Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 284, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 December 1915 — A Rule-Or-Ruin Policy. [ARTICLE]

A Rule-Or-Ruin Policy.

The New York “World" is for Wilson and it sometimes affects to speak for Wilson. We wonder if it speaks for Wilson when it says: “One of two things will happen in Washington at the coming session of congress. Either the administration’s programme will be adopted or there will be no increase in the army and navy.” There can be only one interpretation of this language. It means that the Wilson plan of preparedness must be swallowed in its entirety by congress under the painful alternative of leaving the nation in its present wretched condition of military unreadiness. Yet it is already known that there are not enough democratic votes in congress to adopt the president’s plan. If that plan is adopted it must be by republican support. Does the “World” wish the country to understand that republicans must vote for legislation in the framing of which they are to have no voice ? Is the president’s recent and sudden conversion to the cause of preparedness so thorough that he has already mastered all the essentials of the problem? Has he, after a fgrw weeks, been able to formulate a plan which, running counter as it does to that of the experts in the war and navy departments, is rieverthleas superior to anything that those experts would suggest? Is the president Infallible? The policy which the “World” suggests is a rule-or-ruin policy. Such a policy has too often marked this administration already—with consequent disaster to the nation’s enterprise and hoonr. If it is now proposed to apply this policy with disaster to the nation’s fate in case of war, that fact should 'be plainly made 'known. Is that what the “World” wants the country to understand?