Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-03-13
DESTINY STILL AIDING
THE PRESIDENT IN PARIS
Time Is Swiftly Proving the Validity of
His Plans and the Need for a
League Of Nations

| w France today he will go with new
| endowments Of strength to the task at
Paris. The forces Of destiny are still
upon his side
| The Reeds and the Shcrmans arc but
thin voices in the present camor. The
really powerful enemies Of the President
and the league of nations are behind the
| scenes in Europe. They are the hidden
groups who hold that their own peculiar
interests arc above those Of the state
the internationalized banking cliques, the
adventurers in empire, the munltion
makers and the cXpoitcrs Of misery.
These arc the powers which the Paris
Conference is trying to djsarm, and they
have had SOLDERING interval since Mr..
Wilson sailed for America.
The ground has rocked under their
feet and the skies have been filled with
omens to prove that decent and perma-
nent peace is imperative. They have
realized that it is the faith of the peo-
Piles of Europe in the United States and
in its chief representative that actually
is holding their civilization together, and
they are in a mood to listen TO reason.
If the President returns, as he prob
ably WILL with league Of nations plan
in which the Monroe Doctrine is ex-
plicitly as well as tactly sustained it
will not be because of the Senate criti
cism, but because some Of the old world
statesmen have had time TO look about
them and to consider the consequences Of
failure at Paris.
From the first Mr.. Wilson has insisted
merely on a peace drawn in the interest
Of the people rather than in the interest
of special groups and for that he has
been called dangerous, and even pro-
German. He has realized what every
rational man must perceive now, that out
of the present turmoil in Europe there
can come only anarchy or a new tyrant
nation if the new international agree
ments do not finally eliminate the posi-
blity of wars of conquest.
1t is reasonable to assume that the
President has proceeded on the assump-
ton that neither alternative would be
safe for America. Yet there are Sena
tors in the United States who still insist
that they do not know what he is drv-
ing at.
But we are learning. 1t is easy to
recall the wild tears that were shed in
newspaper editorials, the hands that
were wrung in print, the cries Of outrage
and horror that arose among editors and
politicians who vowed that the world was
coming to an end when Mr.. Wilson first
sailed for the Peace Conference. That
sort of thing is in the past. 1t is inter-
esting to observe that the storm of criti-
csm from the tory side in every Euro
pean country has abated and even the
reactionaries now admit the wisdom of
! the league of nations plan. Are they
too late, as they have always been?
Have they plotted and quibbled too long?
Is peace of any sort to be impossible for
years in the old world?
The unhappy soil of Europe has
always bred tyrants Of one sort or an
other. The tyrants who menace the con-
tinental countries now are the half-mad
leaders of Bolshevism. Like those who
preceded them, they are exploiting the
ignorance and the unhappiness of op-
pressed peoples. The fools and scoun-
drels in older governments are, in the
final analyst to be blamed for this new
affiiction, since their crimes and their
errors have made the foundation upon
which the lunatics like Trotsky can rear
| structures of their fantastic pretension.
| If there had been no war there would
have been no Bolshevists.
If the diplomatists at Paris could have
made it plain at the beginning of their
sessions that fixed peace was to be
established in the world, the hysteria
that is devastating parts of Europe
would be dying out now instead Of
spreading and gathering force.
The simple fact of the matter, already
| obvious to any one who has seen Europe
| at close quarters since the war ended, is
that the masses in the different countries
are heartily and properly sick of hating
one another They themselves are at
tempting a sort Of reconciliation, which
their representatives at Paris have
worked overtime to prevent. Yet the
American policy Of pacifcation in Rus
sia and fair deal for the German peo-
pie was called heresy by the old
fashioned statesmen when the sessions
of the Paris conference were begun.
The wisdom and the necessity for some
such policy is acknowledged now every
where. On the whole, Mr.. Wilson's
sojourn in Europe has been vastly bene.
fetal. He showed the European diplo-
masists way out of the appalling blind
nliey into Witch tbey had been driven.