. ¥ ; . 1 , 1 ■■'»• U -.■■"% :^-l? n.-M Class T} $_^ Book... ""fpf^^ CDPYRIGRT DEPOSm Save America! Discussing The League of Nations Lunacy The Palace Revolution at Washington The First United States Dictatorship The Real Purpose of the Gag Laws The Republican Party's Supreme Duty The Coming Prohibition Inquisition A Two- Gun Book by a One-Flag American (Copyright, 1919, by Frank Putnam.) FRANK PUTNAM 434 Public Service Building Milwaukee, Wis. ^1^ 4 u^% To Theodore Roosevelt AMERICAN PATRIOT The American people do not intend to give up the Monroe Doctrine. We do not wish to undertake the responsibility of sending our gallant young men to die in obscure fights in the Balkans or in Central Europe. APR -5 i3i9 ©CI.A515140 PREFACE These letters first appeared, in part, in Reedy's Mirror, St. Louis, Missouri. They sounded the first clear warning of the President's plan to rush this country into a British-controlled League of Nations, as the price of an early peace. The first purpose of the letters was to save this country from losing its independence and from being committed blindly to perpetual intervention in the quarrels of Europe and Asia. Their second purpose was to expose the ''palace revolu- tion," resulting in the first United States dictatorship, that has taken place at Washington during the past two years. Their third purpose, hinging on the second, was to re- establish a constitutional and republican form of govern- ment in the United States. The Democratic party is dead — self-destroyed by the acts herein enumerated. The Republican party is offered a second opportunity to save the Republic. If it will do that, by rejecting all Leagues or Alliances proposing to abridge our national sovereignty, and if it will immediately thereafter restore free thought, free speech, free press and free assemblage, it can enter upon a new long lease of power and public service. If the Republican party fails, we of the American rank and file win create another agency through which to re- establish American independence and the constitutional rights of the American people. FRANK PUTNAM. 434 Public Service Building, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, March 17, 1919. Table of Contents First Letter: For Free Speech 5 Second Letter: Russia: War Indemnities: Permanent Peace: Nation-wide Prohibition 7 Third Letter: The League of Nations 11 Fourth Letter: The Coming Prohibition Inquisition: The Railroads: State Utility Rate Commissions: Our Grasping- Allies 16 Fifth Letter: Our Soldiers in Russia: Governmental Extravagance: Selling America Into Bondage. . . 19 Sixth Letter: Will the Senate Save America?: Two Ways to Abolish War 22 Seventh Letter: An Opportunity Renewed: What the League Really Means: Hell's Pavement: What Has Happened: What Our Boys Are Learning: No Leagues or Alliances for America: The President's Boston Address 25 Eighth Letter: "To Hell With Hope": Hurry Our Boys Homo: Capital's First Law 32 Ninth Letter: The Issue Fairly Stated: What the British-Wilsonian League Means to Us: How America Is Lining Up: Tempting Impeachment: What the Whole World Wants 36 Tenth Letter: Our Palace Revolution: Real Purposes of the Gag Laws: The Republican Party's Su- preme Historic Opportunity 45 Appendix: Text of the Constitution of the League of Nations, with comment upon its significance to the United States: The Monroe Doctrine as Laid Down by Presidents Jefferson and Monroe: The British Origin of the League of Nations Consti- tution: The Lodge Resolution and List of Its Signers 51 4 Letters From the People — For Free Speech. Milwaukee, Wis., Nov. 10, 1918. Editor of Reedy's Mirror: This country wants neither Bourbonism nor Bolshevism. We want Americanism, in the spirit of our federal constitu- tion. That large section of the American press and gov- ernment which is trying to employ Bourbonism as a means of gagging and imprisoning Socialist and other radical leaders, for expressing their disapproval of government policies, is sowing the seeds of Bolshevism in this country. So long as all Americans retain their constitutional guaranties of free speech, free press and free assemblage, without fear of persecution by persons temporarily in con- trol of the government, we shall have neither Bourbonism nor Bolshevism. If our Bourbons are permitted by timid or drowsy pub- lic opinion to proceed with their programme of imprison- ing American radical leaders for exercising their constitu- tional right to criticise their public servants, the seeds of Bolshevism so implanted will presently fruit in nation- wide political upheaval and industrial disorder. I as the only non-Socialist who publicly endorsed Victor L. Berger's candidacy for congress from the Fifth Wiscon- sin district, did so not because I endorse his political pro- gramme; in very large part I do not accept it as desirable for the American people. I endorsed him for the single sufficient reason that he alone among the candidates in his district dared prison in defense of our constitutional rights of free speech, a free press and free assemblage. Upon that the fundamental issue he was, and is, by far the best American of them all. He received hundreds of votes on that issue. On that issue other hundreds who could not vote for him refrained from voting for his Republican and Democratic opponents. On that issue the Socialist party displaced the Democratic party as the second group, 6 SAVE AMERICA! numerically, in the Wisconsin legislature. The new legis- lature will contain 103 Republicans, 21 Socialists and 9 Democrats. On that issue Socialists almost elected con- gressmen in two other Wisconsin districts. If that issue — of the right of American citizens to free speech, a free press and free assemblage — continues to be made paramount by the Bourbon elements of the old parties, through legal but unconstitutional persecution of Socialists, popular resentment, increasing in volume and intensity, will very soon produce results disastrous to all of the conservative elements of society in this state. The New York Times describing Victor L. Berger as a "pro-German Socialist" and intimating that upon the ground of his "pro-Germanism" he might with propriety be excluded by the House of Representatives from the seat in that body to which his district has elected him, is cruelly untruthful and unjust. I speak with personal knowledge antedating the war by several years. Had Mr. Berger been in fact "pro-German," not one of the hundreds of old- fashioned Americans, his neighbors and acquaintances, who voted for him, would have done so. We knew that no other man in American public life had more consistently, or for an equal number of years, waged a war of destruc- tion against the autocratic principle, nor entertained a livelier detestation for the autocrats in person, than Mr. Berger. We know that no other man more profoundly re- joices in the downfall of the Central European autocracies, and the emergence in their stead of democratic republics. Mr. Berger, believing that many Americans favored the war for mercenary reasons, had a constitutional right to utter and publish that opinion — any enactment to the con- trary notwithstanding. I, believing that profiteering greed was only a minor factor and that the great war was in fact a crusade in behalf of world-wide democracy, had an equal constitutional right to utter and publish my opinion, and ,did so. My constitutional right to advise my public servants of my desires can stand only so long as Mr. Ber- ger' s equal right to advise them of his contrary opinion. 6 SAVE AMERICA! When either can be suppressed by a majority tem- porarily in power, the other can as readily be suppressed in the event that the suppressed minority shall become a majority — as it infallibly will do, if such suppression be not discontinued. Defending Mr. Berger's right of free speech, a free press and free assemblage, I defended my own like right, and that of every other sovereign citizen of the republic. Our government should dismiss the indictments against Mr. Berger. The House of Representatives should admit him to the seat to which his people have elected him. The supreme court should vindicate the constitutional guaran- ties of American citizens. The great journals of the coun- try should call a halt upon the persecution of loyal, if mis- taken, citizens for opinion's sake. Eugene V. Debs, im- prisoned for exercising his constitutional right of free speech, will add 2,000,000 votes to the Socialist total in the next presidential election. The government of the United States of America cannot long be administered in the spirit of a Texas convict labor camp. Americans never will be slaves. If need be — if our Bourbons insist upon the issue — we shall waive all other issues and fight as gladly for the preservation of our individual liberties here at home as our sons have fought to destroy autocracies on the continent of Europe. Never doubt it. PRANK PUTNAM. American Opinion. Milwaukee, Dec. 24, 1918. Editor of Reedy's Mirror: Our country is by way of becoming committed to policies of vast importance, upon which there is no large body of clearly defined public opinion. I conceive it there- fore to be a duty of authentic Americans to express their opinions upon these policies, so far as may be possible, in order that our public servants may know to what extent 7 S A V E AMERICA ! the American people will support them in the application of these policies. Here, by your leave, are my opinions upon Russia: Our soldiers are in Russia, killing and being killed, for no better purpose than to assure payment to British, French and American investors of interest and principal of bonds issued by the late Russian autocracy. Joined with the armed forces of Japan, Great Britain, France, Bohemia and GERMANY in the sordid service of International Finance, American soldiers are helping to de- prive the Russian majority of the fruits of their successful revolution — their only possible compensation for frightful losses sustained while waging war as the allies of the British, French and American peoples. This situation is a gross and damnable betrayal of America's past and Russia's present desire for human liberty; America's soldiers should be withdrawn from Russia forthwith. America's mighty influence should be exerted to procure instant withdrawal from Russia of the armies of Japan, Great Britain, France, Bohemia and GERMANY. The American government should recognize the Soviet government of Russia, and should use its influence to procure like recognition from Great Britain, France, Italy and our other governments associated in the war upon the late Central Empires. If our government takes these steps, it will win the approval of 90 per cent of the American people. If it does not take these steps, it will merit and receive the strong disapproval of a very large majority of the American people. War Indeimiitles: United States senators who urge our government to demand indemnity from the Central Em- pires ask us to repudiate the unselflsh pledge with which our President led us into the world war, and without which he never could have led us into it. British and French and Italian statesmen who clamor for the collec- tion of fifty to two hundred and fifty billions of indemnity from the German people are mentally inhabitants of the past — of a world order gone never to return. No people wanted the war. No government that entered the war had 8 SAVE AMERICA! a mandate from its people to enter it. None could have obtained such mandate, had any asked for it. Governments of that degree of irresponsibility to their people belong- to the past. Hereafter there will be none of that kind. Only such g-overnments could pledg-e their peoples, defeated in war, to accept economic slavery for generations in order to pay for the blunders and crimes of their rulers. Only such governments, victorious in war, could execute peace bargains sentencing the defeated peoples to economic slavery for generations. No people on earth wants any other people reduced to slavery. It is now too well under- stood by the masses of mankind that the presence any- where on ear^h of even one slave menaces the freedom of every other human being. Permanent Peace: The only possible effective guar- anty of permanent peace among the peoples of the earth is the establishment, by and for each people, of a govern- ment which will be in fact the servant and not the master of the people. Hitherto there has been no such govern- ment on earth; hereafter, in the due process of time, the day is coming when there will be none of any other kind. A League of Nations, each governed as all nations hitherto have been governed, by a dominant class imposing its will upon the majority of the people, would afford only a most illusory guaranty of permanent peace. A League of Na- tions such as President Wilson appears to have in mind would serve only to delay the coming of a league of free and self-governing peoples, which alone can supply a sub- stantial guaranty against international war. Nation- Wide Proliibition : The driving force behind the campaign for nation-wide prohibition is the Anti- Saloon League. The Anti-Saloon League is John D. Rocke- feller. The League was organized and financed by Standard Oil interests in Ohio, nearly a generation ago, as a club with which to defeat the gubernatorial candidacy of At- torney General Frank Monnett, who had successfully prosecuted Standard Oil under Ohio's anti-trust act. There- after, in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Texas and other 9 SAVE AMERICA! states the Anti-Saloon Leag-ue was employed as a means of defeating the political ambitions of public officials who, by attempts to enforce the people's laws ag-ainst Standard Oil and its affiliated interests, won the hostility of John D. Rockefeller and his associates. I speak from hearsay knowledge of the facts as to the other states named, from personal and intimate knowledge of political campaigns in Texas. The method of the League was simple: to divide the voters upon the "moral issue" as a means of prevent- ing a division upon economic issues. Attorney General R. V. Davidson of Texas, who forced Standard Oil interests to pay the state a fine of more than $3,000,000 for flagrant violation of its anti-trust act, and who by every precedent of Texas political history was unbeatable in the subsequent race for the governorship, was in fact beaten in exactly the way described. The managers of the prohibition move- ment were in that and subsequent campaigns in Texas allied with the agents of the Oil Trust, the Lumber Trust, the railroad, telegraph and telephone interests. In two gubernatorial campaigns, following the defeat of General Davidson, I supplied the publicity material — addressed di- rectly to several hundred thousand voters, most of whom knew that I had little and wanted nothing (except to pre- serve for myself and others that personal liberty without which all other so-called "freedom" is a damned mockery) — which defeated the candidates of the Anti-Saloon League- corporation crow^d. In later elections the Standard Oil Anti-Saloon League element was successful, aided by the stupidity and lawlessness of the liquor interests. John D. Rockefeller is the smartest politician and ablest business- man this country has ever produced. There is in Texas today a lawyer and businessman of great ability — a fighter from hat crown to boot heels. He supplied most of the evidence upon which the federal government got a supreme court decision "dissolving" the oil trust. He knew^ Texas politics better than any other man in Texas. "Who," I once asked this man, "is Edward M. House, who appears to have captured the President's confidence more fully than any other advisor?" "House," he replied, "is the 10 SAVE AMERICA! messenger from 2 6 Broadway to the White House." I do not profess to know anything of Mr. House's affairs, per- sonally, but I would bet my overcoat upon the accuracy and truthfulness of this man's information. In this con- nection I recall that in 1912 the kaiser's government was kicking Standard Oil out of Germany — making the oil busi- ness in Germany a governmental monopoly. The recent disclosures in a congressional inquiry that John D. Rockefeller and associated interests had largely financed one of the most active "loyalty leagues," engaged in procuring the completest possible suppression of the radical press of America during the war, admits another momentary gleam of light upon the secret and danger- ously reactionary political activities of this American Machiavelli. FRANK PUTNAM. More American Opinion. Another letter titled as above, by the same writer, ap- peared in The Mirror of January 2. That one dealt chiefly with affairs domestic — free speech, prohibition, etc. This goes wider afield. The editor of The Mirror does not see things altogether as does Mr. Putnam, but the editor of The Mirror does believe that there isn't enough criticism of the administration policy, chiefly because the seized cables shape opinion in the presentation of the news. The editor heard a man rejoice the other day that now that Roosevelt is gone Wilson will have no opposition. The worst thing that can happen to Wilson and the country is the disappearance of vigorous opposition. Popular com- plaisance is a grave danger. We need Roosevelts, Putnams and Reeds. — [Editor's Note.] Milwaukee, Wis., Jan. 10, 1919. Editor of Reedy's Mirror: I respectfully submit the following additional opinions upon current events: 11 S A V E AMERICA ! The lieague of Nations: That it is being urged by the controlling class in the principal nations primarily as a means of collecting principal and interest of the war debts of the world; secondarily, as a means of enabling Interna- tional Finance more easily and surely to control the pro- duction and distribution of new wealth — goods and com- modities — throughout the world. That these practical aims are being camouflaged with preachments regarding the League's desirability as a means of preventing future wars between nations. Whether it would be better or worse for mankind to have to pay these gigantic debts out of the product of its labor during the next century I am not wise enough to know — nor even to declare a positive opinion. My feeling is that it would be best for mankind if all the war debts of the nations could be canceled by agreement of the peoples, and a new start, with a clean slate, made by everybody. So strongly do I entertain this feeling that, although every dol- lar of capital I possess is invested in the war bonds of the United States, I should be glad to vote for the canceling of all of the world's war debts, if given an opportunity to do so. I am aware that, regarded as a business problem, it is one of enormous complexity; that such a step would in- volve widespread unsettling influences affecting every in- dustrial and commercial process throughout the world. Yet I feel that after the thing had been done, and the pain of it borne, we should still find ourselves possessing the earth, still able to produce and distribute wealth, and enriched with a sense of relief from an intolerable burden. On the other hand, it is perhaps best for mankind in the long run that in this as in all previous stages of human history, hu- man crimes and blunders should be paid for in expiatory toil — as the only way humanity can acquire intelligence. It seems to me that the issue dividing the old world in which we all dwelt prior to 1914, and the new world which the risen serfs of Eastern Europe and the Central Empires are now trying to bring into being, is roughly suggested in the preceding paragraph. 