S 2 GOODWIN'S WEEKLY
H more fantastic figure than Kaiser Wilhelm in what remains of his
H shining armor of militarism.
H A Democrat in "shining armor" is not one admired of the gods
M though he may look better than pure gilt to the gullible. We have
j known Democrats and esteemed them highly who, in ''shining armor,"
j have looked about as imposing as the scarecrows of the fields.
H Take Governor Bamberger, for example. In shining armor, with
H the sword of defiance in one hand and a phonograph in the other, he
j is very like Impatience on a monument pile gnashing his teeth at
M critics. And the Democratic monument of deficits and freak laws
m grows larger as the days of the administration wane toward winking
M In 1915 the Republican legislature adopted a new system of ap-
i propriating funds so that the state could proceed with regular business
m ' during the first three months each legislature was in session. As the
l appropriation bill was one of the last to be acted on it always befell
HH that the state was out of funds for three months. The appropriation
H for a biennium ended with Jan. 1 and in January, February and March
i the departments had no liquid assets, so to speak. Consequently the
H legislature of 1915, instead of passing a bill appropriating money for
m only a biennium, enacted a measure which provided funds for twenty-
H seven months.
H When the Democrats came into power, therefore, they had a
H supply of funds on hand Republican money, if we may say so.
j It was quite thoughtful of the Republicans to provide in this
Pj generous fashion for their Democratic successors and we would give
H them due credit for their magnanimity were it not for the fact that
H j we have heard many of them mourning over their act as if it were a
HN misdeed. Democrats, of course, will make the nasty retort that a
i Republican never mourns over a misdeed, but we are not here as a
i second for either side of that kind of a dispute. We are simply trying
to shed a little sunshine into the dark places of legislative and admin
istrative camouflage.
At all events, the Democrats had the money and they appropri
ated some more money ere the Ides of March had grown old. They
provided enough cash, as they fancied, to take them through until
, April 1, 1919.
Hi But, behold, they reckoned without that well known Democratic
Hf characteristic of spending while the spending is good. The Democrats
Hj have indulged in a perfect orgie of expenditure. They have exercised
Hi their spending muscles until they have become giant spendthrifts.
H i By October of 1918 the Democrats had run out of funds in spots.
Hi The attorney general was among the first to cry for more. Then it
R became a habit in the departments to cry "more, more." They cast
V aside their famous Bourbon modesty and classic reticence and after
V the election shamelessly adopted an attitude which is well expressed in
H the lines of Pericles : "What the 'ell do we care now."
H The state prison is a horrible example. State prisons, of course,
H usually are. But the Utah state prison had been growing more re-
H spectable every year. Today its population has decreased to half what
H it was in Governor Spry's time, and yet the prison board is demanding
H more money than ever before. The high cost of criminality is get-
B ting to be terrible. You pay more for your criminals and don't get
M so many of them.
M Perhaps our good friends, Jack Lynch and C. S. Varian, will ex-
j plain. Running a prison, of course, is not like running a bank, al-
K though, of course, we except the late departed Bingham banks. But
j why should so much money be required for so few prisoners and
K most of them measly little criminals at that?
fl But admitting that more money is required by high cost of this
f and that, we can find no excuse for the attitude of Governor Bam-
mt berger except that it is clever. No sooner had the governor detected
M: the flaws in the Democratic armor ; no sooner had he espied the grow-
j ing deficits, no sooner had he heard the first, faint cries of "more,"
H than he began to assume an attitude of lamentation. To paraphrase
H' a lyric of the scriptures: "By the riyers of Zion, there he sat and
' wept."
H If the public had begun to suspect that our weeping governor
H were in the slightest degree to blame they banished the cruel thought
H and sat down beside him and mingled their tears with his. And as
I v
the cries of "more" continued the more the governor sobbed in re
petance for his .voracious appointees.
In their sympathy the public forgot that the governor is a mem-1 i
ber of the state boards and that he is largely responsible for the ex- I
penditures in the various departments. The public forgot to ask why
the governor had not seated himself besides the Jordan and sobbed
long before. Why had he not seen to it that the recklessness and
wastefulness of the "shining arnior Democrats" was stopped?
We trust that in our quipful, perhaps even jesting, mood we have
not hurt the feelings of any of our good friends. There is no use
mourning over the spilt buckets of coin, and so we laugh and trust
that even the governor will stop weeping. ,
But, seriously, the state expects the Democrats to do better.
They cannot get off so lightly next time by trying to shift their sins
to the previous administration. They must make good this time or
even the unsuspecting voter will discern to their inefficiency.
MYSTERY OF HUNLAND.
NOT so long ago most of us believed that only Tibet and Central -
Africa lay beyond mystery's frontier. It did not occur to us that
right in the heart of civilization was the most mysterious of all coun
tries Hunland. The very newness of the name is evidence of a land
unknown among us a few years ago.
Hunland describes to us, so to speak, a land within a land. The
veiled prophet was not more hidden from the sight of his subjects than
was this strange inner land of the spirit concealed from the world.
Nor were the frightful orgies of some pagan mysteries more of a
hock to readers of intimate history than were the motives and view
points of the Germans hidden away in Hunland. Tacitus found the
early German tribes rough, brutal, coarse, drunken, savage. That
Hunland vanished centuries ago, we thought. And yet when the cur-
tain was rent asunder the curtain which Hohenzollern Kultur had ,
woven between the world's vision and Hunland we discovered to
our horror a new Hunland as brutal and savage as the old.
Our astonishment has not ceased to this day. When the armistice
was signed and the allies stipulated that their armies should occupy
zones beyond the Rhine we thought that the Germany which had been
shrouded in enigmas during more than four years of war would soon
become as lucid as the stars. With the flight of the kaiser to Holland
had disappeared, we fondly fancied, all of his imperial mysteries.
And yet today Hunland is as mysterious as ever. Amid the clash
of interests and the varied maneuvers of government and revolution
we still are lost in amaze.
What general course events are taking in Germany none of us .
can determine. Perhaps few Germans can tell. We watch the chang
ing scenes as we scan the fleeting film of a detective story at the
movies and wonder who will triumph next. ,.
So puzzling are the changes in Berlin with the Reds now appar- .
ently the masters and then the Conservatives that the suspicion
grows among us that the old magicians of German propaganda are
weaving a new spell to deceive the world. Our fears and suspicions -
lead us to imagine that perhaps the drama which is being enacted each,
day in the capital of Hunland has been outlined in advance by the
political scenario writers of both sides. We cannot divest ourselves of
the idea that the Germans are simply maneuvering for position against
the time when they must lay their cards on the table at Versailles.
One day we see the Germans palpably appealing to our sym-
pathies in their predictions of starvation ; another day we hear public
ists warning us not to exact too much of the. Germans lest we make
it impossible for them to pay, and on sf '11 another day we are bluntly
advised not to take any goods away from the enemy lest we flood our
own lands with cheap articles that will ruin our own business enter
pises. We are profoundly confused by all this. We cannot decide jh
whether German propaganda is again adroitly manipulating our minds
or whether these things are the natural aftermath of such a war as we
haye just passed through.
But whether it be by design or in the normal course of events we j
discover that at the opening of the peace corference the scales are so
evenly balanced in Berlin between Red ana Ilohenzoilerns that the
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