Jasper County Democrat, Volume 23, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 June 1920 — THE SENATE AS AN ISSUE [ARTICLE]

THE SENATE AS AN ISSUE

Warren G. Harding was one of the four senators used by Henry Cabo.. Lodge to pack the foreign relations committtee against - the treaty of peace and the covenant of the League of Nations. The other three were Hiram Johnson of California, Harry S. New of Indiana and George H. Moses of New Hampshire. As a member of the Republican majority of that committee, Senator Harding has a consistent record as a treaty-wrecker. Although he voted for the treaty with the so-called Lodge reservations, he also voted with the Battalion of Death senators in helping to .load down the treaty with those destructive reservations. He vigorously opposed the Republican mild-reservationists whenever a compromise on those mild reservations would have been possible. Later, as a member of the committee, he voted with the other Republicans to report out the Knox separate-peace resolution, and he voted in the senate for the adoption of that resolution. So much for his record. S° me '

thing ought to be eiad too of the circumstances which made that record possible. The Republican majority in the senate consists of Truman H. Newberry of Michigan, who has been convicted In a federal court and sentenced to Imprisonment for his part in the purchase of a United States senatorship. Without Newberry’s vote the Republicans could not have organized the senate. Lodge could not have been made majority leader and chairman of the committee on foreign relations, Harding could not have been made a member of that committee, and the senate would have been compelled to deal with the treaty in a wholly different manner and in a wholly different spirit. The same senators who were responsible for the failure of the treaty controlled the Republican national convention at Chicago. They framed the platform and they nominated Warren G. Harding for president. Harding is primarily their candidate. As Penrose put it in his telegram of congratulation, “You know that I was one of the earliest advocates of your fitness for the office and was prepared at any opto go in and promote your candidacy.” It was at a secret meeting of senators that the Harding nomination was decided, and Harding is essentially the candidate of thq Republican senators. The rank and file of Republican voters would never have selected him. If Mr. Harding becomes president the kind of government that this country has seen in the United States senate for the last year will be extended to the White House. The real president will be the old guard. The executive authority will be in the hands of Penrose and Lodge and Watson and Brandegee and Smoot and their reactionary associates. They are the Republican senate, assuming that Newberry can keep out of jail until March 4, and this Republican senate is now the most irresponsible legislative body in the world. Even the Chicago convention was shocked by the revelations of the Wood and Lowden expenditures of money in the campaign, but the very delegates who were astounded by these expenditures were rubber stamps for a group of men who owe their control over the United States senate to a bought-and-paid-

for senatorship the recipient of which is under conviction and sentence. —New York World.