Jasper County Democrat, Volume 10, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 April 1907 — WASHINGTON LETTER. [ARTICLE]

WASHINGTON LETTER.

Political and General Cloaaip of the National Capital. Special Correspondence to The Democrat. indications accumulate that this country is going to have a hard time letting go in Cuba. The visit of Secretary Taft to this island has not cleared the situation so much as it* might. It will be at least a year before the island can be banded oyer to the natives, and it is generally feared that when it is, there will be only a brief interlude before there is more revolutionary trouble and the intervention of the United States will again be called for to protect American property interests. This country has hundreds of millions of dollars invested in the island, and even this is not ae much as the combined interests of the other foreign governments. The experience of the American ad interim government has been that the Cubans are easy enough to govern, but that they will not govern themselves. It is a case of too many of them who are cut out for reporters and insist on being editors. This government has been besought by England, France and Germany not to let go of the island now it is under American control, the general fear being that the island if left to itself will develop into another Hayti under negro domination. Foreign governments cannot as a rule understand that the United States was sincere in its announcement that it did not want the island originally and was not going to fight Spain for the sake of acquiring- it. Preparations are being made for taking a new census preparatory to another election, but it will be six or eight months before that is completed. Then there will be another six months before the elections are held and the new government is set running. Then there will be considerable time required for the evacuation and most observers do not give the natives more than a year and a half after that to foment another revolution. If the United States is forced to go back again and take charge of affairs, it is a serious question whether it may not decide to stay permanently, if not annexing the island, at least keeping such a strict hand on affairs that it will virtually amount to annexation.

tit It looks now as though the fight io Central America might end in a tolerably permanent peace for the most of the warring states down there. There have been a number of conferences of South American diplomats at the State Department m the past two weeks and it is believed that they will be able to get Honduras, Salvador and Nicaragua together on the basis of a permanent peace and cement an agreement in virtue of which there will be quiet and internal development in the little republics along the isthmus and to the southward for some time to come. 't t t This government stands to do all it properly can for the peace of the world, and an indication of this was givtn this week by the announcement of the peace delegates to the Hague made from the State Department. The party will sail from this country for Antwerp about the middle of May and will include two more members than was ?riginally intended. The scope of the conference has been enlarged, too, and will take in other and more important questions than would have been considered had it met last summer as was intended. The delegates as announced are Joseph Choate, former Ambassador to the Court of St. James, Gen. Horace Porter, former Ambassador to France, Judge U. M. Rose, president of the Arkansas Bar Association, David Jayne Hill, American Minister to the Netherlands, Brig. Gen. Geo. B. Davis, Rear Admiral Chae. Sperry, and William I. Buchannan, first minister of the United States to the Republic of Panama. ,

One of the most remarkable pseudo international incidents on record for a long time was brought to a close this week by the departure for New York of Mrs. Ida Von Claussen, who came all the way from Sweden to see President Roosevelt about what she declared was a slight put on her by Minister Graves of Sweden. Mrs. Von Claussen was never heard of except by a limited circle of friends till the present incident arose. She waa rich, very beautiful and elegantly dressed. While in Sweden she wanted to be presented at court, but for some reason, the official one, was lack of proper credentials, she was not presented by our Minister. She

was very much incensed at what she termed this slight, and came all the way to Washington from Sweden to present her case personally to the President. She took quarters at the most expensive hotel in town and prepared to lay siege to the White House in her latest Paris gown. But right in the ante-room her personally conducted embassy bogged down to the hubs and stopped. The President was busy, very; the Secretary to the President was also busy, excessively. The secretary to the secretary was busier still, and the most that Mrs. Von Claussen could do was to send in a card by a messenger and be told that there was no use in coming back, and the whole of the White House staff would be too busy to see her at any tims. She stayed in Washington three days and tried to get a commission in lunacy appointed to inquire into her own sanity. But the President declined to take any of her demands seriously and she left town this week, vowing that she was going to Germany and renounce her American citizenship. How the Kaiser will make out with this fascinating but imperous subject is a question. t t t Those interested in the personality and doings of the great and near-great, will be pleased to learn that Secretary Taft, maybe-Republican-nominee for the Presidency, has succeeded in taking 100 pounds off his weight in the past year. He has put himself under the care of a noted physician, taken to a strict diet, cut out sweets, beer and as much of other liquids as he can, and rides horseback as much as possible; that is to say, as much as possible for the horse. The Secretary says he can afford to keep only two saddle horses of the Percheron breed and two horses don’t go very far with him yet. But he is happy in the reduotion he has already accomplished, and confided to a friend the other day that he really “did not weigh much more than a grand piano.” I have some fine eggs from pure bred Langshan chickens for sale at 50c per 15. Wm. Hershman, R-R-l, Medaryville, Ind. We want your eggs— best prices. Fendig’s Fair.