Evening capital news. (Boise, Idaho) 1901-1927, 1917-03-26
Senator Borah, in Address
at New York, Defends the
Western Country Against
Unjust Criticism in the
East.
WILL RESPOND IF
THE CALL GOES OUT
People of the West Love
Peace and Want the Unit
ed States to Keep Out of
War, but Are Ready to
Defend National Honor.

In the course of an address in New
York the other day Senator Borah
took occasion to say some things
about the west in defense of unjust
criticism. The senator said:
Here want to digress Cor moment.
1 live in that part of the country for
which certain limited class in the
east are daily making apology. We are
charged with apathy, with a most I'M
enviable kind of pacifism. It Is said
that that kind of pacifism which
weighs personal ease and comforts
against national honor Is peculiarly
prevalent in the west. Bear in mind
first my friends, that that brand of
pacifism was not originally the pro-
duct of the west. 1t is a growth not
Indigenous to the western soil. In so
far as it now encumbers that part of
the earth it was transplanted from a
soil much nearer the rising sun. For
nearly quarter Of century many of
your statesmen, your publicists, your
well organized and highly capitalized
societies of peace have told us out
west about the sword and the plow-
share, that men would make war no
more, that with arbitration tribunals
and q few peace treaties smeared over
with humanitarian phrases, the world
could be made peaceful and perfect,
that patriotism was the last refuge of
the scoundrel," that internationalism
was the first step to the millennium
that those who had not succeeded in
merging all love of country, all pride
Of institutions into that sweetSr, and
holier humanitarianlsm which puts the
South Sea Islander on the same plane
as the American citizen were not yet
free from the shackles of barbarism.
Now IL anything would make a red
hlooded people anemic it would be just
such talk as that. But 1t has taken
only in part.
WEST WILL DO ITS PART.
The people in the west love peace as
all sane and wholesome people do. But
no people in this country will do their
part more readily and more efficiently
when the honor Of the nation or the
rights and lives of its citizens are at
stake and they are called upon by their
government to act. l prophesy that
should their government call them for
its protection they will do their part
as thoroughly as any part OF our citi-
Eenship. The people of the west want
and have wanted their government to
stay out Of this war But IL we are
forced into this war to protect Amer
lean rights and the lives of American
citizens they will respond in the flu
ture as efficiently and as bravely as
they have in the past. 1t was no or
binary people who left the comforts of
eastern communities, the old home
stead, associates and friends and en-
tered the western desert to carve out
those great commemorative
SHOULD CEASE TO WORRY.
would anyone doubt the courage,
the Americanism of a people who made
American commemorative out of ter
ritory which some of our wisest states
men were not indifferent to discard?
Out of this territory they have built
no mean country. Let those who have
suffered such violent changes over
night with reference to peace and war
cease to worry about the west Our
Americanism may be little old fash
Toned, we may not yet have reached the
opalescent empyredn of a league to
enforce peace. we may still have some
inherited prejudices for the politics of
Washington and Monroe and jackson
and Lincoln, but such as our Amer
tcanism is, rough and ancient, the cour-
age of the west will defend il when the
time comes and when their government
calls"