Jasper County Democrat, Volume 22, Number 102, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 March 1920 — HOW MR. ROOT CAN HELP [ARTICLE]

HOW MR. ROOT CAN HELP

Presumably, Elihu Root ’has a large measure of influence with the leaders of the Republican party. They have sought and, in some important particulars, have adopted his advice with regard to the treaty of peace; even more recently they have permitted him to sound, the “keynote” of the Republican campaign in New York state. Those

who manage the Republican party and those who direct the Republican majority in congress owe some sort of deference to Mr. Root’s opinions and counsel. The case being as it is, why does Mr. Root waste time in criticism and complaints of what he appears to deem the government's delay in completing reconstruction? Instead of condemning the executive departments, why doesn’t Mr. Root turn to the Republican congress which has power, which has a program—presented to it by President Wilson in two different messages, submitted months apart—and which unquestionably has the obligation to legislate for the welfare of the country? Reconstruction! is delayed; peace is postponed; domestic affairs and foreign relations are in abeyance; the American people are under restraint because the Republican congress refuses to perform its duty.

Fatuous and useless is this talk of Republican conventions and Republican leaders about what should be done to put the country on a peace-time basis. They know what is needed and whose duty it is to supply the need. The party in control of congress is the party which must take the initiative and assume the responsibility. Let Mt. Root remind his fellow Republicans of that fact. Having begun by making the treaty of peace a question of party politics. Republican senators will surprise no one if they end by making it an issue of partisan faction-

alism. Senator Johnson wants to kill the treaty because he seems to imagine Its death would give life to his presidential boom. He and Senator Borah and Senator McCormick refuse to permit the adoption of “mild" reservations lest the treaty might thereby be saved. So this group of “irreconcilables" vote for the Lodge reservations not to protect America, but to defeat the treaty, and in the vatn hope of promoting Mr. Johnson’s candidacy at the same time. Mr. Lodge knows and furthers the Johnson plan to prevent ratification, through hostility to the treaty and not out of a wish to see Johnson the Republican nominee. Senator Harding, another Republican candidate, professes to favor the treaty and the League of Nations —with reservation to the former—but either fears to risk his political fortunes by opposing Johnson’s scheme or else secretly shares his wish for treaty's defeat.

It was always the boast of Republican leaders that theirs was “the party of the business iman.” They have posed from the beginning as the friends of business. That friendship found expression in their tariff laws and in various domestic politicies, they asserted. Yet, with all this concern and regard for business, the Republicans remained in power for 40 years without devising a safe monetary system; without making provision for farm loans; without taking a step to create an American mercantile marine; without any attempt to modernize and expand our consular system in the interest of our foreign commerce. A Republican congress at this moment is opposing the enlargement of our merchant fleet, is preventing the repeal of the tax on clothing and the like; is reducing the appropriation required to continue and extend the good work of the foreign trade service of the department of commerce. And the business man can’t seem to understand this sort of friendship.

Michigan is still receiving a great deal of deleterious advertisement from the trial of the hundred and more Republicans who are charged with corruption, fraud and conspiracy in connection with the election of Truman H. Newberry to the United States senate. It is a credit to the state that most of its people —including a large number of Republicans—'have condemned and would punish this crime against suffrage. The prosecution and punishment of the criminals, big and little, and the public repudiation of men who profit by such outrages will take every blemish from Michigan’s fair name. Senator Sherman of Illinois declares that Republicans must “save” Senator Newberry, now under charges of corruption, fraud and conspiracy in connection with his

election to the senate. There was not a very enthusiastic public response to this cry for help. Senator Harding, one of the many Republican presidential candidates, is wasting a lot of his own and the peolpile’s time campaigning for vo-tes in Texas. If he doesn’t become president unftil Texas decides to support him, he has a long wait ahead. “There are differences between Senator Lodge and Senator Borah,’’ says a Washington correspondent. One difference is that Borah is frank enough to adimlit he wants to kill the peace treaty. Is Chairman Hays quite sure that his committee of 171 is sufficiently numerous to represent all the different Republican views on the league of nations?