12 SAVE AMERICA! I have no doubt that International Finance — more real and more powerful than any political government — is ac- tively at work in the Peace Congress preliminaries, in banking and business associations, in such portion of the world's newspaper press as it controls, and in various other seen and unseen ways, doing its utmost to produce a peace treaty under which mankind will be pledged to pay, out of its future labor proceeds, the principal and interest of all of the national war debts, including those of czarist Russia and imperial Germany and Austria-Hungary, Mind I say "pledged." Whether mankind, if so pledged by its largely self-appointed representatives at the peace-making, will thereafter meekly submit to bear the burden of that pledge, only time can tell. My own guess is that humanity, if so pledged without its knowledge or consent, will soon take charge of its political governments and cast off the burden. I have lately seen in print sober discussion by leading American bankers of a proposal — one of those "feelers" from time to time put forth in the press in behalf of great politicians and of International Finance — that the Peace Congress should arrange a plan for pooling all of the war debts of the Allied countries, including the United States of America, so that the total debt of these countries should be repaid on equal terms by all of the citizens or subjects of the governments so associated. It has been proposed not that the division should be made on a flat population basis, but that this basis shall be "corrected," as the engineers say, to take into account also the relative wealth of the several associated countries and the comparative ability of the average citizen of each to contribute to the payment of the total war debt. Under such a plan, the portion of the total Allied national war debt which would be allocated to the United States would greatly exceed not merely our ac- tual war debt, but would still more emphatically exceed, in the average share allocated to each American citizen, the average share allocated to the average citizen of Great Britain, of France, of Russia, of Belgium, of Serbia, of Italy, and of Rumania. 13 X SAVE AMERICA! When I state that it is the apparent purpose of Inter- national Finance to provide, if it can, through a League of Nations for the payment of principal and interest of the war debts of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria, as well as of the Allied countries, I draw my conclusion from the evident desire of International Finance to suppress in Russia, in Germany, in Austria-Hungary and in Bulgaria, as well as in the Allied countries, those elements of the population which are trying to establish new political gov- ernments pledged to repudiation of war debts, to occu- pancy and use as the only just titles for holding land, and to numerous other radical proposals. It appears to be the purpose of International Finance, speaking through the statesmen who obviously represent its desires, to impose upon the conquered countries, and upon Russia, political government which may be depended upon to enforce payment of the war debts, to facilitate the completer mas- tery of international commerce by the present ruling class, and in general to retain as completely as possible the or- ganization of society which existed throughout the world prior to 1914. It occurs to me as desirable, and I venture to suggest it, that newspaper editors who read Reedy's Mirror, or so many of them as may be free to do so, can serve their country well by encouraging public discussion of these al- most wholly suppressed factors in the news of the time. I am fifty years old. I have been an interested student of and an active participant in American politics for thirty of those years, in the Atlantic coast region, the South, the Pacific coast section and the Northern States. I have found that my mental and emotional reactions to current political and economic proposals of major interest were as a rule substantially like those of the majority of my fellow citi- zens. If I have sometimes — as in this instance — "seen things coming" a little earlier than others, it is perhaps because the nature of my employment required me to look ahead and see what was coming. I oppose the formation of a League of Nations by gov- ernments which are controlled by the present ruling class 14 SAVE AMERICA! — which means, in the main, by International Finance. I oppose such a League because I believe that if it achieved real power to enforce its decisions, it would make and en- force decisions preventing any further advancement of hu- manity, anywhere on earth, upon the long forward road toward genuine democracy. It would be primarily inter- ested, as the governments which seek to create it are now primarily interested, in maintaining the status quo — things as they are; and it would be able to oppose any change in any country with the armed forces of all the countries members of the League. We are gradually losing, in our own country, all of those rights and privileges of local self- government which were once our chief pride and our chief distinction in contrast with other, older countries ruled by centralized bureaucracies, oligarchies and semi-despot- isms. I challenge the whole process of extinguishing local self-government and substituting for it federalized and centralized absentee rule as one subversive of the American Constitution, and as a deadly betrayal of American liberties. I hope and pray that there may be found in the senate of the United States a sufEicient number of men wise enough and brave enough, and patriotic enough, to reject any treaty submitted by the World Peace Congress which may attempt to barter away this country's right of self- determination in ANY particular, in exchange for the du- bious privilege of strengthening the present control of In- ternational Finance upon the lives, the labor product and the liberty of the masses of mankind. I entertain no doubt whatever that, should any such treaty be reported to the American senate, and approved by that body, the men and the parties responsible for such action would be swept into political oblivion not later than the second suc- ceeding general election. FRANK PUTNAM. 15 SAVE AMERICA ! American Opinion. Third Installment. Milwaukee, Jan. 29, 1919. Editor of Reedy's Mirror: Herewith I respectfully offer a third installment of opinions upon current events — opinions which may be of interest for the reason that they are very likely held by many old-fashioned Americans. My excuse for offering what I regard as typically American opiniqns is that in these extraordinary days our public servants no longer seek our opinion: if they are to receive the benefit of our counsel, we must needs thrust it before them in the public prints. The Coming; Proliibition Inquisition: Prompt, intelli- gent, concerted action by liberty-loving citizens at Wash- ington and at the several State capitals can perhaps pre- vent the prohibition lunatics and their Big Business back- ers from inflicting upon this country the worst of the in- quisitorial outrages which they are planning to inflict. The laws under which the Federal amendment is to be enforced are not yet enacted. They are being drafted. The bone-dry madmen purpose if they can to make it a crime for an honorable citizen to possess for his own use wine, beer or any other liquor, which he in good faith and under the protection of his country's constitution and its laws purchased prior to the adoption of the amendment. They propose to create an irresponsible army of Federal and State spies, informers and constables armed with power of search and seizure, to enter any citizen's home at will, on proof or on suspicion — as has been done hereto- fore in some of the American commonwealths under State- wide prohibition laws. It is my opinion that in the Federal Congress, and in many of the State legislatures, there is a majority of members who, although they may have voted for the Federal amendment, would now vote for laws to enforce it with some slight regard for the rights of the majority of Americans who are not prohibitionists. The 16 SAVE AMERICA ! experiment seems to me worth trying. If the prohibition extremists have their own way unopposed, the laws which they will have enacted will plung-e this country into some- thing very like Bolshevism as surely as night follows day. State Utility Rate Commissions : A State Public Service Commission composed of politicians and other persons ignorant of public utility operation is preposterous. Every such commission should be composed of one skilled utility engineer, one high-class accountant and one first-grade lawyer. It should be controlled solely and automatically by the facts, in raising or lowering utility rates. It should command a corps of engineers and accountants large enough to enable it quickly to learn the fair value of all utility systems within its jurisdiction. It should thereafter require each to make sworn monthly reports of earnings and expenditures. Its traveling auditors should at frequent intervals visit, inspect and check up the operations of the utilities — just as bank examiners visit and check up banks. It should be required to regulate not only rates but wages. If public opinion endorses public utility employes' demands for higher pay, it should do so with knowledge that it must itself pay the higher wages in higher rates for the service. Finally, the commission, in possession at 30 -day intervals of exact knowledge of utility earnings and expenditures, should, at six months or yearly intervals, readjust rates up- ward or downward, in slight graduations, to assure in- vestors against loss if net earnings show a tendency to decline; to assure utility customers against too high rates if earnings show a tendency to increase beyond the require- ments of the fair yearly return contemplated by the State law. The whole cost of supporting the public service com- mission should be charged against the utility companies, and by them included in their rates and fares. State rate, service, financial and accounting regulation of the business — if efficient and helpful — is fairly to be included as a part of the cost of the service. Our Grasping Allies: The cables bring swift confirma- tion and elaboration of my recent letter to Reedy's Mirror 17 SAVE AMERICA! forecasting their desire that this country shall help pay their war debts, besides paying its own. Mark Sullivan, in the current Collier's, warns us to look out for a plea that the eight billions of dollars which our government loaned to its allies in the war against the Central Powers shall be regarded not as loans but as gifts. I shall be in favor of this when England recognizes Ireland as a free and sovereign republic; when France quits trying to grab German territory west of the Rhine; when the Allied Powers recognize the right of the Russian masses to estab- lish their own form of government; when our presidential Don Quixote gets wise to the fact that he was hired to work for the United States of America and not to chase illusory phantoms of Utopian peace all over Europe. We Americans may be, as George Bernard Shaw once termed us, "a nation of villagers"; our submission to the bone-dry witch burners seems to prove it; but I question whether we are such utter suckers as to make Great Britain a free gift of the $4,000,- 000,000 we loaned her, considering that Great Britain emerges from the war vastly richer and more powerful than when she entered it, and we come out of it with no material gains to show for our more than thirty billions of expenditure. There are times when, reading the senatorial debates, I feel as if I were reading the proceed- ings of the British House of Lords. Then Hiram Johnson of California, or one of the few other real Americans in the Senate, takes the floor, and the painful illusion passes. Speaking of Hiram Johnson reminds me that when he was governor of California, and hotly engaged in procuring anti-Japanese legislation out there, I called on him and argued that instead of trying to bar out the Japanese farm- ers who would enrich California with ample cheap food, he should be trying to prevent any further immigration into California of rich but village-minded persons from the small cities and towns of Iowa, Kansas, Illinois, Indiana and the rest of the Middle West. "The Japs," I said, "will produce food. The Yaps won't produce anything, and they will shortly destroy all of California's characteristic charm of gaiety and liberality by voting the state as dry as the 18 SAVE AMERICA! inside of a drum." And they have done it, as their kind did it in Missouri, in direct defiance and betrayal of a re- cent popular mandate against state-wide prohibition. PRANK PUTNAM. American Opinion. Fourth Installment. Milwaukee, Wis., Feb. 10, 1919. Editor of Reedy's Mirror: Here, by your leave, is more American opinion. Our Soldiers in Russia: Prazier Hunt, an American war correspondent of high standing, confirms in a long dis- patch to this day's Chicago Tribune all that I offered as a personal opinion in Reedy's Mirror three weeks ago. Our soldiers were sent to Russia not to guard war supplies, as alleged; Mr. Hunt reports they found none there to guard. They were sent there to help smash the Russian revolu- tion, and to enforce payment by the Russian people of vast bond issues floated by the Czarist government and sold in England, Prance and the United States. They have been fooled, as their people here at home have been fooled, by lying statements issued upon governmental authority. They hate their work — as their people here at home hate it. They feel their mission to be a betrayal of the cause of human freedom — as their people here at home feel it to be. They have been placed and kept under command of British army officers, and made to do the dirty work of the British imperialists and of the international bankers. They have been forced to serve as strike-breakers on a street railway in a Russian city. They have been forced to arrest Russian civil officials whose official policies — in purely internal af- fairs — were displeasing to the British autocrats command- ing the Allied expedition. Nearly 200 of them have been killed and a larger number badly wounded, doing these things which they detested. They want to come home. How long will the American people stand for a govern- 19 SAVE AMERICA! mental policy that makes brave American soldiers the pawns and victims of the international Shylocks and of the British Imperialists? God knows, for God alone knows whether the old American spirit any longer survives in a people capable of endorsing" or submitting to the arbitrary abolition, by their public servants, of the individual liber- ties and the local self-government that made America glorious in her youth. Governmental Extravagance: With Southern Bourbon lawyer-politicians dominating both branches of congress and the federal executive, our government at Washington is hurrying this country rapidly toward bankruptcy. Ex- travagance never equalled in any country in any period of history; waste and profiteering by governmental favorites upon a scale never before imagined — and made more odi- ous by contrast with a scoundrelly penny-pinching mean- ness