The Leavenworth echo. [volume] (Leavenworth, Wash.) 1904-current, 1918-12-06
LAWENCf SAYS GLOOM HANGS
OVER THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

President Seclusive and Fails to Take
Party or Country Into His Conf
DEMONSTRATING of Republicans a
Blunder.
The New York Evening Post, an in
dependent paper. with decided dem
ocratic leaning printed the following
letter of Mr.. David Lawrence, himself
an admirer of the president and for
years considered as the one Washing
ton correspondent who stood closer to
the president than any other. Hith-
erto he has been consistent and per-
sistent in his praise of President Will
son, and his letter bears the impress
sion of having been written with more
sorrow in his heart than anger. When
we say it created a sensation when
made public we state but the truth.
Mr.. Lawrence evidently printed what
lot of the presidents friends have
been thinking but refrained from
making public.
Copyright, 1918, by N. Y. Evening
Post, Inc.)
By David Lawrence
Washington, Nov. 25th-President
Wilson is himself so strong an advo-
cate of frankness in public business
and politics that he will not mistake
the sincerity of purpose and disinter-
estedness of his many friends who be-
lieve he is face to face with a crisis
in his own career both as the leader
of the democratic party and the repre-
sentative of America at the Peace
Conference.
Briefly, there is a dissatisfaction
and discomfort inside the democratic
party of which the public has hitherto
had no hint, but which, if left uncor-
rected by the president himself, will
mean that as he goes to Europe he
will leave behind detected and de-
pressed following whose enthusiasm
for him will have been seriously di-
minished.
Men who are not office holders but
unselfish friends of the president are
grieved and disappointed. They are
not republicans, they are not his po
litical foes, but they are the men who
helped elect him in 1912 and in 1916,
and they are talking earnestly among
themselves about what can be done to
make the president see that he must
clean house, that he must reorganize
his entire cabinet, and that he must,
indeed reorganize the democratic par
ty in congress so that he will have
advisers in the executive branch of
the government and leaders in the leg
islative branch who are in sympathy
with the true wishes and spirit of the
American people.
After talking with dozens of thes
men, the names of any one of whom,
if published, would carry the convic-
ton that they are seeking only things
which will help and not hurt the pres
ident, one gets consensus of opinion
which is unmistakable. Here and
there are suggestions of method which
differ, here and there are different
degrees of dissatisfaction, but, put
categorically, these are some of the
mistakes which the president himself
is declared to have made or to be
making today:
First, the president in his absorp-
ton in foreign questions, has gotten
out of touch with the true spirit of
America on domestic questions. He
has listened to a small group of advis-
ors who have had his ear to the ex-
clusion of the greater group of friends
who come from the middle west and
west and sections of the east where
people are finding it difficult to recon
cile the brand of democracy which Mr..
Wilson preached at the outset of his
administration with the retention of
distinctly autocratic and bureaucratic
advisers and with his own seclusive-
ress.
Second, the friends of the president
are unable to understand why George
Creel should be taken to Europe as
the head of any committee on public
information when Mr.. Creel, notwith-
standing his fine personality and close
personal friendship for the president
and sympathy with the Wilson ideas
has lost the confidence of the Ameri-
can press, and thereby the people.
Third, the friends of Mr.. Wilson be-
lieve a grave mistake was made in
announcing the dispatch of Mr.. Cree
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