Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1919-03-07
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OpDose League of Nations

Omaha, March 4.-To the Editor
of The Bee: AS an old-time believer
in the Americanism of Washington
Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, John
Adams, Jackson and Harrison, for
one want to express disapproval of
the League of Nations, as it is called.
It would be opposed today by Lin
coin, by Grant, by Blaine, by Gar
field, by Cleveland and by Roosevelt
were they among the living. 1t is
my opinion that if the project was
submitted to the people of the United
States today that it would be voted
down by an overwhelming majority,
for most of us believe that as we
grew great and prosperous as a ma
ton without mixing up in the polit-
ical affairs of other nations, that we
should continue that policy in the
future.
When we had a war among our
selves in the war of the rebellion, we
strongly resented interference on the
part of England on the side of the
South and when the English did help
destroy part of our commerce upon
the seas, we made them pay us
millions of dollars damages for their
interference. When President Will
son practically forced congress to
pass law for the charge of tolls to
our own vessels in our own Panama
canal at the dictation of England,
the people of the United States re-
scented such interference on the part
of England, and had there been a
chance at the time to remove the
president for that act, he would sure
ly have been removed.
The people of the United States to-
day demand the rapid return of all
their troops who are on foreign soil,
for they were sent to Europe for a
purpose and as that purpose has
been accomplished by the loss of
tens of thousands of the best young
men of America, and as Germany has
already been practically disarmed
and lies impotent at the feet of the
allies, there is no further excuse or
demand for the retention of our
troops on foreign soil. We do not
want to bind ourselves as q nation
to the political affairs of the nations
of Europe, for we have problems of
our own that need solution, prob
lens that will need wise considera-
ton by ourt1wisest statesmen. The
League of Nations is bound together
with ropes of sand and the binding
will break almost as soon as the
League is formed.
1t is all right for us to make treat
les among the other nations of the
earth, but when we come to be-
come a part of one great whole, with
all kinds of peoples and all kinds Of
nationalities, with all kinds OF aims
that are divergent from each other,
then we should stay by ourselves and
solve our own problems without the
aid or interference of other nations.
The days of the millennium have not
come as yet and all the Missionaries
like Wilson and Bryan cannot
change the people of the earth by
their visionary scheme of league Of
nations.
President Wilson should stay home
and help solve the one great problem
of the South, of the disfranchise-
ment of both black and white voters
of the southern states who are dis
franchised by the hundreds of
thousands. They were good enough
to go to France to fight for what
Wilson calls democracy, but the
southern democracy is not willing
that they should exercise the right in
their own country, which they were
compelled to fight for in other coun-
tries.
Before forming any League of Ma
tions we should show some consis-
tency by making it safe for every
citizen of the United States to cast
their votes as freely in Mississippi
and Virginia as in Maine and Ne
braska. Let us solve our own ma
tional problems.
FRANK A. AGNEW.