Jasper County Democrat, Volume 23, Number 56, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 October 1920 — PATRIOTISM VS. POLITICS [ARTICLE]

PATRIOTISM VS. POLITICS

Vice-President Marshall is heard from infrequently and rarely, at considerable length, hence the attention he is likely to receive and deserve. He attracted some at Decatur, 111., when he spoke of the league after a fashion not likely to appeal to Senator Lodge, who has declared that the sole object of the president was to use the covenant for the purpose of disturbing the peace. Mr. Marshall takes a different view, not only of the Instrument, but of the president. The latter he describes aa unwarlike; the former he declares to be the beet precaution ever taken for averting war. Not less distasteful to the senator will be the statement that the fathers did not Intend our foreign relations to become the subject of partisan controversy. Nor does Mr. Marshall call a kettle black and whitewash a pot. He plays no favorite in that he regrets that the San Francisco convention did not declare for the league plus what are known as the Hitchcock reservations, and protests that a clean-cut declaration for the covenant with the iLodge reservations should have come from Chicago.

Well, things have happened since, take Senator Johnson’s word for it, and the league has been “scrapped,” there being not a shred of it left. Take another happening, and the league will be full of vitality—and teeth —in the event of Democratic success, so that whatever were the sins of omission in either convention, the issue is clearly joined. As now projected it is whether we shall go in or remain out. If we stay out, It will be because of the source from which came the proposition to go in. There is nothing unfortunate about the league but its auspices. As Mt; Marshall cynically . says, we want something to prevent —something

with teeth in it—but the teeth,, must be manufactured at the old Republican dentistry or they •will not be permitted to bite. The covenant, he adds, may not be perfect, but it is the best that cbuld be had, and after every epithet has been exhausted, the fact remains that the president is a patriot and a statesman and a lover of peace. Elections will come and go and partisanship passion will subside. In course of time what a patriot and a lover of peace has sought to do will be .seen In perspective as he was seen at Decatur. In that day and generation politicians now looming large will be Included among the pygmies.—Brooklyn Eagle.