Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 91, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 February 1918 — HITCHCOCK DRAWS FIRE [ARTICLE]

HITCHCOCK DRAWS FIRE

“When Senator Hitchcock in the Senate challenged the assurance of Secretary Baker that 500,000 American troops would soon be in France and that 1,000,000 more would be ready to go this year he aroused sharp criticism,’’ says the Chicago Herald. “Senator Hitchcock’s speech is a greater encouragement to the kaiser,” says the Buffalo Enquirer, “than any counseling of Von Tirpitz and a greater pacifier of German strikers than any orders threatening death by the military commanders of German provinces.” “The country has the choice,"

says the Pittsburgh Dispatch, “of believing that the President and the Secretaries of War <and the Navy, with all the authority and information at the disposal of the government, are incapable df obtaining facts easily accessible to the senator from Omaha or that the President and his associates do know the real situation and Senator Hitchcock does not. - The impression gathered from the debate is that the Nebraskan was too reckless in his oratorical fury.’’ The St. Paul Pioneer Press, which usually is found quite ready to criticize the administration, is not ready to accept Senator Hitchcock’s declaration. It says, after giving some facts of his political history: “Senator Hitchcock is not qualified from whiat he has yet offered pr from the record he has made to upset the nation's confidence in the ability of its government to function with respectable efficiency in the present undertaking. “And we would offer this rule for the consideratio'n of senators and representatives generally: That any severe criticism of the conruct of the war' made ‘at this time by officials olf their rank, if not backed by specific .and incontrovertible facts, can be of no constructive effect but, on the contrary, can lend only aid and comfort to the enemy.” LAUDS WAR ACHIEVEMENT OF THE ADMINISTRATION An unvoiced decision has been made by the American people in this war to make democracy efficient, said President M. L. Burton of the University of Minnesota yesterday in an address before the Cook County Teachers' association in the Art Institute. “No Iman that ever lived has had such wonderful\power in his hands as President Wilson,’ said Dr. Burton. “The government has done in eight or ten months, what they should, have had thirty years to do, and yet some of us stand around and criticize this arid that blunder or mistake.” Every man and every woman owes a duty to his or her communi-

ty and country, and it is the duty of educators to spread that doc- 1 trine, Dr. Burton declared.—Chicago Herald. While’ the controversy still rages in France around the problem of providing husbands for the young women of the republic after the war, French psychologists and economists have Indignantly rejected, any suggestion of the adoption of the “ersatz,’ or substitute marriages, as put forth by Germany. An extensive campaign is being carried on by Dr. Robert de Simone, a noted physician, for the legalizing bf “contract marriages’’ for a period of three years. His plan is for the contracting parties to be at liberty j to dissolve their union at the end ( of three years. Any issue of the marriage is to be cared for by the state in the event of the father and | mother being unwilling to assume responsibility, the parents to de-, vote a percentage of their earnings ( to the education and maintenance of the children.—Capper’s Weekly. ■■ In support of its contention that a war cabinet would be unconstitutional, the New York World quotes from an address by Charles Evans Hughes to the American Bar association last September, in which Mr. Wilson’s rival in the last presidential race said: “It was not in the contemplation of the Constitution that the command of forces and the conduct of campaigns should be in charge of a council or that as to this there should be a division of authority and responsibility. The prosecution otf war demands in the highest degree the promptness, directness and unity of action in military operations which alone can proceed from the executive.” Secret service men guarded two tons of coal recently delivered to President Wilson at the White House. After it was in the bins a White House attendant carefully swept up the precious dust. The President gets his coal just as other people do, in small lots only.