Jasper County Democrat, Volume 23, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 August 1920 — THE LEAGUE AND WAR [ARTICLE]

THE LEAGUE AND WAR

In a somewhat heated editorial — heated at least as far as epithets are concerned — the Philadelphia Public Ledger, which is supporting Senator Harding, said: Every time anything happens in Europe, some sapient ass is sure to remark: “Ah, ha! Look and listen. If America had entered the league, she would have been automatically and unescapably involved in that mess.” Some of the fat boys who tryto make our flesh creep by these shuddering insanities know bettei. They are merely applying the popular formula put out by thick-and-thin opponents of the league, which runs: “Blame whatever is unpleasant on the league. The league would have linked us up with the old world; so unthinking people will easily believe that it would have involved us in everything uncomfortable that happens in the eastern hemisphere.” The Philadelphia paper then points out that the league is a league of peace, and not of war, and suggests —what Is perfectly true —that if we had been in it the chances are that there would have been no such mess as there is today. It quotes Lloyd George thus: We have entered into a covenant

with the nations who signed the peace treaty to have recourse to other methods than the brutal methods of war for the purpose of settling international disputes. * * * It does not contemplate, necessarily, military hetion in support of an imperiled nation; it contemplates economic action and pressure. It contemplates support of the struggling people, and when it is said that if you give any support at all to Poland it involves a great war, with conscription and all the ■mechanism of war with which we have been so painfully acquainted during the last few years, that is inconsistent with the whole theory of the covenant into which we have entered. It contemplates other methods of bringing pressure to betfr upon recalcitrant nations which are guilty of acts of aggression against their neighbors and endanger their independence. The real purpose is to, make it possible for innocent and peaceful nations to live their lives, secure against such raids as that started by Germany six years ago. Even so, the thought is not so much of protecting those nations as of safeguarding the world —ourselves included —against the war that would necessarily result from such aggression. If the whole world had, six years ago, said to Germany that she should not make war, there would have been no war, nor would it have been necessary to send one American soldier to Europe, and there would have been no American graveyards in France.

As to the Polish situation, the Public Ledger speaks with much good sense. In the first place the league —such as it is without us — has not acted. France and Great Britain have done what they could, but, as the Public Ledger says, “It is very doubtful whether either of them was- ready to declare economic war against Poland” to prevent her advance into Russian territory. We quote once more:

Had America been in the league it would at least have given it an outside viewpoint. We might conceivably have stopped the Polish Offensive. But it is silly to talk of the league as “functioning” now when there is no one effectively in it but the nations immediately in touch with the puzzling east Europe situation, and when these nations are dealing directly with the problems posed by that situation through the supreme council and their own foreign offices. That is, they are not dealing with them through the league. Finally, it should be constantly borne Jp mind that the league that criticised is one that h&S been sadly “deflated” by our failure to go into it, If would, be as much stronger with America a member, as the allied armies were after they bad b®®R reinforced by the American contingents.—lndianapolis News (Rep.).