toward the great army of soldiers mustered out, broke and jobless, in a time of grave depression; an apparent utter want of appreciation of the value of a dollar or of the source of the billions of dollars appropriated — these char- acterize the Democratic administration's management of the country's affairs at a time when intelligent economy is most urgently needed. It is my deliberate opinion that, if a halt be not soon enforced by public demand, American bondholders will presently be asking the courts to appoint a receiver for the American government. Selling America Into Bondage: The misuse of a few thousand of our conscripted American soldiers in Russia, to serve the pocket interests of British, French and Ameri- can bankers, is a symbol of the essential meaning of the proposed League of Nations. Each day that passes makes this more clear. The framers of the League propose that this country shall become financially and militarily re- sponsible for widely scattered, semi-civilized peoples whose whole history is one of intermittent warfare. This means that tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of American boys would have to spend years of their lives fighting and doing garrison duty in those regions thousands o'f miles 20 SAVE AMERICA! from home. It means that if American boys refused to volunteer for a service so insane, they must be and would be conscripted for it. It means that American taxpayers would be forced in perpetuity to yield hundreds of millions of conscripted revenue to finance these Quixotic, these in- sane, these madly un-American undertakings throughout the world. American public opinion can not too quickly serve notice upon the American President and his hand- picked associates at the peace-making that they are desired to abandon their Utopian schemes, to withdraw from the service of International Finance whose ends they are con- sciously or unconsciously serving at the sacrifice of Ameri- ca's highest interest, to make a speedy peace for America's account, and to come home bringing with them the Ameri- can army. They have no warrant thus to attempt to sell America into bondage to the international money-lenders. They can never get away with it, if, and God send that it be true, America still retains one spark of her old free spirit. Just as every man's pains are the true price of his own or his father's sins, so Europe reaped as Europe sowed. Europe is unrepentent, unregenerate — at the top. Not Germany alone, but all other European countries, with the single exception of Russia. The Russian masses see the light of liberty; they are striving desperately, with a world controlled by the International Shylocks organized against them, to attain that light. To hell with Europe! Our destiny is here upon our own continent. Here we must win or lose. Let Europe stew in its own stench until Europe repents of its sins of greed and age-old mutual hatreds. Never again should an American soldier be sent by an American government to intervene in any European quarrel upon any other ground than the defense of our own American rights. That was the only possible ground for our intervention in this war. It was the real ground and the sufficient one. The allegation that we went to war, or ever should have gone to war, in order to "make the world safe for democracy," or to enforce fair play between alien peoples, none of whom cared or cares a damn for us, except for what they can get out of us, was 21 SAVE AMERICA! either idiot idealism or rank hypocrisy. Believe me, sir, I have no monopoly of such opinions. I assure you they are held by eight of every ten real Americans with whom I discuss these subjects. FRANK PUTNAM. American Opinion. Fifth Installment. Milwaukee, Wis., Feb. 16, 1919. Editor of Reedy's Mirror: Believing that our country is todaj'- in imminent danger of being committed to a crazy dream of Utopian world empire, and believing that at such a time it is the highest patriotic duty of every real American to sound a warning, I submit these additional American opinions: Will the Senate Save America? Publication of the League of Nations' proposed constitution confirms my fore- cast of its essential purpose. That purpose is to destroy the American Republic and make it the ally or subsidiary of the British Empire, to serve the ends of International Finance. The American Senate, with power to confirm or reject treaties, can save the United States, and will save it if sufiicient pressure of public opinion can be brought to bear upon its members quickly enough. If the President has his way, the Senate will, within the next thirty days, declare its sanction of his Quixotic scheme, and so doing will pass sentence of death upon the United States of America as a free and sovereign nation. Acceptance of membership in the League as planned will automatically commit the United States to participation in every future war in Europe, Asia or Africa — and will assure many such wars because of its declared purpose to suppress revolts with arm.ed force. It will automatically admit every other nation member of the League to partici- pation in determining our affairs and those of our sister Republics in the two Americas. It will terminate the Mon- 22 SAVE AMERICA! roe Doctrine as a matter of course. It will mean the aa- sumption by this country, subject to League dictation, of financial and military guardianship of alien and far-distant peoples, wliG will hate us, and rightly so, as every subject people hates its alien masters. It will mean the yearly expenditure, for these foreign adventures, of hundreds of millions, or billions, of dollars drawn in taxes from the labor product of the American people. It will mean the conscription of hundreds of thousands of America's young men to waste years of their lives, or lose them, policing far-distant alien peoples who hate them. And after all the waste of life and money, it will mean a disastrous failure and a bitter disappointment. Because it is meant not to serve but to exploit the masses of mankind. Proof of this opinion will be supplied, if the League materializes even briefly, by its instant demand for the payment by the Russian, German, Austrian, Turkish and other unwilling peoples of every dollar of the back-break- ing national debts imposed upon them by their late mas- ters and used chiefly to keep them in bondage. It means, in short, to revive the barbarities of the English debtors' prison, and to inclose therein whole peoples, guarded and driven to their tasks by our sons conscripted for that vile service. Back of all its camouflage of pious and pacifistic pretenses, the League of Nations is Shylock preparing to demand his pound of flesh, and it is nothing else under heaven. It is for the Senate of the United States, now and quickly, to determine whether our country shall escape the net that is being spread for it by the allied money lenders of London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna and New York. I have no hope of any Senator from the South. They are, with few if any exceptions, pro-English hereditarily. They are inherently and traditionally hostile to the rights of labor. They are with few exceptions lawyer-politicians trained to the service and the viewpoint of corporate wealth. They are "yellow-dog" political partisans, prouder of an un- broken record of party "loyalty" than of independent ac- 23 SAVE AMERICA! tion, however patriotic, transcending party lines; they will "stand by" the President because he is "their" President, their party's president. They are, above all else, pro- foundly provincial, incredibly ignorant, many of them, of the great world beyond their State or national boundaries. More is to be hoped of Johnson of California, Borah of Idaho, Lodge of Massachusetts, Chamberlain of Oregon, Cummins of Iowa, Reed of Missouri, and others who derive from the root stock of real Americanism Middle, West, North and East; men whose forbears have dwelt upon this continent so long that they have no inherited favor for any European country dominating their love for this country. These men can save the Republic if they will shatter the Wilsonian hypnosis by challenging it squarely in behalf of all that Americans for 300 years upon this continent have labored, sacrificed, endured and died for. I for one do not wish to live to see the day on which my country consents to the raising of any other banner above the flag of my fathers and my sons. I warn my servants at Washington, first and foremost the President, fresh from his imperial honors in foreign lands and from his too intimate contact with kings and lords, that if and when they dishonor Old Glory by subordinating it to the flag of any League of Nations whatsoever, they will be promptly and everlastingly rebuked and repudiated by their masters, the free American people. Two Ways to Abolish War: The League of Nations plan which our President brings back from his European palace with the demand that we accept it on the instant as his imperial pleasure, proposes to abolish war by using armed force. Were he ever so little a philosopher, as he is ever so dangerously a rhetorician, he would know the impossibility of enforcing perpetual peace among nations by mere preponderance of arms. I credit him with entire sincerity, but I regard him as that most dangerous of sincere men — the superhumanly wilful and stubborn fanatic obsessed with a Utopian panacea and momentarily 24 SAVE AMERICA! possessed of governmental power greater by far than that of any other man on earth. I do not believe he would knowingly serve the ends of the international money lend- ers as against the masses of mankind. Upon that issue I may be mistaken, but I prefer to be- lieve that our President means well. Whether he means well or ill, he is upon the wrong road to procure lasting peace between the peoples. The right road is the road of liberty and social justice. At the end of this road the Temple of a League of Peoples awaits humanity's coming to occupy and possess it. Peoples genuinely free, actually self-governing; not as now ruled each by a little all-power- ful owning and governing class — the class which proposes to weld the Allies of the world into a League of Nations pledged to conscript the people's labor and their lives for the enforcement of its will upon them; for the violent sup- pression of their revolutionary aspirations; for the collec- tion of more than two hundred billions of dollars of na- tional debts, with as much or more of interest added, out of their labor product during the next one hundred years. If American Senators have any regard for their oaths of oflace, for the safety and welfare of the Republic, or for their own political futures, they will lose no time in de- nouncing this monstrous scheme to destroy American lib- erty and to subordinate American sovereignty to a League certain ultimately, if not from the beginning, to be domi- nated by foreign governments which ardently dislike us, envy us and which must contemptuously regard us as the easiest to pluck of any suckers that ever came down Time's highway. FRANK PUTNAM. American Opinion. Sixth Installment. Milwaukee, Wis., Feb. 22, 1919. Editor of Reedy's Mirror: Well aware that you do not agree with much that I write, and profoundly appreciating your generous welcome 25 SAVE AMERICA ! to contrary views, I submit herewith further opinions of possible interest and value to your readers: An Opportunity Renewed: The Republican party and the loyal Northern Democrats saved the Republic in the 1860s. Only the Republican party and the loyal Northern Democrats can save the Republic in 1919. Substantially the same political element that attempted to destroy the Republic in 1861 by disrupting it, is now attempting to destroy its sovereignty in England's interest by merging this country into an International Empire miscalled a League of Nations — an empire certain if created to be con- trolled by Europe and virtually certain to be dominated by the British Empire. Under the League's constitution as brought back by President Wilson the British Empire and its chief provinces and dependencies would have six votes in the "body of delegates" as against only one vote for the United States or any other member state. The Supreme Council would determine the size and strength of each member nation's army and navy — starting with the agree- ment that the British navy shall always be large enough — as it is today — to control the waters of th*6 earth. This Council would appoint each of the stronger member na- tions a "mandatory" to police one or more of the weaker peoples: the United States, it has been agreed by the Peace conferrees, shall accept a "mandatory" to police Armenia, a portion of the old Turkish Empire. (One of my soldier sons writes me from Prance that his regiment has had intimations that it is to be sent to Armenfa as a part of the American army of occupation, if the League scheme succeeds). No nation could decline service as a "manda- tory" without inviting the hostility of its associate nations. No nation could withdraw from the League except with the unanimous consent of the other nations members of the League. Every nation member of the League must sur- render to the Supreme Council of the League its own power of decision for or against war: when the League's Council calls upon them to engage in a war to enforce a League order — against either a member of the League, or 26 SAVE AMERICA! a nation outside of the League, or a revolt within a mem- ber nation — Ireland or Canada or India for example — every member nation must join its associates in making- war. If it refuses to do so, its refusal is an act of war against the other nations members of the League. Some of these obligations are cleverly camouflaged in the League's Con- stitution, and have been denied by the League's advocates, but they are all inherent and enforcible in the League agreement, and are meant to be enforced when occasion shall arise. It is unthinkable that the American Congress or the American people will ever deliberately, with eyes open, thus surrender the independence of the United States, or so submit its future safety to the keeping of an International Empire controlled by the monarchies of Europe and Asia. It was the liberal, progressive, humane, and above all the pafriotic members of the Whig party, organized as the Re- publican party, and the liberal, progressive, humane and patriotic members of the Northern Democratic party, led by Abraham Lincoln, who saved the United States of Amer- ica from destruction in the 1860s. I believe the liberal, pro- gressive, humane and above all patriotic members of the Republican party, led by Senators Borah and Johnson, and the like element in the Northern Democratic party, led by Senator Reed, will save the Republic in 1919. I believe it because I should regard myself as a traitor to my country if I doubted its will and its ability to defeat so gross and palpable a scheme for its destruction as a free and sover- eign nation. What the League Really Means: Back of all the pious, peace-forever make-believe, the evident practical purposes of the League of Nations as proposed to us are these: 1. To create a super-sovereignty with authority to em- ploy the armed land and sea forces of all its member states against any one of them, or against any insurrectionary element in any one of them — against the United States of America quite as surely as against any other member state. 27 SAVE AMERICA! 2. To suppress with force all popular uprisings against the existing political, social, industrial and financial orders everywhere on earth. Thus America's wealth and Ameri- ca's man-power, conscripted as occasion might require, would underwrite England's eternal mastery of Ireland, India and the other willing or unwilling subject peoples held in thrall by the Thames Trust — ^the oligarchy that owns and rules England and with England's navy rules the seven seas. 3. To guarantee the payment of more than four hun- dred billions of dollars, principal and interest, of the mem- ber states' war debts, by unloading the lion's share of it upon the United States as the member state whose people are best able to pay it. 4. To destroy the Monroe Doctrine and undo the work of a century by making the American Republics, North and South, once more subordinate to European domination. 