Jasper County Democrat, Volume 22, Number 70, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 November 1919 — MR. LODGE’S TRIUMPH? [ARTICLE]

MR. LODGE’S TRIUMPH?

The Lodge treaty of nullification has been killed, the treaty of Ver•‘sailles still lives, though passion and* partisanship and the spirit of revenge have prevented, for this session of congress at least, its ratification and by the United States, says the New York Times, commenting on the actiop taken by the senate. It will be put into effect by the other signatories, leaving this country without its benefits, standing before the world as the one nation that refuses to sanction measures for the prevention of war. We shall not long remain in that shameful position. The treaty must be called into existence, the United States must join the other nations in

sanctioning the agreement reached at Versailles, in the league for peace. As the hour for nullifying the president’s work approached the splendid discipline of the Repubcan party asserted itself. The scruples and compunctions of tht "mild reservationists’’ gave way, they put themselves altogether under the leadership of Mr. Lodge. The senators of the "battalion of death’’ did not desert their party when they voted, 13 of them, against the Lodge resolution and reservations. They voted to destroy the treaty, and that is precisely what the 35 Republicans who supported Mr. Lodge’s treaty voted for. Forty-two Democrats, Mr. Hitchcock’s entire band of loyal supporters, voted as the (president desired, "against the Lodge resolution of nullification,’’ hoping in that way to prepare the way for saving the Versailles treaty. The country will not for an instant be in doubt as to the responsibility. Who has supported the treaty of Versailles from the moment of it's submission to the senate, who has tolled and striven for its ratification? Who has opposed ratification, who has piled Ossas and Pelions of obstruction across its pathway, who has engrafted upon it reservations that blast and destroy it? When we say who we mean which party. An observing people will judge, hS.§ judged. It has a work of blind partisan recklessness, done in callous disregard of the need and the suffering of nations and of millions of men who will have to bear their burdens unrelieved until, with the establishment of conditions of peace, works of mercy and upbuilding can be undertaken. It is a fearful responsibility that the enemies of the treaty and of peace have taken upon themselves.