Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 253, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 October 1918 — “WILSON NOTE INSULT TO ALL” [ARTICLE]

“WILSON NOTE INSULT TO ALL”

HAYS DECLARES PRESIDENT IMPUGNS LOYALTY OF CONGRESSMEN. New York, Oct 27.—Wi1l H. Mays, chairman of the Republican National committee, made public here tonight a statement in which he replied in behalf of his party to President Wilson’s appeal to the nation to return a Democratic congress. In his statement Mr. Hays said: “President Wilson has questioned the motives and fidelity of your representatives in congress. He has thereby impugned their loyalty and denied their patriotism. His challenge is to you who elected those representatives. “You owe it to them, to the honor of your great party, and to your own self-respect to meet that challenge squarely, not only as Republicans but as Americans. I, as your chairman, call upon you to do it. “Mr. Wilson accords the Republicans no credit what ever for having supported the ‘war measures’ proposed by his administration, although they have done sb with greater unanimity than the members of his own party. Despite that fact, he accuses them of having tried to usurp his proper functions. “At no time and in no way have they tried to take the control of the war out of his hands. The President knows that. The cpuntry knows it. You know it.* A more ungracious, more unjust, more wanton, more mendacious accusation never was made by the most reckless stump orator, much less by a President of the United States, for partisan purposes. “It is an insult, not only to every loyal Republican in corfgress but to every loyal Republican in -the land. It fully merits the resentment which rightfully and surely will find expression at the polls. \ “Mr. Wilson grudgingly admits that the Republicans have been ‘prowar.’ Then why does he 'demand their defeat? Because they are still pro-war? Hardly that. No; it is because they are not for peace through, not*"without, victory; because they consider that ‘U. S.’ stands for unconditional surrender, as well as for the United States and Uncle Sam. ~ “The Democratic congress does not. Mr. Wilson does not. There is the issue, clear as the noonday sun. The country will decide. “Mr. Wilson wants only rubber stamps—his rubber stamps—in congress. He says so. No one knows it better than Democratic congressmen. He calls for the defeat of pro-war Republicans and the election of antiwar Democrats.

“He, as the executive, is no longer satisfied to be One branch of the government, as provided by the constitution. Republican congressmen must be defeated and Democratic congressmen must be elected, as they would yield in everything. That is evidently his idea—the idea of an autocrat calling himself the servant but bidding for the mastery of this great free people. “Republicans in congress have seemed to him good enough when they assented, as they did assent with behest patriotism and sometimes against their best judgment, to his proposals. Republicans at home have seemed to him good enough to send fully a million of their sons into battle, to furnish at least half of the army and; far more than half of the money for the winning of the war, but they are not considered good enough to have a voice in the settlement of the war. “But Mr. Wilson’s real purpose has nothing to do with the conduct of the war; He has had that from the beginning, ha sitTnow, and nobody dreams of interfering, with his control. “He wants just two things. One is full power to settle the war precisely as he and his sole, unelected, unappointed, Unconfirmed personal adviser may determine. ' “The other is full power as the ‘unembarrassed spokesman in affairs at home’ as he actually demands in his statement, to reconstruct in peace times the great industrial affairs of the nation in the same way, in unimpeded conformity with whatever socialistic doctrines, whatever unlimited government ownership notions, whatever hazy whims may happen to possess him at the time, but first and above all, with absolute commitment to free trade with all the world, thus giving to Germany out of hand the fruits of a victory greater than she could win by fighting a hundred years. A Republican congress will never assent to that. Do you want a congress that will? Germany does. » “Mr. Wilson forces the Republican party to He down or fight. I say fight. Answer with your votes. “Mr. Wilson is for unconditional surrender —yes, for the unconditional surrender to himself of the Republican party, of the country, of the allies—all to him, as the sole arbiter and master of the destinies of the world. Do you stand for that? Answer with your votes.”