5. To oppose with armed force the genuine demo- cratization of government or industry anywhere on earth. HeU's Pavement: The proponents of secession in 1860 meant well. They never doubted the righteousness of their cause. They believed the poor black man was sub-human, and the poor white man only partly human, as compared with members of the owning and ruling class and its pro- fessional servitors. Their intentions, judged from their own standpoint, were admirable. The same is true of the proponents of the International Empire proposed in the name of a League of Nations. Its advocates are passion- ately convinced their cause is righteous. Their intentions, also, are from their own standpoint impeccable. Hell is paved with such intentions — summed up all the way down history in the purpose of the self-assumed Superior Person to rule the supposed Inferior Person for the Inferior Per- son's "good" — and the Superior Person's profit. Lincoln, the only people's man that ever sat in the American White House, made the Superior Person's assumption ridiculous forever when he said that no man is good enough or wise enough to rule another without his consent. Not- 28 SAVE AMERICA! withstanding the damnable, traitorous, un-American and unconstitutional "laws" which the League's advocates have enacted an'd brutally enforced during recent time to destroy free thought, free speech and a free press in this country, I freely concede their right, equal with my own, but not a damn bit superior to my own, to advocate their cause with spoken word, with printed page, with moving picture and with whatever other means of propaganda their finan- cial backers may provide. I even concede ex-President Taft's right to denounce all Americans who decline to ac- cept his fat-wit arguments on this subject as fools, scoun- drels or disloyalists. Let them lay on! Let the debate wax hot and the blackthorns fall heavy. I have had more than a sufficiency of censors and suppression during the past two years. It is time for real Americans once more to stand erect, free men, sovereign citizens of the world's greatest Republic and assert their will for the guidance of their servants who lately have assumed the mien and port of masters. It is time for the American press to con- quer the cowardice that has held it half-paralyzed and to resume with its full power its indispensable function as printer, distributor and interpreter of the news. Thomas Jefferson stated a profound truth when he said newspapers without a government were to be preferred rather than a government without newspapers — real newspapers, aware of their function and brave enough to perform it. It is time, in short, for real Americans to tell the Washingrton witch-burners, gag-artists, cranks, tax-eaters and pro- European boot-lickers to get to hell out of the road or be walked into the dirt the next time we all go to the polls to give orders. What Has Happened: Germany, aspiring (its ruling and owning class so aspired: its common people and the common peoples of all other European countries, dreaded war and prayed for peace in 1912 when I walked and talked with them), to seize Great Britain's post as master of Europe and leader in international trade, challenged Britain and Britain's allies to mortal combat. Germany 29 SAVE AMERICA! was winning its fig-ht. Germany believed it could win quicker and at less cost if it could shut off American sup- plies from Germany's enemies. So Germany made war on the United States, at sea, without the formality of a declaration of war. Germany believed her U-boats could shut off America's shipments to Germany's enemies. Ger- many believed the United States could not send a real army to Europe. The United States sent a real army — the best fighting" army Europe ever saw. That army's punch, delivered just when Germany had the Allies on the ropes and slipping-, put Germany down and out. The American navy, working with Britain's, whipped the German U-boats utterly. We went across the Atlantic to lick a nation that jumped us without fair cause. We have done the job we went to do. We should now make a speedy peace, bring our men home and get back to our own tasks. But we don't do that. With all Europe visibly going to the devil for want of a peace basis, our President delays the peace- making in order first to create a League of Nations. Now he comes home for a few days. He sends word ahead by wireless bidding the American Congress not to discuss the League scheme until he arrives to explain it. Caesar might have addressed the Roman Senate in its decadence in that fashion. We shall soon learn whether or not the American Senate is in its decadence. What Our Boys Are IJeaming: They are learning that Europeans of all breeds regard us with a mixture of envy, fear, contempt and hatred. Our boys are learning the curious fact that while the different European breeds hate each other, and fight each other, and blackguard each other, they do it all pretty much as members of a rowdy family do such things. They all regard the Americans over there as outsiders. If we stay long enough we shall merit and receive the treatment usually accorded the chivalrous man who interferes in a family row; we shall have the lady clawing our face while the gentleman lams us with a whiffletree. And before they get through they will both pick our pockets. They envy us for our national 30 SAVE AMERICA ! wealth. They fear us for the punch they have seen our boys deliver against the Germans. They hold us in con- tempt as international Rubes — fool spenders, easy marks. They hate us because at heart they know us, mass for mass and man to man, to be incomparably their betters — a new breed product of a new continent nurtured in freedom and plenty. If ever they get us netted, as African hunters net the lion, in their League of Nations Scheme giving them authority to rule us by outvoting us, they will gang up against us and then God save America — unless we happen to have a he-man and a real American like the late Theo- dore Roosevelt on watch in the White House. No Ijeagues or Alliances for America: I have just read the Editor's leader in Reedy's Mirror for February 21, and I hasten to admit, for myself, that I do oppose my coun- try's entrance into any international league or alliance whatsoever. The Wilsonian League, as proposed in its con- stitution, is a peculiarly atrocious betrayal of American sovereignty, but I am equally opposed to the suggested alternative of an alliance with the so-called Entente na- tions, or any one of them. America can and should stand alone, as she has always stood. So standing, our influence for peace and justice around the world will be infinitely greater than it can be if we subordinate our sovereignty in the manner proposed, or if we surrender any part of our freedom of action by allying ourselves with any other power. The whole world now knows what we can do, under arms. Not within the memory of any man now liv- ing will any power or combination of powers risk defeat by attacking us. No nation nor combination of nations will ever hereafter fail to respect the clearly expressed will of the American Republic, standing alone, sovereign and free from entanglements of any character, the mightiest mili- tary power and the world's foremost exemplar of that Lin- colnian ideal toward which the whole world is rapidly moving — government of the people, by the people and for the people. The proponents of the Wilsonian League of Nations will not dare submit it to a vote of the American 31 SAVE AMERICA! people. They will try to jam it through without consulting the people's wishes. This fact alone brands it as an in- tentional betrayal of the American people's most sacred rights and their most vital interests. We have had too much of jamming things through regardless of the popu- lar will. This time "they shall not pass!" The President's Boston Address: The President's Bos- ton address is four columns of impatient orders for us here at home to dig deeper, work harder, and live leaner for his adopted children across the water; plus two or three para- graphs of praise of himself as the man who supplied the winning ideals for the war and the man who can upset any European government if it dares disobey him; plus a typical ward politician's racial appeal to our Polish, Slavonic anft other recent European immigrants to support him in be- half of their kinsmen in Europe; plus the usual propa- gandistic bunk about how the Europeans love and trust us; but not one line to answer Reed's and Borah's charge that his League constitution is a betrayal of this country's sov- ereignty, nor one word of concern for the welfare of the American people. His invitation to the League's opponents to "test the sentiment of the nation" is unpleasantly remi- niscent of his repeated, and repeatedly forgotten, pledges of "pitiless publicity." If by testing the sentiment of the nation he m^ans a polling of the voters of the country upon this issue solely, his challenge should be promptly ac- cepted and arrangements made for a national referendum. FRANK PUTNAM. American Opinion. Sevraith Installinent. Milwaukee, Wis., March 2, 1919. Editor of Reedy's Mirror: "To Hell With Hope": Quoting the title of your leader for February 28, I'll say that insofar as the allusion is to Europe's hope of tricking this country into paying a dollar 32 SAVE AMERICA! of Europe's war bills — and that is Europe's real hope from the British-Wilsonian League of Nations scheme — I heart- ily endorse your leader's title — to hell with it. Europe, on the testimony of Allied press and statesmen, wants the United States to assume payment of the lion's share of the Allied war debts, dating from the start of the war in July, 1914. Europe wants the League of Nations to assume pay- ment of all war pensions — of which the lion's share would be paid in Prance and England, and the lion's share would be paid by the United States. This country saved England, Prance, Belgium and Italy because we had similar and simultaneous business with their enemies. We are under no obligation to pay their debts. We'll pay our own, and go about our business. Mr. Wilson may believe the plain people of the United States are willing to toot the $400,000,000,000 bill incurred by the criminal insane governments of Europe. If so, he will not be left long in ignorance of his error. We sympathize heartily with the peoples of Europe, who hadn't a word to say about the war, who all dreaded and hated it, and who were driven like sheep to slaughter in it, and we'll approve any generous gifts within reason, ourselves con- tributing to the limit of our several abilities, for their immediate relief. That goes without saying. And we are willing that our government, speaking for us, shall declare our purpose hereafter as heretofore to exert our utmost in- fluence, short of war, for fair play between the other peo- ples of the world. But if our government attempts to pledge us, without our consent, to submit to be drawn into foreign wars at the behest of other governments than our own, we'll repudiate that pledge at the first general election, and kick out of office the administration that gave it. As for the Wilson administration, we're going to give it the boot as emphatically as we did to the Taft outfit in 1912. Make no mistake about that, Mr. Editor. That package is wrap- ped, addressed and ready for delivery, regardless of what may take place meanwhile. This used to be a free country and we mean to make it free again. 33 SAVE AMERICA! Fiddling While Rome Bums: Mr. Wilson returns to Europe without a cong^ressional vote of confidence in what The Chicago Tribune truthfully calls his "British League of Nations." He returns, the dispatches tell us, as stubbornly as ever determined to postpone the making- of peace until after the League of Nations scheme shall have been agreed upon by the allied and associated powers. Meanwhile, for want of a peace basis upon which to re-establish industry, political and industrial anarchy creeps daily further west- ward. Europe is in flames, and the peace conference is too busy drafting a constitution and by-laws for the fire com- pany to get busy with the hose. A IJeagiie of Autocracies: Seven weeks ago I denounced the Wilsonian League of Nations scheme as a league of governmental autocracies, meant not to serve the peoples of the world, but to hold them in perpetual bondage to the present owning and ruling classes for further exploitation. I wrote — and write — not as a radical but as a conservative, desiring to save the best of the present order during the inevitable transition to a new order. Comes now The Lon- don Nation, saying: "Wilson must know better than any of us that the will of the peoples of the earth does not enter and animate the groundwork of this so-called IJeague of Nations. The gov- ernments alone are represented in it. The fatal flaw in the foundation of this structure is its complete autocracy. The present constitution of the Ijeague will make the world safe, not for democracy, hut for a new and stronger despotism." The London Nation, as you know, sir, is a voice not of the British oligarchy, but of the British democracy. Hurry Our Boys Home: With a huge army of our boys still rotting in French mudholes for want of shipping to bring them home, the powers that be at Washington detach 500,000 tons of shipping from the work of bringing them home to serve American exporters. Always the dollar first! Senator Reed spoke like a real American when he said that if he were in charge he would compel the British and 34 SAVE AMERICA! French governments to provide ships to bring our boys home, by serving notice upon them that if they did not he would withdraw from them every advantage of credit and supply which they now enjoy at our hands. Our pro-Eng- lish boot-lickers were swift to denounce the senator for that manly declaration. He can rest assured the masses of real Americans endorsed him. Our Anglo-maniacs are noisy but not numerous. We are not unlikely to need the boys here at home, in fighting trim, to defend this country against its present associates, when the governments of Britain, France and Italy learn that the American people will not foot their war bills, nor pay their war pensions, nor assume any obligation whatever, except that of gener- ous friends, for the replacement of their war losses. Bear in mind that this country is the only one on earth today that has food or raw materials or financial resources adequate to pay the bills swiftly falling due. More than once in recent days observant Americans must have read between the lines of the cabled statements of allied states- men the grim threat that we must adopt their policies or face their combined wrath. You must have detected the same suggestion in more than one of Mr. Wilson's public statements. His admitted acceptance of the British plan for the League of Nation after his own had been rejected lends color to the assumption that he yielded quite as much in fear as in a natural desire to succor his mother country. My answer to all such threats, open and implied, is the answer made by an earlier American, "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!" Capital's "First Law": This is the crime of the Russian people — they have seized the factories and the land from which a small minority of private owners had excluded them, and they have operated the seized factories and the seized land to produce for themselves the necessaries of life. Because most of the owning class opposed them, be- cause it lacked sense to perceive the necessity of what they wished to do, many of that class went prematurely to bloody graves. British property interests have been wiser. 35 SAVE AMERICA! They have submitted to substantially the same compulsion by the workers, but have done it with suflBcient grace to avert blood-letting. Similarly France and Italy. Let no man suppose we in this country are insured against the seizure and operation of our great industrial plants by workmen revolting against enforced idteness and starvation. It can come to pass here, and it will come to pass here, if organized American capital upon any large scale tries at this time the old game of closing factory doors to stop losses due to closed markets or glutted store- houses. Now as never before it is incumbent upon the owners and operators of American capital, in their own most vital interest, to get every dollar busy making work and wages and to cut the cost of living, regardless of profit. The Southern Bourbon administration at Washington has done next to nothing to meet this situation. Nothing more could have been expected of it. The country's one hope for intelligent leadership by government, as I write these lines, is the hope that public opinion may compel the obdurate absentee president to call the new Republican congress in session at an early day. The Republicans have been as greedy in office as the Democrats- — but they have always had some knowledge of the practical necessities of business and industry. FRANK PUTNAM. American Opinion. Eighth Instalhnent. Milwaukee, Wis., March 9, 1919. Editor of Reedy's Mirror: The Issue Fairly Stated: In your courteous editorial comment upon these Opinions, last week, you stated fairly and clearly the issue between those who advocate and those who oppose the British-Wilsonian League of Nations scheme when you said: 36 SAVE AMERICA! "]\Ir. Putnam's general proposition is die Vereinigten Staaten ueber Alles (the United States over all) , and if, as I believe, tliat doctrine is error, the error is ineffective so long as truth is left free to combat it." I am for America first, the rest of the world second: you and other advocates of the British-Wilsonian League scheme are for the rest of the world first, for America second. On that issue we shall go to the American people for a verdict. Under the powerful emotional compulsion of the Presi- dent's pleading for endorsement of the League before its nafure was known — upon the most winning appeal that its purpose is solely to end wars — a popular referendum might have shown an American majority in its favor. I say might because today in the United States a citizen who dissents from the Caesarean policies of our one-man Government at Washington risks twenty years in prison if he dares ex- press his dissent in print or within the hearing of any of the army of m'ore than 200,000 secret service spies that has come into being in this country during the past two years, to gag public opinion at the public's expense. During those first days we heard only from the