The Alaska daily empire., 1917-07-11

or less indecision. It is not often | that these newspaper men go wrong
 and if some of them have been in clined to do so on this occasion, 1t
 must be charged to the administra- | tion, which is more secretive in its
 methods than any administration since Cleveland's first. President Wilson began his work as President | with much talk about "pitiless pub | licity," but before his first term was half finished he began to hedge. No working newspaper man here has talked to him about public affairs for more than two years. The sem iweekly conferences with the cor
 respondents were abandoned during
 the height of the trouble with Mex ico and not renewed.
 Relations Broken Off. If the President had continued the cordial and intimate relations
 with the newspaper men begun by Roosevelt and Taft, it is almost cer- tain the results would have been highly satisfactory. He is not social or communicative by nature, as pub lie men have found out at the same time as the newspaper men, and
 works out on many of his greatest problems in solitude, not even taking his cabinet fully into his confidence. Of course, there has been, and there still is confusion in Wash ington and it could not be other of
 complicated war task, which has proved too much for every govern
 ment that has tackled it.
 It is more than a worldsize job l that the world has been called up-
 on to handle and, while the United States has made mistakes and doubt
 less continue to make them, there is
 real comfort in the thought that 1t
 has shown greater speed in prepara- tion than any of the other Allied
 governments and fewer mistakes. England Loses Time. England, according to the testi- | mony of her own experts who re- gently visited this country, was two years in doing what we did in less than two months. Russia, for req sons which it is not necessary to rehearse now, has not been de- pendable fighting force at any time during the war, although promising
 to be such now. Heroic France,
 alone among the Allies, showed fighting ability from the first, and yet in France almost two years elapsed before there was display of maximum power. It was at Yer dun and not at the Marne that this maximum was first shown. This city is waking up to the fact
 that the government is really be- coming efficient and that the numer- ous little things which from time to time have provoked criticism were
 merely growing pains and not ev- idence of incapacity. The country is also waking up to it.
 The past week has produced surprisingly small amount of criti- cism and surprisingly large amount of praise in quarters where criticism once was rampant. The steadying force of the gov ernment is the Council of National Defense, with it's nearly a hundred sub-committees composed of the country's experts on all questions of
 finance, commerce and industry. These men are serving the govern ment without pay, even going down into their own pockets for railroad fare and hotel bills.
 There isn't any practical business question connected with war man. agement that one or more of these subcommittee cannot answer. They are the administrators court of last resort and it seems impossible for fatal blunders to be made as long as this relationship exists. The presence of these men in Washing ton is visible evidence of popular support such as the country never has had before in time of peace.
 It is strikingly true when success of the Liberty Loan and Red Cross funds is remembered.
 Washington is therefore waking up, rubbing it's eyes and beginning to realize that things are going for ward quite as well as could be ex- pected, better than many people had expected, and that the United United States is to take such a part in the war as will add new luster to its name.
 This cannot happen without Will mean that many young men now hiph ac that oecuuiad hv Washing ton and Lincoln.
 The carrying out of his plans will mea nthat many young men now going into the larmy will live long enough to look back upon him as men who were boys in 1861 have since looked hack unon Lincoln