Jasper County Democrat, Volume 22, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 May 1919 — USING SLANDER AND ABUSE WEAPONS [ARTICLE]

USING SLANDER AND ABUSE WEAPONS

New York, May £1. —Slander and' abuse are the chief weapons in the! campaign which Republican leaders are waging against. President Wilson, declared Chairman Homer S. Cummings of the Democratic national committee in a speech to the Democratic club of Westchester county.' Wm. G. McAdoo, former secretary of the treasury, also attended and addressed this large gathering of Democrats. “It is not conceivable that the malice ot a few will be permitted to deny to America and to the world this measure of healing/’ Chairman Cummings said, speaking of the league of nations. “When I read the speeches of partisan Republican leaders, I wonder what phrases of abuse would have agitated the oolitical atmosphere if the president had led the Country to the disastrous conclusion of an unsuccessful war. Every

epithet of reproach has already been exhausted in an attempt to discredit the leadership of America's president at a time when America’s prestige was never greater, America’s power never so vast and America’s success never so transcendent. The campaign of slander, which is the very spume of politics, has been reserved for America’s greatest leader in the hour of America's greatest triumph. “The war was won and I challenge the critics of the administration to suggest how, within the bounds of human possibility, we could have won the war more promptly or with less loss of American life. The Republican party is rendering small service to America when it converts the machinery of its organization into r.n instrument of attack upon American leadership and American honor.

“What would the conditions of our country have been if labor had been discontented and unwilling to follow the leadership of our president? If no preparation had been made to encourage the farmer in supplying the need of tjie world for food? If our finances had remained in the state in which the Republican party left them? All these measures were essential to America’s success and they were the very basis upon which that sue* cess was founded. And yet these reforms have been enacted since President Wilson first became president of the United States.

“When the war began it was the judgment of the military experts of the German empire that we would not be able to create an army inside of two years. “They said that if we could accomplish this feat we could not transport the army to and that if some of our soldiers reached the firing line the trained troops of Germany would destroy them. And yet we raised an army of 4,000,000 men and we transported more than 2,000,000 soldiers to France. “For the first time an agreement has been adopted, calculated to include ultimately all the nations of the world and to arrange international affairs, not in accordance with the outworn doctrines of another age, but in harmony with the principles of human justice applicable equally to .the great and to the small. That an American president is engaged in this work should move every American heart, irrespective of party affiliation or personal prejudice, to a fervent prayer that he may succeed in his great task. “Despite all obstacles and discouragements, he has persisted. Within a few weeks, if all goes well, he will return to America, bearing with him the greatest document of human liberty that was ever prepared by the hands of man.”

Fortner Secretary- McAdoo related how, when England, France and Italy called on the United States in 1918 to hasten them supplies of wheat to prevent starvation among their civilian populations and the collapse of their armies, the railroad administration sped the movement of empty cars from east to west, expedited their

loading with yaln, and hurried them back to the Atlantic seaboard for shipment of their contents to Europe. This drastic method, which was adopted regardless of cost, was so successful, Mr. McAdoo said, that within 30 days the emergency had been met and the crisis that threatened the defeat of the allies was averted. This happened, he said, In February and March, 1918, In the midst of an exceptionally severe winter. The interallied wheat committee reported that there was a deficit of 900,000 tons of bread cereals. The rations of the Italian army had already been reduced twice and the rations of the French army once. Food was scarce among the civilian populations and there was fear that the Russian debacle would be repeated in one or both of these countries. But American enterprise was equal to tfie demand and the danger was spon removed.