River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1911-09-14
CLASH ON TREATY
PRESIDENT AND COLONEL ARE
FAR APART ON AR5lTRA-
TON COMPACT.
TAFT URGES ITS ADOPTION
Roosevelt in Periodical Attacks Docu-
ment as HypocriticaI and Deficient,
Says 1t Is Constructed Too Loose
ly to Be Understood.

Hartford, Conn.-President Taft In
an address here scored the majority
of the senate foreign relations COM
mittee for it's narrow view" in regard
to the senate's power to make treaties
and defend the peace pacts now pend
ing before that body.
simultaneously there was made pub
lie in New York an article by Col
Theodore Roosevelt in the Outlook
characterizing these conventions as
silly and impractical; protesting
against the binding of the United
States to arbitrate questions of nation
al honor, declaring that the American
people would not observe such an
agreement and that advocacy Of it,
therefore, was hypocrisy.
He declares there are certain things
in the proposed agreement that the
United States never would attempt to
recognize and that the document is
constructed so loosely that 1t never
could be determined just what certain
parts of it meant.
President Taft endeavored to show
the benefits that would accrue to the
high contracting parties from COM
plete arbitration and the support
which his movement was receiving
from peace societies and commercial
organizations.
Perhaps the most significant part of
his address was as follows:
II call your attention to the unfor-
tunate consequences, not only to our
selves but to the whole civilized
world, not only for today, but for ages
to come, if the final adoption of this
reasoning by the senate committee is
to prevail.
Steadily throughout the world the
burden of the creation Of armies and
fleets has grown heavier and heavier,
steadily tFa competition has grown
more fierce that is crushing the life
and the hopes of the people.
"But steadily, too, and of late even
more rapidly, has grown the hope
that an escape from these burdens may
be found, that in some measure at
least the peaceful methods of settling
disputes among individual men may
obtain among nations, in some meas
ure. I say, let us not be too extrava-
CANT in our dreams and our prophe-
cies, and yet who can say what the
end of such movement may be?
"Now, wherever good men and wom-
en- the world over are looking and
praying for the dawn of this great day
Of peace, their eyes turn first with
hOpo opd confidence Tn the great re-
public of the west, to the land whose
ideals are Of peace and Justice. indus
try and freedom, to the land which
more than any other has used the
peaceful method of arbitration for the
settlement of its difficulties with other
nations.
I'm this great movement we are the
hope of the world. These hopes by
the proposed narrow construction OF
the senate's power to make treaty
we are now to strike down. To the
men and women who are struggling
and longing we say, Look not to us for
leadership. We cannot even follow.
"For remember, if the senate cannot
now bind us to abide the judgment of
an arbitral court as to whether a
question is justiciable it can never
bind us, and if the senate cannot bind
US the nation cannot bind us, and this
peace-loving people is forever incapa-
BILE of taking step along the great
path which all the world wishes to
tread. and along which oil the world
thinks America best fitted to lead"