Life — March 15, 1917 — page 20: what you’re looking at

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MARCH 15, 1917. ‘* While there ts Life there's Hope"’ No. 1794 Published by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY J. A. Mitcnett, Pres’t. R. O'GOR- MAN, whose term in the Senate has now happily expired, repre- sented the in- capacity of the Democratic party in New York to do its public duty. After a protracted effort to choose a senator, it chose him. As the representative of its incapacity, he was a success beyond expectation. In other respects he sel- dom represented the state. In politics he has been a Fenian, and it was his fidelity to that party which included him among the dozen senators who blocked the vote to arm our merchant- ships, and defeated so much other im- portant legislation. New York is to blame for O'Gor- man, Missouri for Stone, Wisconsin for La Follette, Iowa for Cummins and Kenyon, California for Works, Oregon for Lane, Arkansas for Kirby, Minnesota for Clapp, and so on. Four of the culprits were not re-elected. With the rest, their states must deal at convenience, but is it necessary that Gumshoe Bill Stone of Missouri should continue to be Chairman of the Sen- ate’s Foreign Relations Committee? That is a very important post, and should be in the charge of a senator who is in sympathy with the sentiments of the country. Stone is pro-German, has operated steadily on that side since the war began, and is now conspicuous in defeating the will of the Demo- cratic administration in a matter in- volving the honor and safety of the country. If Missouri likes him we must bear it, but at least he should A. Miter, Sec’y and Treas. 17 West Thirty-first Street, New York English Offices. Rolls House, Breams Bldgs., London, E. C. lose his job as chairman of the most important committee in the Senate. The strongest argument in favor of amending the rules of the Senate so that a few filibusterers may not defeat the will of their colleagues is that La Follette is at the beginning of a new six-year term. It would be futile to call a special session of Congress to pass the measure that the Senate fili- busterers defeated if the surviving remnant of them can go ahead and defeat it again. But as to all that, Mr. Wilson is as good a judge of what is expedient as anyone, and the Senate may immediately amend its rules. Both the war and the spring seem to have been postponed, but it often hap- pens so in March, which is a month that deals freely in the unexpected. We always get the spring in the end, gnd we need not despair of getting into the war. Mr. Wilson, in his in- augural, is not particularly martial, but at least he shows no sign of taking the back track. “We stand firm,” he says, “in armed neutrality.” And again he says, “ We are provincials no longer. The tragical events of thirty months have made us citizens of the world. Then there can be no turning back." That idea he seems to have accepted at least as positively as Mr. Bryan has rejected it. Mr. Bryan does right to reject it. He has neither the endowment nor the equipment to meddle to advantage in world politics. His vineyard is Chau- tauqua, and in that he can delve pro- fitably. But Mr. Wilson is a very dif- ferent order of man. Prudent people hesitate more and more to define his limitations. “The greatest things,” he says, “that remain to be done must be done with the whole world for stage and in co-operation with the wide and “universal forces of mankind, and we are making our spirits ready for those things.” Whatever you make of that, it does not sound like hiding under the bed while German submarines destroy our commerce. It is not under the bed, where La Follette and Stone would hold us, that spirits are made ready for co-operation with the universal forces of mankind. So let us find encouragement in the President's inaugural. HE German wooings of Mexico and Japan have made chiefly for merriment. Most of the newspapers printed indignant editorials that thun- dered about this new exposure of Ger- man perfidy, But how can anybody be indignant with Germans about mat- ters of detail like attempts to seduce Japan or Mexico? Of course they would try these games. It is a little awkward for them to be caught at it, because that makes them ridiculous, and when the catch is confirmed from Berlin, it leaves everybody grinning at the denials in our German-language newspapers. But the games themselves are respectable compared with other things that the Germans have done in” this war, and especially the rape of Belgium. Politically, it was very valuable to us to have the negotiations with Mex- ico detected. It helped to wake up those of our people who still need awakening on the subject of German intentions. But morally it did Ger- many no harm in the eyes of anyone who has acquired understanding of her in the last thirty months. The United States has worked continuously and with great effect to defeat the consum- mation of the hideous German plan. comicbooks.com