The Goldfield news and weekly tribune. [volume] (Goldfield, Nev.) 1911-1947, 1919-12-27
SAVING OUR OWN DEMOCRACY

The Tribune long ago expressed the view that while some
form of understanding with the other principal powers of the
world in relation to the preservation of peace was desirable,
highly desirable, that no matter how nearly the league cove
nant which Mr.. Wilson brought with him from France ap~
preached the perfect ideal of such a covenant, yet there was
one thing more to be cherished by this republic than a league
of nations and that is our democracy, the principle of represen-
tafve government. This could not stand if a president might
successfully claim the right or power to negotiate with other
powers and deny to the legislative branch of the government
The share of council and responsibility which the people have
placed upon it. Better a thousand TIMES that the league and
treaty fail than that the senate surrender its powers or yield
to dictation from any source other than the voice OF the people
as expressed at the polls in the manner by law provided.
And so it is comforting to find others voicing the same doc
trine in support of what the senate has so decislvely done.
This from the New York Sun:
1T has been from the beginning an impossible if
not an inconceivable thing that the American people,
through their constitutional representatives i'll the
United States senate, should vote, at least with their
eyes open, for the merging of any part of their SOW
ereignty in a system of foreign control, or for the
surrender in any degree Of that independence of action
which was dequeathed to them by the heroes and
statesmen who made America free; the far-seeing old
worthless who shaped the course of the republics pros
perity and greatness.
"The arrogant, obstinate pride of opinion which
attempted, in the guise Of service to humanity in gen.
eral, to bring about this previously undneamed of revo-
luton in Americas traditional policies was attempting
at the same time to reconstruct the very framework of
the American system of distributed powers; that is,
to concentrate in the executive the functions and de-
cisions entrusted by the constitution to the legislature,
the judiciary and the people themselves; to substitute
individual will for representative determination; to
erect an autocracy in the false name of democracy;
to establish a virtual dictatorship in a republic which
hates the word"
If the treaty had gone through as proposed, the senate
would have ceased to be in effect a part of the treaty-making
powers of the country, as provided for in the constitution and
that power by the right of precedence would hereafter have
lodged in the man who happened to be president as completely
as it was ever lodged in a kaiser. And if lodged in a Wilson,
why not in a Bryan, or a Roosevelt, or a Buchanan, Andrew
Johnson or Aaron Burr, for Burr came closer to the presidency
than any other man who ever missed ii. No president has ever
vet tried as Wilson has tried to discredit the lawmaking branch
of the republic, and let us hope no other ever will.
In fact, under the super scheme of government proposed
from Paris, congress would have been relegated to a minor
position. Even the right to declare war and to make peace would
have been taken from the representatives Of the people, here
tofore elected for that, among other purposes.