USA > New York > History of the state of New York, political and governmental, Vol. V > Part 22
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1See Current History magazine, April, 1919, pp. 100-101.
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to the League because it would militate against their starting a war of revenge, and from the Socialists, whose schemes in the interest of the "proletariat" for "an "international commonwealth" to confiscate property and standardize individuals would necessarily be brought to naught by a League founded on the prin- ciples of democracy and administered without refer- ence to special interest. Various amendments to the covenant recommended by its critics in the United States were duly urged at Paris by President Wilson and were adopted.
Considering the plain facts of the League's origin and nature, the great disputation concerning it that has so agitated the American people can be rightly connoted and examined only in the narrow partisan relation from which sprang the essential opposition to the covenant- and ultimately to the entire Versailles treaty. The world-wide demand for and acceptation of the League cannot be questioned, and neither can the utter in- adequacy and futility of all devices alternative to the League of Nations that have been suggested for the object of guaranteeing peace.
In the times before the Kaiser's emprise of world conquest-how far away they seem-there obtained the amiable Hague "conventions" of 1899 and 1907, which assuredly represented the "best minds," as well as the best possible endeavors, of all governments in the ab- sence of a formal League. To revert to the Hague plan would be manifestly preposterous in view of its omis- sion to apply binding arrangements and the experience resulting from it.
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The alternative of an International Court, so hope- fully proposed by some Americans, would involve de- fects very similar to those of the Hague experiment unless the court should be instituted and should function under precisely those political "commitments" of the nations which the Republican party has professed to regard with such indignation and horror. At the time these words are written (October, 1921) an International Court, with a distinguished American as one of its Judges, has recently been set up by the League of Nations-and there can be no room for another court so long as the League continues.
Another alternative to the plan of the League of Nations is the project of conferences at the initiative of the United States, to be participated in by invited powers and to consider certain limited objects-every one of which objects meantime engages the earnest and constant efforts of the established League. Such con- ferences of course would be contributory to the League's great aim, the promotion of peace. But with the League at the same time existent and eager to admit us to membership an essential motive of our government in calling the conferences would be the merely expe- dient one of meeting the demand for world concord by an approximation to the League's ideals and policy. An approximation is good, but not enough.
There remains at last the alternative of waiting for the occasion to arise before entering into a concert of guaranteed peace-that is, waiting for "the next war," and meantime maintaining armaments, perpetuating the spirit of arbitrariness throughout the world, and
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with light heart toying with the factors of popular dis- content ever becoming more aggressive on account of unbearable taxes and living conditions, the prospect of other exterminating wars, and the administration of government by men in no way interested in the progres- sive tendency of the times except to resent and resist it. This policy is in fact the one consistent treatment of the whole matter if an effective League is barred.
It became the treatment favored by the Republican party so far as that organization ventured to declare it- self to the understanding of the country.
In the fight against the League and the treaty the Re- publicans at no time offered any constructive proposi- tion whatever. They only brought forward a series of reservations that were designed to be destructive of the treaty by preventing its ratification and in some particulars were even worded with the palpable intent of affronting the Allies. The reservations ac- complished their purpose; whereupon the Republican leaders in Congress turned to the project of effecting a separate peace with Germany by the preparatory means of a declaration terminating the state of war-to which end the Knox joint resolution was passed by the Senate on May 15, 1920, and by the House on May 21. The measure was vetoed by the President, and thus ended the proceedings relating to the treaty for the term of the Wilson administration.
After the coming in of the Republicans (March 4, 1921) the Knox resolution was reintroduced in amended form, passed by both houses of the Republican Con- gress, and approved by the Republican President;
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whereupon a separate treaty of peace with Germany, retaining for the United States the advantages con- ferred by the Versailles treaty but repudiating our obligations under the covenant of the League of Nations, was negotiated with the German government, signed in Berlin August 25, 1921, and ratified by the United States Senate October 18.
It should be particularly remembered, as a most material part of the record, that the Anglo-American agreement for the security of France, which President Wilson signed in Paris, was totally discarded by the Republican Senate and administration.
The Republican arguments against the League of Nations, which so successfully served their purpose for the passing time and occasion of their strenuous em- ployment, have come to the substantial test of their validity and merits. Already have some of the prin- cipal contentions been found utterly without weight. The first session of the League Assembly opened in Geneva November 15, 1920, forty-one governments be- ing represented, and continued until December 18; and the second session was held in Geneva September 5 to October 6, 1921, with forty-eight member-governments represented. On both occasions all the proceedings gave evidence that the League possessed to an eminent degree the qualities of vitality and energy. Very marked was the spirit of resolute independence on the part of individual nations ; and in the collective capacity of the Assembly one of the most pronounced tendencies shown was that of entire freedom from domination in any par- ticular national or group interest. Notice was given and
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registered of proposed amendments to the covenant, some of which were acted on; everything was done in dignity, good faith, and mutual comity, yet with decided and at times vigorous interchanges of opinion ; and at the close of each session it was the belief of the members, and of dispassionate people throughout the world, that the League, through its representative body as also through its Council and secretariat, was excel- lently fulfilling its mission.