Wilson sycophants, the British boot-lickers and the dear unworldly idealists among us. Press and public were afraid to say what they wished to say. A few of us broke that spell. I am proud to have been one of them and prouder of my friend Reedy, that despite his predilections based upon a world-embracing altruism he was still sufficiently an American to permit me to express my dissent in the columns of Reedy's Mirror. The infamous gag law enacted by the convict-labor driving Bourbon administration at Washington at the be- hest of a President who undoubtedly foresaw that he could best accomplish some of his ultimate purposes if the American people were made afraid to discuss them or to express dissent from them, is a dead letter. It will pres- ently expire by limitation. The attempt of its sponsors to jam through a similar law for peace after war failed in 37 SAVE AMERICA! the final hours of the 65th Congress. No such law will ever hereafter be enacted in this country. We have been put on warning against its evil consequences, and shall hereafter be always on guard against it. A few Federal judges, like the cheap montebank Landis of Chicago, whose brother is the Washington lobbyist for the powder trust, will still from time to time conduct vilely partisan "trials" of citizens accused in essence of disloyalty to our one-man Government, and will impose brutally un-Ameri- can prison sentences upon them. But be sure that every citizen so conspired against by public servants for the "crime" of exercising his constitutional rights and perform- ing his patriotic duty, will presently be turned out of prison by an administration elected by the American peo- ple to do that act of simple justice. The Republican majority of the United States Senate, together with the real Americans among the Democratic senators from the North- ern States, have written "finis" to the black history of terrorism enacted under the Wilson gag laws administered by the Burleson-Gregory-House gang of slave-drivers, labor-haters, shoddy aristocrats, absentee landlords and four-flushing prohibition hypocrites from Austin, Texas. The American majority of the American Senate has made American citizens free once more to give orders to instead of taking orders from their public servants. Today the British-Wilsonian League of Nations scheme hasn't a ghost of a chance of obtaining approval by a majority of American voters in a national referendum. Its backers know that. They will never consent to the hold- ing of a referendum. Their only hope of delivering the United States bound and gagged into the hands of the British oligarchy, which by the President's own admission drafted the League of Nations scheme brought by him to us for adoption, is the faint hope that they may bully a two-thirds majority of the American Senate into accept- ing it. They will exert every ounce of compulsion at their command, through British-controlled American news- papers and British-controlled American banks, and through 38 SAVE AMERICA! associations of other hyphenated Americans who hope to see this country's men and money spent like water in behalf of their native countries, — but they will fail, if I know my America. Mark you this, sir, an issue of sheer Americanism that ploughs deeply enough to bring Boies Penrose of Pennsylvania and Robert M. La Pol- lette of Wisconsin, George Harvey of New York and Eugene V. Debs of Indiana shoulder to shoulder in defense of America's menaced liberty, is an issue which can have but one conclusion. The British-Wilsonian League of Na- tions scheme which the President insists is sacred against change, and which you, sir, tell us must be accepted be- cause it is the best we can get, is deader than a last year's mackerel. Some scheme of international concert to minimize wars we may adopt. I personally oppose any and all schemes for linking the United States of America in alliance with any or all European nations. I believe Europe can and should organize a United States of Europe, as I believe the peoples of Asia should organize a United States of Asia, and as I believe the republics of the two Americas, in- cluding the Dominion of Canada, when all are ready for it, should organize for mutual helpfulness but reserving ab- solute sovereignty each within its own limits, the United States of North and South America. The three grand con- tinental groups might go as far as they liked in substitut- ing equitable arbitration for the shock of arms in compos- ing their occasional differences. What the British-Wilsonian League Means to Us: Here, stripped of pious platitude and criminal camouflage, is ex- actly what the League of Nations constitution brought us by President Wilson offers us: 1. The United States shall become one of nine votes in the Supreme Council of the League. The members of this Supreme Council shall NOT be chosen by the peoples of the member nations, but shall be appointed by the govern- ments of tJie member nations. 39 SAVE AMERICA! 2. The United States shall accept membership in per- petuity in this Leag-ue: no means is provided for with- drawing from it except with the unanimous consent of all other member nations. 3. This Ijeagiie's Supreme Council, acting for the British, Italian, Japanese and other monarchical govern- ments which will unquestionably always control it, will set up a world autocracy, supported by a conscript world army. 4. This Lieague's Supreme Council will pool the war debts, war losses and war pensions of all the member na- tions, and will apportion them for payment by the peoples of the member nations, with regard primarily to the ability of the several peoples within the IJeague to make payment. As the United States is best able to pay, the United States will be expected and required to pay the Uon's share of these gigantic bills. Make no mistake about it: this is the real reason for Europe's passionate desire that the United States shall enter its Ueague of Nations. We have been forewarned by our ablest American correspondents — ^Mark SuUivan of Collier's in particular — that this is the Euro- pean scheme. It is inherent and enforcible in the constitu- tion of the proposed League of Nations. It is, I venture to state, the exact "supreme sacrifice" which President Wil- son on several recent occasions has warned us that we must be prepared to make. It is too high a price to pay for the gratification of the President's extraordinary vanity. Had he consulted the American people, we should have saved his face by warn- ing him against pledging us — without warrant of fact or law — to any such preposterous engagements. He chose not to consult us. He chose to move like an absolute monarch whose subjects were safely gsigged and terrorized into silence. Into the pit that he has digged for this people he will fall, and we shall bury him, at the next general elec- tion, so deep that no future president will ever dare for- get the constitutional limitations placed by a free people upon his official authority. 5. This League's Supreme Council will determine the 40 SAVE AMERICA! size and composition of the army and navy which each member nation shall maintain. The British authors of the League scheme sent over to us have already assured Great Britain of continued mastery of the seas, and Britain's colonies of actual perpetual control of Germany's colonial possession taken man-fashion by force of arms. It is ali'cady made apparent that the United States is to be re- quired by this Supreme Council to maintain a standing army of 500,000 professional soldiers. Secretary Baker in this morning's papers "regrets" his "necessity" to hold 200,000 young Americans conscripted for the European war in the regular army establishment until they can be re- placed by volunteer enlistments. Winston Churchill an- nounces Britain's purpose to maintain a standing army of 900,000 conscripts, for the purposes of the League of Na- tions. Does this foreshadow peace? Is any man or woman facing these facts so blind as to believe the League's real purpose is to maintain peace by any other means than armed force: a peace of suppression and exploitation of the peoples everywhere around the world? 6. This League's Supreme Council, controlled inevi- tably from the seat of government of the British Empire at London, will "appoint" each" of the militarily and financially stronger member nations a "mandatory" to govern and "protect" the exploitable smaller, backward peoples. It is already proposed, with no word of dissent from the one- man American Government at Washington, that this coun- try's first "mandatory" shall be Armenia. That "appoint- ment" if made cannot be declined without incurring the active displeasure of the other member nations of the League, nor without violent secession from the League. It is unthinkable, if the American people by majority vote authorize their government to enter the League as pro- posed, that we should ever repudiate our obligations so assumed. It is well, therefore, that we scrutinize most carefully, and weigh most thoroughly, the obligations so to be assumed. And despite the evident purpose of the Wil- sonian gag law to prevent it, we are going to discuss this 41 SAVE AMERICA! matter fully and freely, weigh it carefully and impose our will upon our servants with regard to it. 7. Our first "mandatory" to "protect" Armenia would require us to send and for many years maintain an army of American boys in that distant, God-forsaken region in- habited for thousands of years by constantly warring-, semi- civilized elements bitterly alien to each other. A con- script army as matter of course — for what American hoy with a lick of sense or ambition would volunteer to throw his life away in such a futile and senseless service? Your son? My sons? By Grod Almighty, no I Our place is here in America, completing the superstructure of human lib- erty upon the foundations laid by our forefathers. The London oligarchy wants this country to assume with it the "white man's burden" — to rule and exploit the "lesser breeds without the law." We shall decline the in- vitation without thanks. And when we get control of our government at Washington back into our own hands, we shall root out and deport the American Republic's most insidious and most dangerous enemies — the paid agents, poUtical, financial, ecclesiastical, joumaUstic and otherwise, — of the British propaganda in this country — the most powerful alien propaganda ever launched against this country's intelligence and its peace and security. How America Is IJining Up: Dear old Bill, you are a brilliant Editor, pontificating in your celebrated sanctum. I am only a plain, old-fashioned, one-fiag, western Ameri- can, a practical politician these many years for sheer love of the game. Let me tell you how our folks are actually lining up on this British-Wilsonian League of Nations scheme. The workingmen, farmers, businessmen and most of the bankers are lining up against it. The preachers, college professors, editorial idealists and editorial servants of the British propaganda, and the emotional female sec- tion of the prohibition crowd are lining up for it. Write your own ticket. The workers and wealth producers op- pose it: the dreamers and non-producers want it. 42 SAVE AMERICA! There are eight daily papers published in Milwaukee — four printed in English, two in Polish, one in German, one in Yiddish. For the League are one paper printed in Eng- lish — a violently pro-English journal on all issues; both Polish papers, the German paper and the Yiddish paper. The three American dailies are against the League. Their combined circulation and political influence greatly exceeds that of the other five. The German paper is for the League because iTts heart is in Germany — and it knows that every dollar this (^untry may contribute to payment of Europe's war losses will mean one dollar less for Germany to pay. The Polish papers are for the League because their hearts are in Poland — and they look to the League to create and maintain a free Poland, backed by American dollars and American conscript soldiers. The Yiddish paper's heart is in Jerusalem — and it hopes the League may set up an in- dependent Jewish nation there — supported by American dollars and American conscripts. Welcome to the company, old Bill; my heart is in America — America first and America forever! Tempting Inipeachinent: Arthur Brisbane, America's best reporter, writes the following: "The President told the great crowd (at the New York meeting just before he sailed), that opposition to the Licague by Senators would prove futile; that he would bring back a peace treaty and a peace covenant or League so closely interwoven that it would be impossible to separate one from the other. He would leave to the Senators the responsibility of refusing to make the peace that the coun- try wants." If a city or state political boss proposed a trick like that to make the people take something they didn't want in order to get something else they regarded as indispensa- ble, he would be denounced, and properly so, as an enemy of the people. If President Wilson made that statement, he is an enemy of the people whose pay he begged for and whose service he swore faithfully to perform. This iis but one of many proofs of his amazing contempt of American 43 SAVE AMERICA! public opinion, his extraordinary eg-omania. In this in- stance he goes too far beyond the bounds of public patience: he tempts impeachment and removal from the presidency. While actual war was on, one-man govern- ment was tolerable; now that war is ended, continuance of an autocracy is impossible. When he told the mem- bers of the Democratic National Committee, his guests at dinner, that he "loathed the pygmy minds" of those who oppose his British League of Nations, and that he would like to hang them, he gave distressing evidence of a men- tal condition that clearly calls for restraint by that portion of the American Government which has not deserted its post of duty at Washington. His reckless refusal to call Congress in special session during his absence, when domestic problems of the gravest character demand instant governmental attention, is a challenge that should be accepted without a day's delay. The Vice-President should be sworn in as acting President, and should immediately summon the new Con- gress which the American people last November elected as a means of repudiating Wilsonism and restoring American- ism at the Federal capital. The new Senate being in session should by resolation notify the Paris peace conference that the United States will not accept the British- Wilsonian League of Nations scheme, whether it he submitted separately or interwoven with the terms of a treaty of peace; that if submitted, it should be submitted separately and apart from the peace treaty, so that it may be rejected and tlie peace treaty ac- cepted; that whatever League of Nations scheme shall be submitted must be submitted upon the understanding that it cannot be accepted by the United States until a majority of the American voters in a national referendum shall have endorsed it. Will William Marion Reedy, William Jennings Bryan and all of the other distinguished advocates of the refer- endum principle dare deny the American people's right to have a referendum upon this proposition to subvert the 44 SAVE AMERICA! American Constitution and subordinate American sover- eignty to an International Empire ruled from JLiondon? What the Whole World Wants: We all want peace. We want an end of the orgy of bloodshed, of billion-dollar graft, of idiot controversy over Utopian schemes to control the distant future. We want a basis upon which the armies can be disbanded and their men get back to their homes and to work. For four months past. President Wil- son has been the chief obstacle to the making of a speedy peace. He must stand out of the way and let the world have peace before industrial hell breaks loose on both sides of the Atlantic — and if he does not, then the American Government must pick him up and set him out of the way. FRANK PUTNAM. American Opinion. Ninth Installment. Milwaukee, Wis., March 16, 1919. Editor of Reedy's Mirror: Our Palace Revolution: A political revolution has taken place in the United States during the past two years. It was what historians call "a palace revolution." Our public servants at the Federal capital, assuming to be our rulers, have without consulting us enacted and enforced laws which deny self-government to the American people. They have done this by making it a crime for us to employ the only means through which intelligent self-government is possible. They have made laws forbidding us to discuss their official acts. They have prescribed, and through the courts they have enforced, severe prison penalties for dis- cussing their official acts. Hundreds of the finest men and women in America have been imprisoned for doing it. Others, like Eugene V. Debs, the best loved public man in America, and Victor L. Berger, the first citizen of Milwau- kee, are under sentence to long prison terms, for no other act, real or alleged, than that of publicly expressing 45 SAVE AMERICA! their opinion, as American citizens, of the oflBcial acts and policies of their public servants. Usurpation: This palace revolution was a usurpation, by the people^S servants, of powers which the people in their Federal Constitution expressly withheld from their public servants. This usurpation has been participated in by the President, by