Prov¬
inces of Alsace and Lorraine, and by the in¬
demnity of one billion dollars which was ex¬
pected to keep France under the foot for a
generation to come, the least alarmed of all
Germany’s neighbors was England—the neigh¬
bor that should have been profoundly concern¬
ed for its own ‘safety.
But for the heroism of the youth of 1 Flan¬
ders ; but for the desperate determination of
those French lads who marched through Paris
chanting the Marseillaise, on the way to the
battle-front: where they meant to fight and
die: but for tlie arrival of the American boys
who came to the relief when France and Eng¬
land were both at the last gasp, the colossal
designs of Bismarck and the Ivaiser might
hjive grown into imperial success, and the fall¬
en nations been filled with vain curses of the
short-sighted statesmen who could not ‘see two
feet before their faces. , ' • j
Little as the ordinary man may think of
it, the situation of the world today is far less
promising for peace than when the Armistice
was signed, in November, 1918.
Japan has not kept a single promise which
she made to us at the so-called Peace Confer
euce—a Conference so dominated by heathen
power that the chaplain, who officiated, was
compelled to strike from his invocation the
name of Jesus Christ.
Japan has done nothing to prepare for
peace: what she has done prepares her for
long and bloody struggles with the "Western
Powers, and places us where we cannot send a
single ship to the Philippines if she denies us
the right to do so.
She has been made supreme in the Smith
,
em Seas.
She has been made supreme in Siberia.
Her control reaches from the Mongolian
border to the southern lines of Shantung; em¬
braces Korea, and the vast Island of Sakhalin.
France and England are at daggers’ point.
England says that the penalty imposed
upon the Germans is too great, and France ob¬
stinately maintains that every franc of it shall
be paid. • *4
Russia is almost at a state of war with
Japan upon the one side and Poland upon the
other.
What has become of all that dream-talk
to which we listened a few months ago?
Even those who talked it then, and ap¬
peared to believe in it, are silent now.
They see that no matter how much altru-
ISIo> 45