Is it probable that any harm would have come to the great United States in such illustrious and honorable company?
And looking to the future is it probable that the great United States, if sitting in the Assembly and the Coun- cil of the League of Nations, could in any contingency suffer the remotest interference with its sovereignty, ex- perience the slightest limitation upon its discretion, be drawn into undesired commitments in the least manner or proportion, or become either a supine victim of or consenting party to an arrogant super-government? Those who know the United States, and at the same time have an understanding of the interests and position of the world as related to the United States, must con- sider such questions, merely frivolous to the extent that they are not supremely ridiculous. The outstanding les- sons of the German War are that the United States won the victory and has the potentiality to win the next vic- tory if another world conflict occurs. There can be no question of a super-government exercised upon the United States from any quarter-and least of all from
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the League of Nations, the world's delegated agency for the service of humanity.
The League of Nations proposal has in no respect been negatived except most casually, tentatively, and superficially on the part of a temporary political major- ity in the United States secured mainly as the result of internal circumstances and conditions not at all related to the merits of the League debate. History has con- tinually demonstrated that nothing is more delusive or transitory than a party majority however huge, even if gained on a wholly uncomplicated issue of the time be- ing. After the glittering party triumph comes the mat- ter-of-fact party responsibility, with the merciless test and proof of the party position and proposition.
The final determination of the question depends on the course and logic of events. It was to serve the pur- poses of discrediting President Wilson and achieving a party success that the opponents of the League pictured it to the public as a monster of so frightful mien, kin to the fabled "gorgons, hydras, and chimeras dire." The permanent realities of the matter will prove to be not the vituperations of an unscrupulous campaign or the private hates of vindictive individuals, but the necessities of the world for a secure and an ordered peace and the obligations resting upon every great people in that relation.
Either the present League of Nations will success- fully continue with or without entrance of the now absent governments, or the fundamental policy that it represents-the policy, to use Mr. Wilson's words, of "a cooperation of the nations which shall be based upon
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fixed and definite covenants and which shall be made certain of effective action"-must, sooner or later, be taken over and enforced by some other world instru- mentality. It is only trifling with great matters to main- tain the alternative policy of "staying out" "till the occa- sion arises"-the necessity to make certain of effective action is too tremendous, the inevitable consequences from failure to do so are too terrifying. It is a truism-rather, a mere platitude-that the recent war was scarce a rehearsal to the next, assuming that a next is to be permitted; and it cannot too emphatically be insisted that the question of a next is exactly and alto- gether a question of permission. Even under strict and compulsory engagements, arrangements, and supervi- sion through the concerted action of the world there cannot fail to be apprehension of the possibility of sud- den and exterminating war by secret preparation. The following is from an official report of testimony lately given by D. B. Bradner, Chief of the Chemical Re- search and Development division of the United States Army Chemical Warfare Service :
"Mr. Bradner :- Mr. Chairman, the Chemical Warfare Service has discovered a liquid approximately three drops of which, when applied to any part of the skin, will cause a man's death. Much smaller amounts than this, or even vapors from the liquid, cause very slow-healing burns.
"The experience of the World War proved it is possible for an airplane to fly within 100 feet of enemy troops and machine-gun them with practical impunity. The opinion of men well-informed on aerial warfare is that the only defense against airplanes is attack by airplanes.
"If, instead of carrying machine guns, attacking planes were equipped to carry a tank of this liquid for discharge from nozzles
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similar to the ordinary street sprinkler, so that it would fall like rain, killing everything in its path, then you would have a weapon which would absolutely destroy troops, cities, or non-combatants unless they were protected by a superior air force.
"During the Argonne offensive in the past war the entire First American Army of a million and a quarter men occupied an area approximately forty kilometers long by twenty kilometers wide. If Germany had had 4,000 tons of this material and 300 or 400 planes equipped in this way for its distribution, the entire First Army would have been annihilated in ten to twelve hours."
No constraint upon the legitimate aspirations of peo- ples is contemplated by the League of Nations, and neither is any interference with their needful contests to assert and maintain their rights. But manufactured and unprincipled wars must cease; and they can be made to cease only by eliminating their artificial provo- cations consequent upon prodigious armaments, the system of rival balances of power, and the separate ruthless pursuit of exclusive interests, and by negativing and penalizing their artful and devious preparations. This is the true Wilsonism.