the majority members of both branches of the Congress, and by the Federal courts. The excuse given for the usurpation was the war emergency; the pretended necessity to suppress all vocal or written criticism of the administration's war policies. That necessity, if it in fact existed, was something new in American history. We never 'before engaged in a war which the people were not willing whole-heartedly to sup- port to a finish after full and free discussion of its causes, its purposes and its plan. Apparently the Wilson adminis- tration did not trust the American people to support this war, if left free to declare its choice. If the administra- tion entertained that fear, it did so because it did not know the American people. There has never been the slightest doubt that the people were willing to support this war whole-heartedly to a finish, reluctant as a majority of them undoubtedly were to enter upon it at all. Real Purpose of the Gag Laws: The true purpose of the Wilson gag laws now becomes more clearly apparent. That purpose appears to have been to terrorize the Ameri- can people into mute acceptance of the Wilsonian scheme to deliver the United States back into the British Empire under the guise of membership in a League of Nations so framed — by British statesmen on the President's own ad- mission — ^that it must with absolute certainty be controlled by the British Empire. It would be a very great personal triumph for an Amer- ican President, of recent and exclusively British origin, thus to restore to the British Empire this richest of its lost crown jewels. Mr. Andrew Carnegie, founder of the Fund to which Mr. Wilson once applied for a pension, has long 46 SAVE AMERICA! advocated this restoration — has perhaps even financed in part the "hands across the sea" propaganda leading up to it during the past two decades. It is an affecting picture which imagination paints In contemplation of the proposed home-coming of Brittania's erring daughter, Columbia — in tears — confessing that George Washington and John Hancock, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams and Benjamin Franklin, Israel Putnam and Anthony Wayne, and God knows how many others, all rogues and rebels, seduced her youthful innocency and led her astray. But I fear it is too late for that picture ever to be realized. We have been too long a free and independent nation. In fact, this was a free and independent country from the days of President George Washington down to the days of President Woodrow Wilson. No earlier Presi- dent ever dared challenge the right of his employers, the American people, to criticise fully and freely the acts and policies of their government, either in war or in peace. We have had occasional disquieting intimations during the past twenty years that our Federal Government was drifting away from the people; that it was losing some- thing of its former sense of direct responsibility to them; that it was becoming steadily more and more bureaucratic — more a career for ambitious politicians and less an agency for public service; even that it was losing its regard for those high and imperishable ideals that animate our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution of the United States. You who are old enough will recall how promptly and with what nonchalance our Federal Govern- ment justified the order by our Philippine viceroy — was it Mr. Taft? — forbidding any of our Philippine subjects to read the American Declaration of Independence, or to print it, or even to own a copy of it, and making such reading, printing or ownership a seditious act, punishable by imprisonment. It worried some of us at that time to see our American Government repudiate the Declaration of Independence and go back mentally to slavery days. But 47 SAVE AMERICA! we were told and believed that it was only a temporary expedient; that too much liberty granted our Philip- pine subjects all at once would go to their heads and make serious trouble. It never occurred to us that in permitting our Federal Government to become once more half slave and half free w^e were paving the way for it to apply similar restrictions upon us here at home. We never had any doubt of our ability to preserve our own personal lib- erties guaranteed by our Federal Constitution, nor any doubt of our ability to keep this country free and inde- pendent of any other country or combination of countries, forever. It remained for President Wilson, with his gag laws and his British League of Nations scheme, to raise doubts on both points in the minds of the American people. It re- mained for President Wilson, virtually abdicating the American presidency for months at a time in order to assume command of the world, to pledge us without asking our consent to the renunciation of our national sover- eignty; to the assumption of vast European and Asiatic liabilities, and to the acceptance, for the United States of America, of a limited measure of home rule under the sovereignty of a British-controlled International Empire. Under the appalling spell of the world war, of his own most persuasive and coercive eloquence and of his supreme readi- ness to assume responsibility for leadership. President Wil- son has acquired and freely used powers far transcending any committed to the presidential office by our Federal Constitution — powers whose further unrestrained use, as many of us old-fashioned Americans believe, will wreck the Republic founded by George Washington and confirmed by Abraham Lincoln. When, early in 1917, a coward Con- gress, controlled in both branches by the Democratic party, abdicated its functions and its responsibilities and formally constituted President Wilson the first American autocrat, he ordered, his Congress enacted and his courts enforced laws under which the United States ceased, for several millions of its loyal but bewildered citizens, to be a free country. 48 SAVE AMERICA! The Republican Party's Supreme BHstoric Opportunity: A political counter-revolution is needed — is in fact indis- pensable — to repeal those laws; to liberate hundreds of citizens imprisoned for exercising their Constitutional rights; to make the American people once more free to employ free speech, a free press and free assemblage, the only means through which self-government is possible; and, above all, to prevent the impending sacrifice of Amer- ican national sovereignty upon an altar built by European and Asiatic Empires. Leadership in this political counter-revolution is the supreme historic opportunity of the Republican party. Some of that party's leaders in the United States Senate appear to recognize this fact fully, others dimly. The Re- publican party's leadership as a whole appears ready to accept this its second opportunity to save the Republic from destruction. A splendid few of the Democratic Sen- ators also have aligned themselves against the proposed betrayal; the Democratic party's leadership as a whole appears to have accepted the British-Wilsonian League of Nations scheme for perpetual American intervention in European and Asiatic international quarrels. Senator Borah's declared purpose to demand a national referendum on the League of Nations scheme exhibits him as the wisest and most courageous of the Republican lead- ers. The Republican party controlling both branches of the 66th Congress can provide for the referendum. Presi- dent Wilson's party, enacting and brutally enforcing laws to suppress public opinion and to gag free thought, has therein certified its fear or its contempt of popular refer- endums. The President and his party, it may be taken Tor granted, will appeal for continuance in power upon the issue of imposing the "supreme sacrifice" — of life, wealth and national sovereignty — upon this country, for the benefit of Europe. The Republican party, taking the American side of botH these overshadowing issues, can sweep the Democratic party into richly merited oblivion and in so doing can save the American Republic. 49 SAVE AMERICA! If the Republican leadership fails or falters — if it com- promises where national safety and the highest expediency bids it stand like a rock against ANY League or Alliance attempted to be jammed down the country's throat with- out full discussion and a national referendum, then we shall know that the time has come to organize an Ameri- can party for the regaining of our individual liberties and our national independence. FRANK PUTNAM. 50 SAVE AMEEICA! Appendix. Constitution of the League of Nations as Adopted at Paris, with an Interpretation of Its Meaning to Americans. PARIS, Feb. 14. — At the plenary session of the pre- Uminary peace conference at 3:30 o'clock this afternoon at the Quai d'Orsay, President Wilson, as chairman of the commission on the League of Nations, read and explained the following report: Covenant. "Preamble: In order to promote interna.tional co- operation and to secure international peace and security by the acceptance of obligations not to resort to war, by the prescription of open, just and honorable relations be- tween nations, by the firm establishment of the under- standings of international law as the actual rule of con- duct among governments, and by the maintenance of jus- tice and a scrupulous respect for all treaty obligations in the dealings of organized peoples with one another, the powers signatory to this covenant adopt this constitution of the League of Nations: COMMENT. A compact for a world autocracy, framed by autocratic statesmen in secret conclave, without consulting the peo- ples affected, is a gross denial in fact of the high preten- sions set forth in its preamble. Article I, "The action of the high contracting parties under the terms of this covenant shall be effected through the instru- mentality of meeting of a body of delegates representing the high contracting parties, of meetings at more frequent intervals of an executive council and of a permanent in- ternational secretariat to be established at the seat of the League. COM3iENT. No provision is made in the Constitution for the ap- pointment or election of this "body of delegates." Gov- emments as autocratic as those which conducted the war would of course proceed to appomt them, without consult- ing the peoples afifected. Article U. "Meetings of the body of delegates shall be held at stated intervals and from time to time as occasion may require for the purpose of dealing with matters within the 51 SAVE AMERICA! sphere of action of the League. Meetings of the body of delegates shall be held at the seat of the League or at other places as may be found convenient and shall consist of representatives of the high contracting parties. Each of the high contracting parties shall have one vote but may have not more than three representatives. COMMENT. The world has been informed that it has been agreed that Great Britain and" five of the British provinces or de- pendencies shall each have one vote in the "body of delegates," as against only one vote for the United States or any other nation member of the League. This is pro- vided for in Article VH, admitfing "dominions and col- onies." Article m. "The executive council shall consist of representatives of the United States of America, of the British Empire, France, Italy and Japan, together with representatives of four other states, members of the League. "The«selection of these four states shall be made by the body of delegates on such principles and in such manner as they think fit. Pending the appointment of these repre- sentatives of the other states, representatives of (blank for titles of nations named above) shall be members of the executive council. "Meetings of the council shall be held from time to time as occasion may require and at least once a year at whatever place may be decided on, or failing any such decision, at the seat of the League and any matter within the sphere of action of the league or affecting the peace of the world may be dealt with at such meetings. "Invitations shall be sent to any power to attend a meet- ing of the council at which matters directly affecting its interests are to be discussed and no decision taken at any meeting will be binding on such power unless so invited. COMMEIVT. The executive or Supreme Council of nine members would be composed of eight representatives of European and Asiatic nations, and one representative of the United States. Besides Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan and the United States, only four of the other nations' members of the League can have representation on this Supreme Coun- cil, which would employ a conscript world army to en- force its win upon all of the earth's peoples. Xo more monstrous autocracy was ever conceived in the brains of 52 SAVE AMERICA! cynical old men scheming with fatuous vanity to remold human nature and imprison evolutionary humanity in a straight jacket of armed legahsm. Article IV. "All matters of procedure at meetings of the body of delegates or the executive council, including the appoint- ment of committees to investigate particular matters, shall be regulated by the body of delegates or the executive council and may be decided by a majority of the states represented at the meeting. "The first meeting of the body of delegates and of the executive council shall be summoned by the President of the United States of America. C030IENT. If the American Senate does its plain duty, that first meeting will never he called. Article V. "The permanent secretariat of the League shall be es- tablished at (blank) which shall constitute the seat of the League. The secretariat shall comprise such secretaries and staff as may be required under the general direction and control of a secretary general of the League, who shall be chosen by the executive council; the secretariat shall be appointed by the secretary general subject to confirmation by the executive council. "The secretary general shall act in that capacity at all meetings of the body of delegates or of the executive council. "The expenses of the secretariat shall be borne by the states' members of the League in accordance with the ap- portionment of the expenses of the International Bureau of Universal Postal Union. COMMENT. More political jobs and more drafts upon the pockets of the taxpayers to pay political salaries. Article VI. "Representatives of the high contracting parties and officials of the League when engaged on the business of the League shall enjoy diplomatic privileges and immunities and the buildings occupied by the League or its officials or by representatives attending the meetings shall enjoy the benefits of extra territoriality. COMMENT. Proving that the League of Nations is planning to be in fact a super-State, enjoying the diplomatic privileges 53 S A V E AMERICA ! and Immunities of sovereignty-^and not to be a mere con- sulatory or advisory organization as some of its advocates have pretended. Article Vn. "Admission to the League of states not signatories to the covenant and not named in the protocol hereto as states to be invited to adhere to the covenant, requires the assent of not less than two-thirds of the states represented in the body of delegates and shall be limited to fully self-govern- ing countries including dominions and colonies. COMMENT. A grossly undemocratic provision that one-third of the member nations, with one vote added, can exclude any nation from membership in the IJeague. A provision that Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey must submit to the dictation of this one-third plus one of the League's membership, with regard to their military forces, or be excluded permanently from the League. This provision would with reasonable certainty, and at no distant data, drive the countries named, with Russia for a probable ally, into the formation of a rival League, and an ultimate renewal of warfare. Article VEd. "The high contracting parties recognize the principle that the maintenance of peace will require the reduction of national armament to the lowest point consistent with national safety and the enforcement by common action of international obligations, having special regard to the geographical situation and circumstances of each state; and the executive council shall formulate plans for effect- ing such reduction. The executive council shall also de- termine for the consideration and action of the several gov- ernments what military equipment and armament is fair and reasonable in proportion to the scale of forces laid down in the program of disarmament; and these limits, when adopted, shall not be exceeded without the permis- sion of the executive council. "The high contracting parties agree that the manufac- ture by private enterprise of munitions and implements of war lends itself to grave objections and direct the execu- tive council to advise how the evil effects attendant on such manufacture can be prevented, due regard being had to the necessities of these countries which are not able to manufacture for themselves the munitions and implements of war necessary for their safety. 