Jasper County Democrat, Volume 22, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1919 — "A FUGITIVE FROM INFORMATION” [ARTICLE]

"A FUGITIVE FROM INFORMATION”

In his remarks yesterday before lhe senate committee on foreign relations, Senator Lodge said: The president has never offered <o come before this committee. He only sent a telephone message saying he would be glad to have the committee come to the White House. We have called for paper after paper and he has not sent one. iEven if this were correct, it is as easy for the committee to go to the White House as it is for the ■ president to visit the committee room. But the president went further than this, for in his address

delivered when he submitted the treaty to the senate, he said: My services and all the information I possess will be at your disposal and at the disposal of your cammlttee on foreign relations at any time, either Informally or in session, as you may prefer, and I hope that you will not hesitate to make use of them. That surely may be construed as an expression of willingness to appear before the committee, and it was so understood by the country. It was so understood by Senator Lodge. In the News of July 19 was this: Senator Lodge is in error in his statement that “there seems to be in the press a great deal of misunderstanding about the president desiring to appear before the foreign relations committee.” There has been no mistake whatever; the situation is too simple to be misunderstood. The president announced that he was ready to appear before the foreign relations committee and give it any information that he had, and Senator Lodge said Ifehat he would not be invited to do so. The Massachusetts senator cited a precedent of the Madison administration as being against any consultation between the president and the committee, Mr. Madison holding that the two were co-ordinate branches of the government, and therefore ought to act independently. If Senator Lodge stands by his precedent, he would neither go with the committee to the White House, nor ask the president to appear before it. When he said that the president would not be invited, he imust at least have believed that the invitation w r ould have been accepted if tendered. We fear that the New York Evening Post was right when it spoke of Senator Lodge as “a fugitive from information.’’—lndianapolis News.

< A VACATION FROM DUTY The heat of summer, though it be a discomfort to all others in

Washington, has proved a .convenience to the Republican leaders of the House of Representatives It has provided them with an axcuse for a month's recess from the pain «ud labor of doing nothin? While in their refuges by the sea or in the mountains —fa from the torrid atilt of Congress—the Republican leaders may contemplate their recent record of “masterly inactivity.” In a two months’ special session, which they sought to compel President Wilson to call for their own partisan purposes, the Republicans have passed only those bills which could and would have been enacted by the previous Democratic Congress but for the filibuster in the Senate last March. As to the vital legislation which I resident Wilson recommended, which the country demanded ?nd which the Republicans promised, they have done worse than nothing. They have not merely failed to act —by bickering and jealousies among themselves they have made affirmative actl >a impossible. Great measures of reconstruction for the adoption of which the special session was called have either been defeated or allowed to go without the slightest consideration. Legislation for the railroads, the passage of the reclamation act, the adoption of a program for the devel< pment of water power, the r**orgaiJ’ation of the army, Lt<« °s tablishment of a budget system, the outlining of a maritime policy, the abolition of luxury taxes, the safeguarding of immigration, the protection of American industries brought into being by the war, notably the manufacture of dyestuffs —all these are in the catalogue of Republican omissions.