Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 January 1916 — Writes Humorously About The Ford Peace Expedition. [ARTICLE]

Writes Humorously About The Ford Peace Expedition.

Thp Sunday papers contained an article written by William C. Bullitt, who ft accompanying the Ford peace expedition as a newspaper correspondent. It was written at Stockholm; Dec. 30th, and sent by mail. Although it is over three weeks old it is very jnteifesting and shows that the newspaper men with the expedition considhave done. Mr. Bullitt-tells how the members of the party, commonly called delegates, although no one ever delegated them anything, contract bills lavishly and send them to Gaston Plantiff, who is the manager of the expendition for Mr. Ford. Every expenditure goes to him. He pays the transportation, the meals, the hotell bills, the champagne suppers and the cablegrams. He is quoted as saying that he don’t know and don’t give a damn about this peace business, but what he wants to do is to get this bunch of “nuts” safely to Copenhagen and The Hague' and then send them safely back home again. Plantiff is

the New York and eastern manager for the sale of Ford automobiles. He stated that the expendition would cost s§oo,ooo and Mr. Bullitt* says that the c members of the party are determined that he won’t be disappointed. He lands with some foijce on Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones, buriesqueing his whiskers and saying that he can compose sentences so deftly that they sound as if they mean something, when as a matter of fact they don’t t -mean anything at all. He says thai the women of the expedition have rather looked upon Dr. Jones and his whiskers as a sort of “Moses” to lead them out of the darkness into light, but that gray hairs and a flowing beard Mrjll not take the place of brains and he laughs at the leadership. . / He' describes a trip from Christiania to Stockholm. It was 20 degrees below zero when they were routed out to catch an 8 o’clock train which did not arrive until 11 o’clock. The delegates had a cold wait and when they got into the train they found that it was not heated except in one end and the ladies were generally huddled in that end. The train leaked, that is, it had cracks that let the cold air in and the delegates looked back to the 20 degrees below’ zero at the station as though they were looking back at Palm Beach. The delegates all got into one compartment and huddled together like sardines. The train moved slowly and it was finally announced that- it would reach Stock; holdat 7 o’clock the next morning. They slept on each other’s shoulders and Bullitt-comments amusingly upon the care that should be taken in selecting a good shoulder to sleep upon. There was real harmony that night with part of the delegates asleep and the others too cold to start an argument. They learned during the night of the mysterious disappearance of Mr. Ij’ord. He had started for America fifteen minutes before they were scheduled to leave Christiania. He was sick or disgusted or something. He quoted from a Stockholm newspaper, which said: “.Charity begins at home. The American ‘peace-makers’ know very well that the war would cease at once if America stopped shipping ammunition to the allies. Therefore, if they had been sincere the Americans would have gone to Washington and the shipment to the allies.” » Mrs. Boissevain characterized the party as lacking “collective ning.” She said that what little respect the party might have commanded by sincerity of intent was more than offset by a well-deserved contempt for the result of; “our collective mental processes.” Mr. Bullitt indicates that the peace expedition has been looked upon with scorn almost every place and approves the statement of Mrs. Boissevain that “we are laughably inconsistent.” »-