54 SAVE AMERICA! "The high contracting parties undertake in no way to conceal from each other the condition of such of their in- dustries as are capable of being adapted to war-like pur- poses or the scale of their armaments and agree that there shall be full and frank interchange of information as to their military and naval programs. COMMENT. Providing that the IJeague's Supreme Council "shall determine" for each member nation "what military equip- ment and armament is fair and reasonable" for it to main- tain, and providing that "THESE LIMITS, WHEN ADOPTED, SHAIjIj NOT BE EXCEEDED WITHOUT THE PER3flSSION OF THE EXECUTIVE COUNCIL-." Under that provision, the representatives in the Supreme Council of Great Britain, Japan, Italy, France and the four other nations deemed by them to be worthy of member- ship WOULD DECIDE "what military equipment and armament is fair and reasonable" for the United States. The people nor the Goa eminent of the United States would NOT be permitted to determine for themselves the strength of oui" miUtary defenses. And, once tricked into the League, neither the American people nor the American Government could do anything to make their mihtary de- fenses stronger than tliose dictated by the Supreme Coun- cil, without — as will presently appear — being deemed to "have committed an act of war against all the other mem- bers of the League." The man who advocates acceptance of this scheme, after fully understanding its meaning, may be a "citizen of the world," or of England or France Or Italy or Japan or Germany — but he is NOT an American. Such a man, whether he be a laborer or a president, has forfeited liis right to speak or act for America. If he be a president, or other public official, who has made solemn oath to serve America singly and to defend America against the acts and machinations of her enemies, his en- dorsement of this scheme to deprive the United States of the right of self defense cannot, I insist, be regarded by sane men otherwise than as a deUberate violation of his oath of office. Article IX. "A permanent commission shall be constituted to advise the league on the execution of provisions of article 8 and of military and naval questions generally. 55 SAVE AMERICA! COM3£E]VT. More weasel words to clothe autocratic intention in ap- parent harmlessness — "advise" here meaning to "inform," so that the Supreme Council may enforce the super- national powers conferred upon it hy the League Constitu- tion. Article X. "The high contracting parties undertake to respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial in- tegrity and existing political independence of all states members of the League. In case of any such aggression or in case of any threat or danger of such aggression the executive council shall advise upon the means by which the obligation shall be fulfilled. "No state shall be admitted to the League unless it is able to give effective guarantees of its sincere intention to observe its international obligations and unless it shall con- form to such principles as may be prescribed by the League in regard to its naval and military forces and armaments. COMMENT. Providing:, in effect, that American boys shall he con- scripted to help the British oligarchy suppress revolutions hy the Irish, Indian or other oppressed peoples held in bondage hy Great Britain. Providing that American boys shall be conscripted to maintain forever all of the national boundaries to be fixed by the Peace Congress. A guaranty that American hoys shall always thereafter he doing con- script service, killing and being killed, in wars between the jealous and gre^y Grovernments of Europe, Asia and finally Africa. Article XI. "Any war or threat of war, whether immediately affect- ing any of the high contracting parties or not, is hereby declared a matter of concern to the League, and the high contracting parties reserve the right to take any action that may be deemed wise and effectual to safeguard the peace of nations. "It is hereby also declared and agreed to be the friendly right of each high contracting party to draw the attention of the body of delegates or of the executive council to any circumstances affecting international intercourse, threaten- ing to disturb international peace or the good understand- ing between nations upon which peace depends. COMMENT. Declaring our obligation, equally with all other nations members of the League, to take a hand in ANY WAR OR 56 SAVE AMERICA! THREAT OF WAR, wherever it may occur upon the earth's surface. A League for peace? Great God Ahnighty, this preposterous scheme assures us notliing else so cer- tainly as that it would keep us almost continually at warl Article XII. "The high contracting parties agree that should disputes arise betwein them which cannot be adjusted by the ordi- nary nrocesses of diplomacy they will in no case resort co war^^thout previously submitting the questions and mat- ters Tnvoived either to arbitration or to rnqmry by the executive council, and until three months after the award bv the arbitrators or a recommendation by the executive Sunctl; and that they will not even then resort to war as agafnst a member of the League which complies with the award of the arbitrators or the recommendation of the executive council. , ^ ^x. v.- "In any case under this article the award of the arbi- trators shall be made within a reasonable time and the recommendation of the executive co^^^^l f Jjj,^?, ^^^« within six months after the submission of the dispute. com:ment. Providing for wars between nations members of the League and between LeagTie members and nations not m the League. Article XIH. "The high contracting parties agree that whenever any dispute or difficulty shall arise between them which they recognize to be suitable to submission to arbitration and which cin not be satisfactorily settled by diplomacy they will submit the whole matter to arbitration. For this pur- nose the court of arbitration to which the case is referred ffibe'the court agreed on by the P-^V^L^hiS'^ci^itrict" any convention existing between them. The high contract- fnJ parties agree that they will carry out in full food faith any award that may be rendered. In the event of any fail- ure to carry out the award the executive council fj^all pro- pose what steps can best be taken to give effect thereto. COMMENT. Providing for concerted war by League members upon any member nation that might decline to he hound by the verdict of a court of arbitration. Article XIV. "The executive council shall formulate plans for the establishment of a permanent court of international justice and tSs court shall, when established, be competent to 57 SAVE AMERICA! hear and determine any matter which the parties recognize as suitable for submission to it, for arbitration under the foregoing article. COMMENT. The only article in the Constitution compatible with our national sovereignty and common sense. The proper basis for an international agreement acceptable to the peoples of the world at this stage of their development. The free play of the world's sense of right and wrong — when the passing of autocratic government makes such free play of public opinion possible — ^will support the manifestly fair verdicts of an international court of justice, and will in fact do far more to prevent wars than this monstrous scheme of world-wide armed autocracy could ever do. Article XV. "If there should arise between states members of the League any dispute likely to lead to rupture, which is not submitted to arbitration as above, the high contracting parties agree that they will refer the matter to the execu- tive council; either party to the dispute may give notice of the existence of the dispute to the secretary general, who will make all necessary arrangements for a full investiga- tion and consideration thereof. For this purpose the par- ties agree to communicate to the secretary general, as promptly as possible, statements of their case, with all relevant facts and papers and the executive council may forthwith direct the publication thereof. "Where the efforts of the council lead to the settlement of the dispute a statement shall be published indicating the nature of the dispute and the terms of settlement, together with such explanations as may be appropriate. If the dis- pute has not been settled, a report by the council shall be published, setting forth, with all necessary facts and ex- planations, the recommendation which the council thinks just and proper for the settlement of the dispute. "If the report is unanimously agreed to by the members of the council other than the parties to the dispute, the high contracting parties agree that they will not go to war with any party which complies with the recommendations and that, if any party shall refuse so to comply, the council shall propose measures necessary to give effect to the rec- ommendation. If no such unanimous report can be made, it shall be the duty of the majority and the privilege of the minority to issue statements indicating what they believe to be the facts and containing the reasons which they con- sider to be just and proper. "The executive council may in any case under this article refer the dispute to the body of delegates. The dis- 58 SAVE AMERICA! pute shall be so referred at the request of either party to the dispute, proV^ided that such a request must be made within fourteen days after the submission of the dispute. In any case referred to the body of delegates all provisions of this article and of article 12 relating- to the action and powers of the executive council shall apply to the action and powers of the body of delegates. COMMENT. Making the Supreme Council of the IJeague the final judge of issues arising between nations members of the Ijeague, and authorizing it to employ the armed forces of all member nations to enforce its decisions. Thus, if Japan and the United States, both members of the Lieague, disagree witli regard to the right of Japanese subjects to enter and reside in this coimtry without let or hindrance other than shall be applied to immigrants from other countries, the Supreme Council — consisting of EIGHT European and Asiatic members and ONE American mem- ber, shall have final authority to decide the issue, and to ENFORCE ITS DECISION WITH THE AR3IED FORCES OF ALLi MEMBER NATIONS. Advocates of the League pretend that immigration is a "domestic" question. Since it interests always at least TWO countries, it is clearly NOT a domestic but an international question, and might be expected to come before the Supreme Council for decision very early in the League's career. I Uke the Japanese. They are a race of thoroughbreds, physically and intellectually. No people is their superior, taken as a whole, in character or natural eligibility to in- tercourse with the world's most enlightened peoples. But I do not beUeve the American people as a whole want the Japanese, or the Chinese or any other non-Caucasian peo- ple to send any considerable number of its nationals into this country. All that Japan thus far has asked of us is that if we admit ANY of her people to residence here, after submitting them to such fair and reasonable tests as we apply to immigrants from other countries, we shall so amend our nationaUzation laws that the Japanese ad- mitted may become citizens of the United States. I have long advocated sucli an amendment of our natui-aUzation law. We cannot maintain good neighborhood with a great, proud people, our next-door neighbors, so long as we per- sist in rating them unworthy of admission to our citi^en- 59 SAVE AMERICA! ship. The Japanese, being what they are, pardonably resent our national boorishness toward them in this re- spect. That they have been most patient, most concilia- tory, most punctilious in observance of their national agreements with us respectmg immigration, was character- istic of them. That they shall continue forever to regard us as friends despite our churlish refusal to admit the obvi- ous equaUty of their best with our best is not to be ex- pected. Here is the seed of the next great war. The British IJeague of Nations, in my judgment, is a step schemed by the far-sighted British statesmen to assure themselves, among other benefits, of our aid, and the aid of the other strong Caucasion peoples, in retaining the British grip on India and on Britain's Chinese dependencies, against tlie clearly foreshadowed purpose of awakening Asia under Japan's leadership to expunge Caucasian mastery over the last square foot of Asiatic soil. In my judgment, based upon something more than general knowledge of the subject, the United States will have sufficient difficulty in maintaining peaceful relations with Japan on our own account, with- out blindly underwriting the British Empire's inevitable conflict with Asia. Article XVI. "Should any of the high contracting parties break or disregard its covenants under article 12, it shall thereby ipso facto be deemed to have committed an act of war against all the other members of the League, which hereby undertake immediately to subject it to the severance of all trade or financial relations, the prohibition of all inter- course between their nationals and the nationals of the covenant breaking state, and the prevention of all financial, commercial or personal intercourse between the nationals of the covenant-breaking state and the nationals of any other state, whether a member of the league or not. "It shall be the duty of the executive council in such case to recommend what effective military or naval force the members of the League shall severally contribute to the armed forces to be used to protect the covenants of the league. "The high contracting parties agree further that they will mutually support one another in the financial and eco- nomic measures which may be taken under this article, in order to minimize the loss and inconvenience resulting from the above measures and that they will mutually sup- 60 S A V E AMERICA! port one another in resisting any special measure aimed at one of their number by the covenant-breaking state and that they will afford passage through their territory to the forces of any of the high contracting parties who are co- operating to protect the covenants of the League. COM3IENT. Providing that if, once in the League, the United States shall "break or disregard its covenants" — that is, refuse to be bound, even against our o\\*n most vital weKare, by the decisions of the Supreme Council composed of eight Eu- ropean and Asiatic members and one American—this coun- try "shall thereby be deemed to have ipso facto committed an act of war against all the other members of the League." They thereupon, ha\ang previously so limited our mihtary forces as to leave us powerless, wiU proceed to give us the thorough licking we shall have richly deserved for having been so besottedly "altruistic" as to get our- selves into a fix of that kind. Is it any wonder that Senator Brandagee of Connecticut, after hearing the Presi- dent "explaui" the League Constitution, felt as if he had been walking with AUce in Wonderland? Aiticle XVn. "In the event of disputes between one state member of the League and another state which is not a member of thi League, or between states not members of the League, the hfgh contracting parties agree that the state or states not mfmbers of the^ League shall be invited to accept the obligations of membership in the League, for the purpose of such dispute upon such conditions as the executive coun- cil may deem just and upon acceptance of any such invita- tion the above provisions shall be applied with modifica- tions as may be deemed necessary by the League. "Upon such investigation being given, the executive council shall immediately institute an inquiry into the cir- cumstances and merits of the dispute ^nd recommend such action as may seem best and most effectual m the circumstances. "In the event of a power so invited refusing to accept the obligations of membership in the League for tne pur- pose of such dispute and taking any action against a state member of the League which in the case «« ^ s^at®. ^®f " ber of the League would constitute a breach of article 12. the provisions of article 16 shall be applicable as against the state taking such action. "If both parties to the dispute when invited refuse to accept the obligations of membership in the League for tne 61 S A V E AMERICA ! purpose of such dispute, the executive council may take such action and make such recommendations as will pre- vent hostilities and will result in the settlement of the dispute. COMMENT. A brutal proposal to force nations not members of the League to submit to the League's dictation, in any dispute which may arise between a League member and an out- sider, and to enforce the League's decision upon such non- member nation with the League's conscript world army. A more ruthless and essentially lawless denial of the rights of neutral peoples to remain at peace cannot be imagined. Here again is clear evidence of the purpose of the creators of the League to set up an all-powerful world autocracy — a realization by law-minded schemers of the bloody dreams of earlier would-be conquerors. The only difference is that this new breed of would-be world controllers pretends to be motivated by pure and lofty altruistic ideals: they "want to do us good," whereas the ancient conquerors, less casuistical, made no concealment of their desire to do us good and plenty. Which is just what this new gang would do, if it could put its deal across. Article XVIH. "The high contracting parties agree that the League shall be entrusted vsrith the general supervision of the trade in arms and ammunition with the countries in which the control of this traffic is necessary in the common interest. COMMENT. Authorizing the European- Asiatic Supreme Council of the League