Ottumwa semi-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1916-1918, 1917-11-16
IOWA is FoREwARNEo.

Tnere are TWO QlS tluCL peiiiS " .Ae
future OF America and to the lnstltu-
! lions of American government Ger
many. of course, is the first. Social
! ism and anarchy, under various
aliases, constitute the second.
I, If the war were not binding US to
/ every other consideration and circum-
stance, socialism and its companion
| isms would loom big as very real
menace and one calling for immediate
and united opposition. To be sure, II
it were not for the war, socialism
would not have received the notice 1t
, has received recently and would not
occur to many of us as peril worthy
OF serious consideration.
And yet, the greatest forward step
socialism has taken--if action lnlm-
ical to the public good can be de-
scribed as forward step-was in
! augurated long before the war came
to America The Non-partisan league
was organized in North Dakota IN
1915. and it was able in 1916 to obtain
, political control of the state in the
same campaign which centered about
the boast that America was being
(, kept out Of the world struggle.
1
, along the lines of revolutionary, wild.
cat legislation that ever was dreamed
/ of in the days when Jerry Simpson,
! cyclones. drought, populism and an
! apparent strain of insanity in its, body
| polite combined to make Kansas the
| laughing stock of the nation.
The Non-partisan league has ex'
tended its organization work into
Minnesota and South Dakota, having
elected a congressman from the state
which saw it's origin. It's propaganda
is quite frankly socialistic and antag.
onistic to the governments policy in
the present crisis, and it includes as
we'll about all the hair-brained
schemes for reform" which have not
been protected by copyright.
| Now the organizers are enlargine
their field of activity with view te
| establishing a hold in Iowa and Ne
braska. It is time for Iowa to asser'
| its sanity, good sense and loyalty tt
the government by closing its doors
/! to the propagandists who are seeking
to inveigle farmers and wage earners
into league OF disloyalty which poses
as an agency OF liberation from polit
! ical party machines.
The Non-partisan leagues platform
of principles resembles the table Of
symptoms for which the old-fashioned
patent medicine was guaranteed tc
| hold permanent cure. Reading
through the latter document, it is
possible for minds sufficiently recep
tive to identify in single human or
ganism every ailment from earache to
appendicitis. Just so the Non-par
tisan league proposes to cure our race
of every social. political and economic
| i'll which has been viewed with
alarm" in decade.
| Perhaps it is because the war has
turned mems minds topsy-turvy thai
the organizers were so successful In
North Dakota and Minnesota. Prom
ises of high prices for what they had
to sell and low prices for what they
had to buy served as the most potent
arguments in enlisting recruits, II
seems, and it was in accordance
with that sort of bunkum that the
| Non-partisan league announced its re
cent disloyalty rally, in st. Paul as
conference for the consideration OF
methods to reduce the cost Of living
This was the meeting at which Sen
ator Lafollette sided with Germany or
| the Lusitania case and invited the con
tempt of loyal Americans.
| The Non-partisan league will not be
welcomed in Iowa by any considerable
| number of citizens aside from those
OF pro- German sympathies and per
suasion. Loyal Americans will rejec
| 1t. Socialists will welcome it. nc
doubt, as offering them new name
| in place of the one which has lost al
hope of political effectiveness because
of the socialist party's record of dis
| loyalty
/, But disloyalty under any other ban
ner cannot lose its identity nor hide
its purpose. Iowa Is forewarnet
against the Non-partisan league.
| PROTECTOR.