Manchester Democrat. [volume] (Manchester, Iowa) 1875-1930, 1919-02-05
THE BACKTRACKING TRIBUNE


One of the most astonishing edi-
torials ever published in an Amer
lean newspaper is the editorial APP
pearing recently in the Chicago Tri-
bune, Are We Trustee for Europe?'
Those who recall the insistance
with which the Tribune urged Amer
lean intervention, and who remember
the Tribune assaults upon everybody
who hesitated, will now appreciate
such sentences as these.
ut is fine thing to be neighborly;
finer to mind ones own business,
particularly when one has great deal
of business on hand.
I'VE are expected to disregard our
own nation, forget America, become
broad, generous, and cosmopolitan.
1--WE may be alleged to have some
duties in Europe, but we doubt If
those duties approach in Importance
the work we have to do here in the
United States"
The Tribune even went so far as
to ask in what sort of community
The Register could circulate, when
it refused to acquiesce in the gen.
eral indictment, refused to believe
that Americans were asleep" were
'fat and contended,"x were "indiffer-
ent to the worlds needs" were lost
in gross materialism and dollar chas-
| ing" and so on to the end of the fam
iliar chapter.
Nobody rang the charges louder
than the Tribune Nobody figurativ-
ely painted the middle west SO yellow,
nobody was so sure that our real
business was on the other side of the
water. We could not move fast en-
ough then to take on European pro-
blems, we could not move fast enough
to get away from our "benighted iso-
lation" and our "benighted selfish
ness"
But now how is it with the Trib-
une? Now we learn that:
European problems are usu-
ally interwined with the inter-
ests of nearly every continental
nation. We consider problems
|
PECULIARLY our own. If we trust
ourselves into the affairs of Eu-
rope shall we not expect to find
Europe intruding in ours. the
Monroe doctrine to the contrary, 2,
Was there ever such an anticltmax?
Fortunately the Tribune was not
right in the first instance, and for
tunately it will not prove right In the
| second The Tribune was wrong
about America being selfish, asleep,
too fat, too interested in dollar !chas-
ing. Without selfish thought Am
erica went to Europe when the duty
became plain and the call imperative.
Having gone, who can believe that
America will scuttle, just when the
fruits of the campaign are tp be
plucked, when the thing we fought
for is about to be realized? Does
anything the Tribune says now ring
true in the breast Of any real Amer
lean?
Never was there such counsel OF
folly as this counsel Of absconding
from the peace conference at YER
sales. The men who hesitated
about entering Europe had $50 years
of precedent behind them and the
counsels of the fathers. But the men
who hesitate about going ahead now
that we are in are mere yellowbacks
with nothing but selfish fear to ap-
peal to. TO have stayed out OF the
war had some justification. To get
out after having entered has none.
Not an American boy went to Eu-
rope to straighten boundary lines or
collect indemnities. Everyone Of
fered himself to advance the cause
of civilization and to establish law
and order in the world. They went
to carry the blessings of American
liberty to the ends of the earth. Is
that mission to fail through any such
counsel of folly as the backtracking
Tribune now offers ?-Des Moines Re-
gister.