Admittedly the League of Nations is in its inception and in its brief progress to the present an experiment. An experiment very similar to the Constitution of the United States at the origin of that instrument. Should the League prove a failure and no other agency take its place, then the liberal spirit that called it into being must bide a further experience of the familiar results of the old order. It has survived an attack from the politi- cal party of reaction, standpatism, and special interest in the United States that was expected to be annihilat- ing. The Democratic party is its friend, and looks hopefully to its future.
CHAPTER XII THE COX CAMPAIGN-WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE FUTURE
T HE Democratic national convention of 1920 was held in San Francisco, June 28 to July 6. Its first act after organizing was to adopt a message of greeting to President Wilson, in which the great achievements of his administration were applauded and a feeling personal tribute was paid him. Reference was made particularly to his illness resulting from over- work in the cause of securing a just peace, and to the vindictive personal spirit of his enemies.1 "We deeply resent," said the message, "the malignant onset which you have most undeservedly been called upon to sustain from partisan foes, whose judgments are warped and whose perceptions are obscured by a party malice which constitutes a lamentable and disgraceful page in our history." A notable act of the body was its refusal of a delegate's seat to one of the President's bitter opponents.
1The records of American history afford no parallel to the persistent cam- paign of venomous and vituperative abuse waged by the Republicans against President Wilson. It seemed that his illness was hailed as providing an opportunity for new and more ingenious calumnies and malignities.
On September 27, 1919, the day after his breakdown at Wichita, the New York Sun printed an editorial in which it was plainly intimated that his
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The convention was thoroughly and enthusiastically in accord with the policies of the administration, and in its platform referred with great strength to the splen- did measures and results of Democratic rule during the previous seven years, and sustained the principles and course of the President in embarking upon and con- ducting the war and in negotiating the settlements of peace. On the League of Nations subject the following declaration was made: "We advocate the immediate ratification of the treaty without reservations which would impair its essential integrity; but do not oppose the acceptance of any reservations making clearer or more specific the obligations of the United States to the League associates." This had been the position of the President and the Democratic party throughout the
reported illness was only a sham. The "hope" was expressed that his abandonment of his speaking tour might be taken as "indicating nothing more than the prudence of sagacious advisers in the political sense"-because the public had so far observed no "disturbing symptoms" as to the President's condition except "such as might be inferred from an increasing tendency to bitterness of denunciation, and a looser and less characteristic tone of argu- ment, manifested in his later speeches."
On October 12, 1919, there was published a statement by George H. Moses, Republican United States Senator from New Hampshire, purporting to give the country the exact facts of Mr. Wilson's condition. Mr. Moses exultingly added: "Of course he may get well-that is, he may live, but if he does he will not be any material factor in anything." The President on his sickbed learned of this heartless comment and jocosely remarked to a visitor that "the Senator could be reassured, although he might be disappointed."
Toward all his foes, no matter how slanderous and vitriolic their denuncia- tions of him, the President maintained from first to last calm self-control. If he replied it was in terms of reason, with very sufficient strength but never any recrimination; and this equipoise was what most enraged his slanderers (especially the more scholarly and intellectual Republican Senators and editors) and drew forth their choicest billingsgate. It will readily be recalled how little patient and restrained some of his predecessors were under criticism.
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final struggle in the Senate-on the principle of all practicable concessions to accomplish the one result of overcoming destructive opposition. But while willing, with the President, to make such expedient concessions, the convention emphasized the main contention always insisted on by Mr. Wilson, that the League covenant as formulated was wholly incapable of being construed as limiting (under any circumstances) the proper and in- dependent action of the United States,-and that the Republican representations to the contrary merely raised a false issue.
On the forty-fourth ballot James M. Cox, Governor of Ohio, was nominated for President. For Vice-Presi- dent the nominee was Franklin D. Roosevelt, of New York, Assistant-Secretary of the Navy.
The Republican convention, held in Chicago June 8-12, was opened with an address by its chairman, Henry Cabot Lodge, in which he declared that "the de- feat of the present administration and all it means" was the prime issue, and most bitterly denounced the Presi- dent-alleging that he was for that "which is not Amer- ican" and adverting to "his dynasty" and "autocracy." Previously to President Wilson's labors at Paris Mr. Lodge, with many other eminent Republican leaders (including former Presidents Taft and Roosevelt), had uniformly stood for the principle of concerted action of the nations to maintain peace. In an article in the Forum for June, 1918, he had discussed the war from the Amer- ican point of view and had especially, in the strongest terms, opposed resort to a separate peace with Germany, which he asserted would be "a crime which nothing can
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justify" and would "brand us with everlasting dis- honor." But when the Democratic President and ad- ministration entered upon the policy of establishing an effective League and treaty in conjunction with the Allies, Mr. Lodge became the head and front of the Republican obstructionists; and ultimately he sup- ported the Knox resolution looking to a separate peace. It would seem that before assailing President Wilson or anyone he should have set his own record straight by at least the means of adjusting his former principles to some specific program for the future. He did not, however, advocate any definite program whatever, and neither did the convention; concerning the League the sole policy was that of opposition to it as Wilsonian. Senator Warren G. Harding, of Ohio, was nominated for President, and Governor Calvin Coolidge, of Mas- sachusetts, for Vice-President.
