Jasper County Democrat, Volume 23, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 May 1920 — PEACE RESOLUTION A SHAM [ARTICLE]

PEACE RESOLUTION A SHAM

The peace resolution which the Republican bosses have directed their party’s majority in congress to pass is, as they well know, unconstiutional and must, under his oath of office, be vetoed by the president. The constitution requires that peace treaties shall be nego* tiated by the president and ratified by the senate by a two-thirds majority. Because the peace of Versalles was negotiated by a Democrat, the Republican majority in the senate defeated its ratification. Republican leaders know that the peace resolution they now plan to put through congress by “road roller” methods Is a travesty, a sham by which they hope to hide their responsibility for defeating a constitutional peace, and fool the public into believing that the president and the Democratic minority in congress share the responsibility for keeping the country technically in a state of war. To such low estate has congress fallen in its game of partisan politics.

Action of the North Carolina Democratic state convention in declaring for equal suffrage and calling upon the legislature of that state, soon to- be convened, to ratify the federal constitutional amendment, probably makes such action by the legislature certain. North Carolina, a rockribbed Democratic state, will thus probably be the thirty-sixth state to ratify. By this action, the Democratic party will be directly responsible for placing the ballot In the hands of the women for the 1920 national election. The Republican congress now proposes to investigate the federal reserve board, which is about like investigating the Rock of Gibraltar to see if it is solid. Not even the system that enabled the country to finance the greatest war of all time without a financial tremor is to escape the activities of the “investigating” congress. However, such an investigation will serve to give the congress another pretext for killing time and for not doing those things it should do.

Senator LaFollette, of unsavory war record, has effected a complete “come back” in the “g. o. p.” His ticket swept Wisconsin in the recent Republican primary. Holding the delegation from his state to the national convention in the hollow of liis hand, he will be much courted at Chicago, just as he was by his party leaders in the senate when It was found that his vote was needed to organize the senate and pack the foreign relations committee against the peace treaty. . Whether or not it be fair to criticize a Republican congress for failing to adopt a reconstruction legislative program recommended by a Democratic president, it is at least in order to criticize it for falllug to develop any alternative program and for total failure to keep the campaign pledges to enact such legislation so vociferously made to the people in the fall of 1918.

Lew Dockstader, the celebrated minstrel, in a recent humorous political monologue in a Washington theater, nominated Senator Henry Cabot Lodge for president on a “He-kept-us-out-ot-peace” platform. The suggestion is commended to the Republican national convention. Dr. Lodge’s quack prescription calling for a separate peace with Germany will not suit the body of the American public. But this isn’t his first reversal, for he once declared there should be no separate peace. As the Orient refuses to come to Washington, a lot of congressmen will go to the Orient without any warrant except one on the treasury, says the Washington Post With the government paying most of the freight, the demand for tickets for the congressional “joy ride”