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I BeL' flHHHIHHHHHflHHBIHHHMHHiliHIfllilHIflMlliilllflHMIHIHIlHHHHHHHHiBMEEBiBBHI H L Bnkg SI Thinking Paperjbr Thinking People H f PRESIDENT WILSON x I iff " ! T) RESIDENT WILSON has arrived home to ask that his secret Xt diplomacy be' ratified. How much better it would have been had W he remained home and prepared a plan for the League of Nations ' which could have been sanctoined in advance by the senate. We are under the necessity now of accepting or rejecting the plan said to be largely Wilson's plan already approved by the entente powers. If " the senate rejects the scheme it will be not only a rebuke to the presi '' dent but a snub to friendly powers. In a sense, therefore, the presi (l, dent is using duress to force the United States senate to adopt his views formulated in secret and proclaimed as a covenant before there was the slightest chance to discuss any of the points in this country. tif. If it be argued that there was'more or less of an idea among the people of this country as to what the covenant would contain it can be '' flatly denied. In one of his last utterances Colonel Roosevelt, after the president's departure for Europe, said that no one could approve or condemn the League of Nations because nobody knew what it was. - The president, for'many good reasons, should have remained at ' home, but even if he felt the call of Europe so insistently in his soul . that he could not stay in Washington and perform the duties of his t office, it was incumbent on him to prepare in advance a draft of the ll League of Nations and submit it for consideration to the senate and r the people. Ateast the general scheme could have been agreed upon. ,, The people would have had a chance to discuss all the salient plans f': from Roosevelt's proposal that the league oe based on a few general .. principles and covenants to the extreme plan of William Howard Taft ; that a League to Enforce Peace be established. 17 H Acting as he did President Wilson committed himself, to an of- m fensive form of secret diplomacy. All his emotional andiiigli-sound- Sr., ing assurances that hereafter international covenants must be openly v- discussed and openly agreed upon seem hollow and hypocritical now I that the covenants have been prepared in secret and agreed to secretly &,. in advance by the "high contracting parties." Who is there that does S not feel that he is in a certain sense bound by what the president did abroad. True, it would be a folly, a betrayal of the nation if the , senate were to ratify the -treaty in a weak surrender to this duress ; .' nevertheless all of us are conscious of the duress. f " - Unless the peace treaty is to be delayed for many months our discussion must be brief. Speaker Reed, in the campaign of 1896, re ferring to the silver issue, said that the country had been called upon to determine this great question "in less time than it takes to ripen a strawberry." Now we are called upon to approve or reject a certain plan for a League of Nations in an even shorter period. If we reject the plan there will be no "league. If -the senate tries to modify the plan it will enter upon a protracted task which will delay peace in definitely. If the senate approves the plan in haste all of us may live to repent at leisure. To approve in haste is to approve blindly. President Wilson contended that he must be actually in touch with the peace delegates to obtain what he wanted. It seems to us that he should have been actually in touch with the United States senators all the time that the plans for the league were being formulated here and abroad so that he might know what they wanted. In that way H he could have made valuable communications to the senate from time H to time and the senate could have supervised the terms of the cove- H nant. Inasmuch as the covenant must be ratified by the senate it H would have been well had the senators been consulted constantly re- H garding the plan. H One of the peculiar and deplorable results of the president's H erratic action has been an open and public breach between him and -H the senators who oppose the league as promulgated in the Paris plan. H Some of the senators felt it incumbent on them to reject the presi- H dent's invitation to dinner, arguing that they would be bound by the H rules of courtesy to treat as confidential everything said at this secret H diplomacy feast. They feared that they might be bound to keep in H confidence things that the American people should know. H Long ago the president should have laid his cards on the senate table, face up. In Europe he could not easily do that. Had he re- mained at home it would have been simplicity itself. H The senate and the nation are in a quandary. The presi- H dent comes back fully equipped for argument and has his opponents at a disadvantage because he thoroughly familiarized himself with H his plan while keeping the senators utterly in the dark. Some of them H have already blundered in their criticisms. Some of their arguments H have seemed almost juvenile. And yet there is a great body of H sceptics who feel that, after all is said and done, the covenant binds M this country to unending, interference in the affairs of Europe, Asia, H Africa and the' islands of the seven seas. H Theoretically the people want the United States to live up to all H the obligations resulting from their entrance into the war, but when M it comes to indorsing a League of Nations plan which involves us in a M seemingly interminable adventure in all parts of the world there are 1 many sane leaders like Senator Borah and millions of plain citizens H who fear that President Wilson has committed the nation to a scheme H fraught with the deadliest dangers. H ( l T jH A UTAH CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY AMAZING has been the development of the sugar beet industry in Utah. The stranger within our gates, when told the magnitude of the industry, marvels. He recalls, perhaps, that it was Napoleon Bonaparte who established the sugar beet industry in France and he wonders whether Utah's success was due to a Napoleon or to some M peculiar features of the soil or to a happy combination of both in- H fluences. M Utahns could tell him that there was and is a Napoleon of the H industry, but they would smile in the telling, for they would mentally contrast the vanity, egotism and pomp-of the military conqueror with ",H the modest, simple, retiring man who built up the Utah and Idaho in- dustry. Sometimes he was battling against odds that might well have daunted even Napoleon. H The industry, although irwas founded before the time of Thomas H SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, MARCH 1, 1919. .