Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1919-03-05
p, 6,,oeiated Press.

New York, March s. President
Wilson in his speech at the Metro
politan Opera House last night said:
my fellow citizens, 1 accept the
intimation of the air just played. 1
will not come back till its over, over
there And yet 1 pray God, in the
!, interest of peace and of the world,
that that may be soon.
THE first thing that I am going
to tell the people on the other side
of the water, is that an overwhelm-
ing majority of the American peo-
pie is in favor of the League of Ma
tions. | know that that is true; 1
have had unmistakeable .intima-
tions of it from all parts of the
country, and the voice rings true in
every case. 1 count myself fortu-
nate to speak here under the un-
usual circumstances of this evening.
l am happy to associate myself with
Mr.. Taft in this case He has dis
played an elevation of view and a
devotion to public duty, which is be-
yond praise.
No Party Issue
And I am the more happy be-
cause this means that this is not
a party issue. No party has the
right to appropriate this issue, and
no party will in the long run dare
oppose it.
I'VE have listened to so clear and
admirable an exposition of many Of
the main features of the proposed
covenant of the League of Nations,
that it is perhaps not necessary for
me to discuss in any particular way
the contents of the document. L
will seek rather to give you its
setting. l do not know when [ have
been more impressed than by the
conferences of the commission set
up by the conference of peace to
draw up a covenant for the League
of Nations. The representatives of
fourteen nations sat around that
board-not young men, not men in
experienced in the affairs of their
own countries, not men inexperi-
enced in the politics of the world;
and the inspiring influence of every
meeting was the concurrence of pur-
pose on the part of all those men
to come to an agreement and an
effective working agreement with re-
gard to this league of the civilized
world.
There was a conviction in the
whole impulse; there was convic-
ton of more than one sort; there
was the conviction that this thing
ought to be done, and there was also
the conviction that not man there
would venture to go home and say
that he had not tried to do it.
Taft Sets Picture
MIR. Taft has set the picture for
you of what a failure of this great
purpose would mean. We have been
hearing for all these weary months
that this agony of war has lasted
because of the sinister purpose of
the Central empires, and we have
made maps of the course that they
meant their conquests to take.
Where did the lines of that map lie,
of that central line that we used to
call from Bremen to Bagdad?
They lay through these very re-
gions to which Mr.. Taft has called
your attention, but they lay then
through the united empire, through
the Austro- Hungarian empire whose
integrity which Germany was bound
to respect as her ally in the path
of that line of conquest; the Turk
ish empire whose interests she pro-
fessed to make her own lay in the
direct path that she intended to
tread.
Empires Disappear
And now what has happened :?
The Austro-H Hungarian empire has
gone to pieces and the Turkish en-
pire has disappeared, and the ma
tions that effected that great result
for it was a result of--2Iheration
are now responsible as the trus-
tees of the assets of those great ma
tions. You not only would have
weak nations lying in this path, but