New Britain herald., 1919-02-22
WHAT WILSON IS DOING.
Republican Newspaper ExpIodcs Ar
 gumentS of Presidents Critics.
Philadelphia Public Ledger)


 what Woodrow Wilson-decent, peace loving American citizen-is trying tc do. He may have undertaken the inn possible; but ln the peasant villages Of Poland, in the murderOuS coal mines of Silesia and in every con- scrlpt-cursed country from the Pacific to the Atlantic the dumb driven cat ue there made of our brothers most earnestly hope and pray not. One tIhhg at all events is very certain, and that is that if Woodrow Wilson were 10 throw np his hands and come pack to America wdth the message that he found it impossible to get q peace carrying content and opportun- ny to all that this latest peace must De Ike the old one, leaving some na- tons Tn shackles so intoIerable aS eventually to compel revolt a great 0ish or despair would sweep over the olo world that all the fanfares of inn Perlallsm could not drown | ct at the very crisis of his cru. saoe' When the scales swing hourly between success and failure. com. pany ot lncorrigible partisaas gather. ca Tn luxurious New York hotel and Tn the name of Lincoln sought to as4 sass1nate the influence of a. war presi. dent, wrestling with pressing prob. lems Of reconstruction on which hans me whole future, not of 8 nation but ot world. It is amazing: it Woalld
 be incredible if this petty spirit had not peeped out elsewhere before: its slashing assaults upon our war prest. dent were no doubt cabled to Euro,Aa and are being chucllled over today bv every protagonist of the ancient and.
 uhholy system We had hoped to slay, system of secret chicane, of callous 1CC universal youth sacrificed to the Moloch of militarism.
 James M. Beck one of the sneak CTS, took the responsibility of ssvina that the president, in his effort to se- cure a permanent peace, stands "as one man, and one man alone, against the express mandate of the American. peopIe pledging this country so far as he can to policies subversive to all the pillars of this government and which set at naught the most sa cred traditions as expressed in
 W ashlngton's Farewell Address, Continuing, he added:
 T say that Woodrow Wilson's for eign policy, from the time he took thg reins of office until the present hour
 has been a black stain of dishonor upon the American people. His prin- c1ples have been crazy patchwork of contra adiCtions, but to one idea hs has been consistently loyal, and that IS that this great war, the greatest in the history of the world, must end in peace without victory. He empha- sized that in 1915, and at the present hour he only so far modif1es this poJ- icy as to make it peace without full victory and that is exactly the sig nif1caAce of that which is now taking T0l n ourselves and our faithful allies"
 Then Mr. Beck goes more into de- tails. He accuses the president of making his league of nations "a pre- text to dictate a peace without full victory, of committing 'incredibls baSeness in the name of the American people," of bullying Great Britain and France" and of menacing flnancially-crippled France with with draWal of our financial support and threatening Britain, dependent upon her navy, with a greater American navy if she does not accept his policy. He even invokes the shades of Lincoln and Washington, who are represented as amazed at "Woodrow Wilson's work in the last four years sapping the foundations of our gov ernment with a policy of universal, world-w wide intrigue that could olly mean permanent abandonment ot Washington's policy" As for Lincoln, he is made to complain: 1T poured out my hearts blood to save the con- stituton of the United States, and that which I have saved you (the president have gone far to under mine"
 It is difficult to deal patiently with an irresponsible farrago of misrepre- sentation partisan malice and hap hazard bludgeoning like this. If the references to Washington have any discerning meaning, they imply that President Wilson has disobeyed Washington and gone in for "entang- ling allianCes' Yet every schoolboy knows that that is exactly what he has most meticulousIy avoided doing; and those who have sat at the feet of MT. Beck in his belligerent outbursts have imagined that an American "alliance" with the allies was exactly what the latter most wanted. President Will son always refers to the allies as the nations with which we are asso- ciated mot allied-and his league of nations is the only known scheme by which the Ulted States can help these nations keep the peace without entering into "entaagling alliances with them. President Wilson is in this regard the true heir Of Washington, and MT. Beck has been one of the most persistent rebels against the Washington tradition. That is, ot course, on the assumption that he has meant the plain implication of his own Words-something one cannot be quite certain of after the irrelevances and non sequiturs of the Lincoln din- ner
 As for "bullying France and Brit ain,' that is a libel The president has told France the plain truth-that a league of nations is her only sure