Of the other parties in the field the Socialists opposed the League of Nations, while the Prohibitionists favored it.1 The Farmer-Labor party made no declara- tion as to the particular subject but advocated a "league of free peoples" on a vague plan; and therefore that
1Socialist platform :- "The government of the United States should initiate a movement to dissolve the mischievous organization called the 'League of Nations.' . The United States should immediately make peace with the Central powers."
Prohibition platform :- "The League of Nations is now in existence and is functioning in world affairs. We favor the entrance of the United States into the League by the immediate ratification of the treaty of peace, not objecting to reasonable reservations interpreting American understanding of the covenant. The time is past when the United States can stand aloof from the affairs of the world. Such a course is short-sighted and only invites disaster."
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organization is to be classed with the Republicans and Socialists as against "Mr. Wilson's League."1
While all the accumulated events of the preceding year had sharply defined the issue of the Versailles treaty as the dominant one for the Presidential cam- paign, it was on the part of the Republicans made only incidental to the program of comprehensive denuncia- tion of President Wilson. The Republicans in fact pre- ferred that the discussion concerning the League of Nations should be conducted strictly on the proposition of repudiation of the League without any other argu- ment than that confidently asserting it to be "un-Ameri- can" and prejudicial to our "sovereignty." So far as they presented the issue they relied mainly upon alarm- ist appeals and a variety of catchy expressions such as "Are you an American?" "Down with Wilsonism!" "No more autocracy!" and "Do you want your boy to go and fight for the King of the Hedjaz?" But looking to the decisive result of the contest they placed their principal reliance upon the consolidation of several very numerous and influential elements of the electo- rate to "down Wilson" from diverse motives of special prejudice, hate, revenge, and interest.
There was primarily the vote of those disgruntled about the war, inclusive of many who never had heart- ily approved it and the far greater number who looked only at its results personal to themselves in so greatly in-
1In the campaign all the speakers for the Harding ticket received the following instruction from the Republican national committee: "In referring to the League of Nations it should always be spoken of as 'Mr. Wilson's League.' "
JOHN B. STANCHFIELD
John B. Stanchfield, born at Elmira, N. Y., March 30, 1855; attended public schools; graduated from Amherst college, 1876; Harvard college of law, 1877; studied law later with David B. Hill; elected district attorney of Chemung county, 1880 and reelected in 1883 ; elected three times mayor of Elmira; member of the assembly, 1895 and 1896, being majority leader in 1896; democratic candidate for governor, 1900; for U. S. senator, 1901 ; delegate to state constitutional convention of 1915.
FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, lawyer; born Hyde Park, N. Y., January 31, 1882; graduated from Harvard, 1904; Columbia law school, 1907; member New York state senate, 1910 to March, 1913, when he resigned to become assistant secretary of the navy, which office he held until 1920; Democratic nominee for vice-president, 1920.
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creasing prices and disorganizing all the former condi- tions. It was their ready conviction that Wilson was responsible, and their convenient deduction that his party should be chastised accordingly. The reasons and explanations of things were to them of little weight as against their prejudices-prejudices diligently stimu- lated by the Republican leaders, orators, and writers, who at all times referred to the war principally in terms of fault-finding and took scrupulous care to deny that credit of any kind was due the Democratic government. Mr. Harding in his addresses dwelt on return to "normalcy" as the matter of foremost consideration and concern. It was known to all that he had never been an "idealist" about the war. He had voted in the Senate for the destructive reservations to the treaty and for the Knox separate-peace resolution. As early as June 8, 1917-only two months after our entrance, when the
noble sentiment which produced that result was still at its height and all questions as to the administration's proper conduct of the war were still for the future,-he had said in a speech in the Senate : "I have believed the Liberty Bond campaign hysterical and unseemly. Much of the sentiment uttered concerning our part in the war is balderdash."1
Of conspicuous note as contributory to the outcome was the intense opposition to the Democratic ticket, for reasons purely of "revenge on Wilson," by several of the more numerous groups of voters of foreign birth or ancestry.
Owing to the President's action at the Peace confer-
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