to say what countries shall be permitted to make or buy war equipment. It is a fair presumption that the British-controlled League would deem it "necessary in the common interest" that no arms or ammunitions should ever come into the hands of the peoples of Ireland or India. Article XIX. "To those colonies and territories which as a con- sequence of the late war have ceased to be under the sover- eignty of the states which formerly governed them and which are inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world there should be applied the principle that well be- 62 SAVE AMERICA! ing and development of such peoples form a sacred trust of civilization and that securities for the performance of this trust shall be embodied in the constitution of the League. "The best method of giving practical effect to this prin- ciple is that the tutelage of such peoples should be en- trusted to advanced nations who by reason of their re- sources, their experience or their geographical position can best undertake this respectively and that this tutelage should be exercised by them as mandatories on behalf of the League. "The character of the mandate must difCer according to the stage of the development of the people, the geographi- cal situation of the territory, its economic conditions and other similar conditions. "Certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish empire have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally rec- ognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a mandatory power until such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these com- munities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the mandatory power. "Other peoples, especially those of Central Africa, are at such a stage that the mandatory must be responsible for the administration of the territory subject to conditions which will guarantee freedom of conscience or religion, subject only to the maintenance of public order and morals, the prohibition of abuses such as the slave trade, the arms traffic and the liquor traffic and the prevention of the es- tablishment of fortifications or military and naval bases and of military training of the natives for other than police purposes and the defense of the territory and will also secure equal opportunities for the trade and commerce of other members of the League. "There are territories such as Southwest Africa and certain of the South Pacific Isles, which, owing to the sparseness of their population or their small size or their remoteness from the center of civilization or their geogra- phical contiguity to the mandatory state, and other cir- cumstances, can be best administered under the laws of the mandatory state as integral portions thereof, subject to the safeguards above mentioned in the interests of the indigenous population. "In every case of mandate, the mandatory state shall render to the League an annual report in reference to the territory committed to its charge. "The degree of authority, control or administration to be exercised by the mandatory state shall, if not previously agreed upon by the high contracting parties in each case, be explicitly defined by the executive council in a special act or charter. 63 SAVE AMERICA! "The high contracting parties further agree to establish at the seat of the League a mandatory commission to re- ceive and examine the annual reports of the mandatory- powers and to assist the League in ensuring the observance of the terms of all mandates. COMMENT. Providing that the victorious Allies shall retain the colonies they won from Germany, and that the United States shall be given a job of bag-holding for remote regions whicK none of the European nations can trust each other to handle honestly — all as "mandatories" charged with "a sacred trust of civilization." I admire the English statesmen beyond words; they are the greatest rulers since the Roman Empire; they get what they go after; we get only the privilege of glozing over their successful grab in sniffling, sanctimonious phrases and of footing the lion's share of the cost in men and money. Article XX. "The high contracting parties will endeavor to secure and maintain fair and humane conditions of labor for men, women and children both in their own countries and in all countries to which their commercial and industrial rela- tions extended; and to that end agree to establish as part of the organization of the League a permanent bureau of labor. COJ^IMENT. In wliich the Governmental autocrats, acting for the financial autocrats who pull the strings from behind the scenes, agree to recognize workingmen, women and chil- dren as human beings — the first recognition, and the last — accorded to the rank and file of mankind, or to their un- solicited wishes with regard to their future governments, in the whole text of this extraordinary document. Article XXI. "The high contracting parties agree that provision shall be made through the instrumentality of the League to secure and maintain freedom of transit and equitable treatment for the commerce of all states members of the League, having in mind, among some other things, special arrangements with regard to the necessities of the regions devastated during the war of 1914-1918. C03IMENT. What this article means its authors may know: nobody else has been able thus far to guess — and its authors have not troubled to explain. Free trade? 64 S A V E AMERICA! Article XXH. "The high contracting parties agree to place under the control of the League all international bureaus already es- tablished by general treaties if the parties to such treaties consent. Furthermore they agree that all such inter- national bureaus to be constituted in future shall be placed under control of the League. COMMENT. Initiating the super-State's bureaucracy — and extend- ing its authority into the routine relations between mem- ber nations. Article XXTTT. "The high contracting parties agree that every treaty or international engagement entered into hereafter by any state member of the League shall be forthwith registered with the secretary general and as soon as possible be pub- lished by him and that no such treaty or international en- gagement shall be binding until so registered. COMMENT. Providing "pitiless publicity" for international treaties after these shall have been made by the autocrats in secret, without consulting the desires of the peoples af- fected. In this connection, it is worth recalling that Wood- row Wilson in 1907, in his "Constitutional Government in the United States," wrote: "Of one of the greatest of the President's powers I have not yet spoken at all; his control, which is very absolute, of the foreign relations of the nation. The initiative in foreign affairs, which the President possesses without any restriction whatever, is virtually the power to CONTROL THEM ABSOLUTELY. "The President cannot conclude a treaty with a foreign power without the consent of the Senate; but he may guide every step of diplomacy, and to guide diplomacy is to de- termine what treaties must be made, if the faith and prestige of the government are to be maintained, tw NEED DISCLOSE NO STEP OF NEGOTIATION UNTIL IT IS COMPLETE, AND WHEN IN ANY CRITICAL MAT- TER IT IS COMPLETED THE GOVERN3IENT IS VIRTU- ALLY C03iMITTED. Whatever its disinclination, the Sen- ate may feel itself committed also." 65 SAVE AMERICA! It must be admitted that the President in this respect has practiced in 1919 what he preached in 1907, In 1907 he told how a President capable of attempting it could usurp powers of absolutism which the American Constitu- tion clearly meant to withhold from him, and in 1919 he has attempted and is now attempting to usurp absolute control of treaty-making in exactly the way he marke<^ out in 1907. AS I HAVE ALREADY STATED SEVERAL TIMES IN THIS BOOK, THE UNITED STATES SENATE IS THE ONLY POWER THAT CAN DEFEAT THE PRESIDENT'S PLAIN PURPOSE TO SACRIFICE THIS COUNTRY'S INDEPENDENCE IN BEHALF OF A EUROPEAN-ASIATIC BRITISH- CONTROLLED LEAGUE OF NATIONS. The American Senate can save the country, and will save it, if it has the guts. The man who wouldn't risk his life- — to say nothing of his political job — to save his country's Uberty, would be unworthy to clean the Sen- ate spittoons, much less to speak for freemen in that august chamber. The Senate can keep this country out of a situation which the American people, once they know the truth, would never let it get into. If the Senate weakens and lets the country be dravm into the trap, we shall have to FIGHT our way out a little later. Article XXIV. "It shall be the right of the body of delegates from time to time to advise the reconsideration by states, members of the league, of treaties which have become inapplicable and of international conditions of which continuance may en- danger the peace of the world. COMMENT. Extending the super- State's control over its member nations; a further step in the gradual extinction of their separate sovereignties. Article XV. "The high contracting parties severally agree that the present covenant is accepted as abrogating all obligations inter se which are inconsistent with the terms thereof and solemnly engage that they will not hereafter enter into any engagements inconsistent with the terms thereof. In case any of the powers signatory hereto or subsequently ad- mitted to the League shall, before becoming a party to this covenant, have undertaken any obligations which are in- 66 SAVE AMERICA! consistent with the terms of this covenant, it shall be the duty of such power to take immediate steps to procure its release from such obligations. COMMENT. Requiring member nations to abandon pre-existing in- ternational compacts which conflict with the IJeague's Con- stitution. Article XXVI. "Amendments to this covenant will take effect when ratified by the states whose representatives compose the executive council and by three-fourths of the states whose representatives compose the body of delegates." COMMENT. Making amendments to the League Constitution practi- cally impossible by requiring unanimous consent of the Su- preme Council of nine, and consent of three-fourths of the nations represented in the "body of delegates." NOWHERE IN THE ENTIRE DOCUMENT ONE WORD RECOGNIZING THE RIGHT OF THE PEO- PLES AFFECTED TO BE CONSULTED AT ANY STEP IN THE FRAMING OR IN THE ADMINISTRATION OF THIS SCHEME FOR THE WORLD-WIDE SUBMERG- ENCE OF FREE PEOPLES, AND FOR TEOE CREATION OF A SINGLE WORLD -EMBRACING AUTOCRATIC SUPER- STATE. The American Senator who votes for this scheme votes consciously or ignorantly to betray his country, and to be- tray the highest hopes of all manldnd. The Monroe Doctrine "The question presented by the letters you have sent me is the most momentous which has ever been offered to my contemplation since that of Independence. That made us a nation; tliis sets our compass and points the course which we are to steer through the ocean of time opening on us. 67 SAVE AMERICA! "OUR FIRST AND FUNDAMENTAIi MAXIM SHOULD BE, NEVER TO ENTANGLE OURSELVES IN THE BROILS OF EUROPE; OUR SECOND, NEVER TO SUF- FER EUROPE TO INTERMEDDLE WITH CIS-ATLAN- TIC AFFAIRS. AMERICA, NORTH AND SOUTH, HAS A SET OF INTERESTS DISTINCT FROM THOSE OF EUROPE, AND PECULIARLY HER OWN. SHE SHOULD, THEREFORE, HAVE A SYSTEM OF HER OWN, SEPARATE AND DISTINCT FROM THAT OF EUROPE^" — ^Thomas Jefferson to President James Mon- roe, 1823. "The political system of the allied powers [the Euro- pean Holy Alliance] is essentially different in this respect from that of America. This difference proceeds from that which exists in their respective governments. And to the defense of our own, which has been achieved by the loss of so much blood and treasure, and matured by the wis- dom of their most enlightened citizens, and under which we have enjoyed unexampled felicity, this whole Nation is devoted. We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers, TO DECLARE THAT WE SHOULD CON- SIDER ANY ATTEMPT ON THEIR PART TO EXTEND THEIR SYSTEM TO ANY PORTION OF THIS HEMIS- PHERE AS DANGEROUS TO OUR PEACE AND SAFETY. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered, and shall not interfere. BUT WITH THE GOVERNMENTS WHO HAVE DECLARED THEIR INDEPENDENCE AND MAIN- TAINED IT, AND WHOSE INDEPENDENCE WE HAVE, ON GREAT CONSIDERATION AND ON JUST PRINCIPLES, ACKNOWLEDGED, WE COULD NOT VIEW ANY INTERPOSITION FOR THE PURPOSE OF OPPRESSING THEM, OR CONTROLLING IN ANY OTHER MANNER THEIR DESTINY, BY ANY EURO- PEAN POWER, IN ANY OTHER LIGHT THAN AS THE MANIFESTATION OF AN UNFRIENDLY DISPOSITION TOWARD THE UNITED STATES. 68 SAVE AMERICA! "Our iwlicy in regard to Europe, which was adopted at an early stage of the wars which have so long- agitated that quarter of the globe, nevertheless remains the same, which is NOT TO INTERFERE IN THE INTERNAIi CONCERNS OF ANY OF ITS POWERS; to consider the government de facto as the legitimate government for us; to cultivate friendly relations with it, and to preserve those relations by a frank, firm, and manly policy; meet- ing in all instances the just claims of every power, sub- mitting to injuries from none. It is impossible that the allied powers [of Europe] should extend their political system to any portion of either continent [North or South America] without endangering our peace and happiness; nor can anyone believe that our southern brethren, if left to themselves, would adopt it of their own accord. It is equally impossible, therefore, that we should behold such interposition, in any form, with indifference." — ^Message of President James Monroe, 1823. The British Origin of the League of Nations Constitution. The Wisconsin -News, Milwaukee, March 5. Copyright, 1919, by Star Company. During President Wilson's meeting with the foreign relations committees of the Senate and House to discuss the proposed league of nations, the President was asked by Senator Brandegee of Connecticut: "How many drafts of the constitution for this proposed League were presented to the Paris conference of nations?" The President replied that there had been four, one by Great Britain, one by France, one by the United States and one by Italy. Senator Brandegee then inquired : "Which one was accepted?" The President replied: "The British." 69 SAVE AMERICA! Senator Brandegee asked what was done with the re- jected drafts. President Wilson said: "They were put aside." Representative. Ragsdale of South Carolina then in- quired: "Mr. President, what does the IJeague of Nations pro- pose to do as regards Ireland?" The President answered: "The question of Ireland is a domestic matter outside the province of the League of Nations." Lodge Resolution on League and Names of Republican Signers. Washington, March 4, 1919. By the Associated Press: Senator Lodge's resolution on the League of Nations and the names of the 3 7 Republican Senators and Senators- elect supporting his position, follow: "Whereas, Under the Constitution, it is a function of the Senate to advise and consent to, or dissent from, the ratification o'f any treaty of the United States and no such treaty can become operative without the consent of the Senate expressed by the affirmative vote of two -thirds of the Senators present; and "Whereas, Owing to the victory of the arms of the United States and of the nations with whom it is associated, a peace conference was convened and is now in session at Paris for the purpose of settling the terms of peace; and "Whereas, A committee of the conference has proposed a constitution for a League of Nations and the proposal is now before the peace conference for its consideration; "Now, Therefore, Be It Resolved, By the Senate of the United States in the discharge of its constitutional duty of advice in regard to treaties that it is the sense of the Sen- ate that while it is their desire that the nations of the world should unite to promote peace and general disarmament, 70 SAVE AMERICA! the constitution of the League of Nations in the form now proposed to the peace conference should not be accepted by the United States; "And Be It Resolved Further, That it is the sense of the Senate that the negotiations on the part of the United States should immediately be directed to the utmost expedi- tion of the urgent business of negotiating peace terms with Germany satisfactory to the United States and the nations with whom the United States is associated in the war against the German Government, and the proposal for a League of Nations to insure the permanent peace of the world should be then taken up for careful and serious consideration." Names of Republican Signers. The Republican Senators and Senators-elect whose names were on the list read by Senator Lodge as favoring his resolution on the League follow: Senators: Lodge, Massachusetts; Knox, Pennsylvania; Sherman, Illinois; New, Indiana; Moses, New Hampshire; Wadsworth, New York; Pernald, Maine; Cummins, Iowa; Warren, Wyoming; Watson, Indiana; Sterling, South Da- kota; Preylinghausen, New Jersey; Harding, Ohio; Hale, Maine; Borah, Idaho; Brandegee, Connecticut; Calder, New York; Penrose, Pennsylvania; Page, Vermont; McLean, Connecticut; Prance, Maryland; Curtis, Kansas; Spencer, Missouri; Townsend, Michigan; Johnson, California; Dill- ingham, Vermont; Lenroot, Wisconsin; Poindexter, Wash- ington; Sutherland, West Virginia; Smoot, Utah, and Gronna, North Dakota. Senators-elect: Edge, New Jersey; Keyes, New Hamp- shire; McCormick, Illinois; Phipps, Colorado; Newberry, Michigan; Ball, Delaware. 71