The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1918-11-08
AN OPEN LETTER
TO ROOSEVELT
Written BY profound Indignation"
in New York World,
October II

denC 10 berndHyJ Ieel lmpelleu W
write this public letter to you. If
| withhold my name from publication
it is only because a long friendship
with members of your family makes
me 10th to wound them by a per-
sonal note and because l am con-
WINGED that l speak for very
large and almost unanimous con-
stituency. The admiration for you
which l, along with hundreds of
thousands of fellow-Americans have
felt in the past has been gradually
undermined by your failure to be
loyal to any one but yourself.
Both Presidents who have followed
you in the occupation of the most
onerous and responsible position in
the world today have suffered from
your attacks, both insiduous and
open. The one, an old friend and po-
litical comrade; the other, politi-
cal opponent charged with a task
beyond the power of any human be-
ing to perform to the satisfaction of
a critical and necessarily uniformed
country has never received from you
even a suspension of comment, a
generous thought or a helpful word.
have read your public utterances
faithfully and / cannot recall one
occasion on which the winning of
the war has been put before politics,
or any evidence Of loyal support
of your country in its travail has
been shown, or has called forth that
eloquence and force of speech which
you have not hesitated to employ to
attack, to weaken, to try to destroy.
The poison you distil is often dem
onstrated. Based upon your ire
sponsible fulmnations mistaken opin-
ions are formed, doubts are created,
faith shaken. If the household of
your friends and family, who look
upon you as an aracle in much the
same attitude of mind which in
spires the encourage Of the Kaiser,
fair estimate of the accomplish
ments of the present Administration
is impossible to attain. Incorporate
language, the result of conclusions
drawn from insufficient data and
msinformation, is all one ever gets.
They reflect you, and you, appar-
emily, are not capable of a just
judgment. Your vision is clouded
by partisan prejudice and ignoble
jealousy that the great war is
drawing to close successfully for
our arms without and even in spite
of your efforts. You are reported
in the public press as having said
in late speech at Oyster Bay that
the presidents diplomacy was
worse than secret diplomacy, it was
almost treacherous diplomacy" All
who read those words must have
burned with rage and shame. Your
sons have gone to the war. They
went like countless other brave
young men, You gave" them only
in the sense that you were proud
and glad to have them go. Theirs
was the gift, not yours. How many
other parents do you think have
done the same and said nothing?
But it is impossible for you to
say nothing about anything In this
last fact lies perhaps the one thing
which renders you harmless and pow
erless excepting to exasperate. We
have been so long and so persistent
ly inoculated by small doses of your
venom, sometimes fevered and dis
tressed by it, that when we are ex-
posed now to the disease of Roose-
veltism we do not take it; we remain
unaffected and healthy. Only we
do protest that such utterances as the
one have cited are prejudiced,
ignorant, unpatriotic and disloyal,
and we ask that for. your own sake,
and to preserve that remnant of re-
spect which as a former President
we should like to retain, you de-
sist from such offences.
| am, sir, yours with
PROFOUND INDIGNATION "