The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1919-09-19

in order to see how the red tide comes in. That
may be seen in the wrecked shops of Liverpool
last winter, and in the streets of Boston within
the last few days. Revolution, to certain Sec
ton of the public, has no political meaning what
ever, it is nothing but synonym for license.
Very few revolutions have been carried out in
the staid manner in which the English disposed
of the second and fourth Of the Stewards. AS
time goes on the red terror seems to become more
of pattern than the methods of Pym and Crom-
well. The ways of the Latin, the Slav, or the
Magyar revolutionary are hardly those of the
Anglo-Saxon and the Anglo-Saxon revolution
airy, wherever he exists, will do well, as Captain
Cutie would say, having found that out, to make
a note of it.
''But the most ridiculous form of revolution
is when perfectly free nation proposes to revo-
utionize ITSELF not at the ballot-boxes, but In the
streets. For nearly century and a helf the
United States of America has been a model of
liberty without license. But today there comes
an element, imported through the immigration
offices, which proposes to extend liberty through
license, which is topsy- turvy way of limiting
liberty by license. In the United States of
America every man has vote, and before very
long every woman will have one. In such con-
ditions to suggest revolution as means of
carrying out the wishes Of the majority is about
as sane as sitting on the branch which you pro-
pose to saw off. The form of government in
the United States today Is that deliberately
chosen by it's citizens voting in public elections,
and obviously constitutes the direct wishes of
the majority. The very next time that the polls
are opened, the voter can go into the booth, and
by the very simple process Of obtaining major
ity make any changes he likes in the govern
nlent of the country. This is by no means to the
liking, however, of the alien, who frequently is
not even citizen, and does not even know the
language of the country he desires to control
He still lives in the atmosphere of Moscow or
Vienna before the war, and seems to imagine that
the only way to effect political change in free
country is to break the windows, loot the shops,
and shoot the nearest policeman. The entire pro-
cess and the entire idea are mere travestles of
the methods of free state, and exhibit an lg-
norance of the American idea of government so
deep as to make it difficult to accept it as mere
ignorance The implication, the whole time, is
that certain minority is not so much innocent
as committed to conspiracy for the overthrow
of the constitution by that means which it has
itself stigmatized so violently in the hands OF
autocracy a coup d'etat.
'In such circumstances all that is sane in the
nation had better exert itself to checkmate the
insanity of the group. All that it is necessary to
do this is, first to be that the laws are just
and that the execution of justice is above sus-
picion, and then to insure that that execution
shall be carried out without hesitation. The
revolutions of the past have been made possible
because the laws were unjust, and those respon-
sible for their execution without conviction.
Washington, however, is not Petrograd. For the
people who vote for the legislatures to contend
that the legislation is unjust is either foolish or
criminal. The government of the United States
today, as it always has been, is in the hands of
the people, and has been stated once and for all
by Lincoln, in the phrase, government Of the
people, by the people, for the people,"