Jasper County Democrat, Volume 22, Number 68, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 November 1919 — EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS [ARTICLE]

EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS

The special session of congress has furnished daily demonstrations of what President Wilson had in mind last autumn when he issued an appeal to the people to return a Democratic congress. He had had experience with Republican individuals in the blocking of war legislation, and knew they would not hesitate to handle the big reconstruction problems, then self-evi-dent, in the same way. It is hardly likely that Chairman Hays of the Republican national committee could have been addressing himself to the majority in the present congress when he said that the need is not "for less politics but for more attention to politics." Republicans In the house and the senate have not overlooked politics In anything, though they have often lost sight of everything else.

In the midst of the debate on "reservation" in the senate a few days ago, a man in the galleries arose and declared that he bad received a supernal command to make a speech on the league of nations. But as “wild reservatlonists" are allowed to hamper public business only from the floor of the senate, the poor fellow was ejected and confined. The Republican majority In both the senate and the house has passed little remedial legislation, and then only upon the insistence of the president and other Democratic leaders. Republican senators and representatives, elected on thei> pledges to help carry out the Wilson policies, immediately forgot their promises. They are hindering, not helping. Theodore Roosevelt’s doctrines and policies will govern the Republican party’s dealing with lr** dustrial problems, says Chairman Hays of the Republican national committee- But Roosevelt living could not get a hearing for his (policies from Mr. Hays and other "standpatters." All the Republican experts have been set to work, microscopes in hand, to find a germ of hope in the returns of the recent gubernatorial and other local elections. Their discoveries thus far have not been regarded as encouraging to the Republican leaders in the senate.

Senators who wanted to kill the treaty with an axe; senators who wanted to take its life with poison; senators who wanted to paralyze it in all its members, and a few senators who wanted to let it live and function —these are the groups in the Republican “majority” in the senate. - • It costs the taxpayers $20,000 a day to keep the Republican congress in its present state of inactivity. If these senators and representatives don’t like to work they can strike —and save the people a lot of money. t Smug otpponents of the treaty are condemning industrial agitators. But it is quite as bad for Republican senators to prevent international peace as it is for the agitator to disturb domestic tranquility.

Some Republican organs are publishing articles to prove that the house of representatives, at least, has passed some bills. Yes, but the Republican senate has only “passed the buck.” Senator Lodge is about to experience difficulties with a new treaty —that between the defeatists and the “mild reservationists” This pact is in force subject to reservations. Notwithstanding all Republican efforts to carry the state, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate is able to sing with appropriateness, “Maryland, My Maryland.”