Arizona republican., 1919-09-08
Roosevelt and a Peace League

 respect to the peace treaty and the League of Ma tions?" There was such turning to Roosevelt alive as there is to Roosevelt, dead.
 Men who had opposed Roosevelt bitterly in his life time are now sezng upon his detached utterances on the subject of world peace agreement as argu- ments for and arguments against the covenant of the League of Nations.
 We have this from the Des Moines capital:
 The Sioux City Tribune says, 70 for Roosevelt"
 There are many millions of Americans who are saying the same thing. Colonel Roosevelts clarion voice today would point the for many thousands He would tell all about the peace treaty and the covenant and would advise what to do. The re- publicans of the United States would like have the peace treaty adopted if they do so without aban donng any real American interests.
 Republicans in congress feel that the president has been selfish reliant and that he has ae cepted no counsel worth while. Now the president IS debating treaty and covenant with the republican senators and is maintaining himself quite we'll How ever consists in telling the senators that if the treaty is amended we must return to Germany with hat in hand to ask Germany to sign it again. No American would rejoice in seeing this done The president does not confess that he IS the man who put his country into it's present shape in regard to the Paris treaty.
 We join the Sioux City Tribune in exclaiming, 70, for Roosevelt"
 Why this turning of the American people when in doubt to Lincoln or to Roosevelt? We may conceds that neither was the wisest the most far-seeng or cear-seeing of his time though each, at the time of his death and for period before, was the one overshadowng American It not, admit the wisdom of these great Americans to which the people in great crises turn but their rugged common sense and honesty.
 In the present crisis it is not the wisdom of our present leaders who are for and against the League of Nations that the people dstrust. but their good faith They are in doubt whether the dangers which the opponents of the say turk in that Nv andf whether the president and the of the treaty are not attempting conceal those dangers In short the people do not know whom to believe and whom to trust.
 There are some things with respect to Roosevelt's attitude toward a world league for peace that we know from his frequently spoken words. We know that the winner Nobel prize many years favored world arrangement for peace but arc lacking the details of such arrangement. We also know that there something dearer to Roosevelt than peace and that Amercanism and national ism. We know that when President Taft nego- tiating in 1912 those peace treaties from which to eliminated the reservations of existing treaties, from arbitration of questions of national honor and vital interest they vigorously by welt destructive of nationalism This attack was renewed by him upon the Bryan peace treaties in which objectionable Article III of the Taft treaties which threw into the arbitration court, and made justciable, every of dispute between nations From this must know that Roosevelt, if living would oppose any agreement in which there might be sacrificed any shred of Amer ican sovereignty Whether he would join in the depreciation which the opponents of the have placed upon it. cannot know for the language of the covenant framed after he had ceased to speak
 We may be that he would certainly, if living, disagree with the utterance the president at +ir1ae in vubi ba hae daoJa <ha+v rfce something of sovereignty for humanity and may be absolutely that he would condemn those senators republican and democratic who may attempting the utter destruction of world agreement under which sovereignty would be preserved
 The only expression of Roosevelt which could have a bearing upon the covenant article which he prepared for the Metropolitan magazine only short time before his death and which is printed in the September number. At the time of it's preparation there had been hint of the nature the covenant It was only known that would be offered but it not known that the inter- -twinng of it with the peace treaty contemplated.
 In that article Roosevelt>after outlining in only general his plan of world convention of peace trusted that it would be based upon the misty. dreamy and to him. mystifying fourteen points Said he:
 If the League of Nations is built on a document high sounding and meaningless as the speech in which Mir. Wilson laid down his fourteen points it will simply add scrap to the diplomatic waste paper basket. Most of these fourteen points like those referring to the freedom of seas to tariff arrangements to the reduction of armaments police force for each nation and to the treatment of colonies, could be interpreted, and some of them by President Wilson and his advisers. actually were interpreted) to anything nothing. They absolutely true to the traditions of the bad old diplomacy, for any nation could agree to them and yet the right to interpret them diamericay the opposite manner to the interpretation that others put upon them"
 MT. Roosevelt issued this warning:
 Tn living to the promises after once the league has been formed the chief will be insstence upon keeping faith when keeping faith is irksome or un- pleasant But in forming the league chief danger will come from the enthusiastic persons who in their desire to realize the millennium at once right off play into the hands of slippery politicians who are equa, ready to make any promise when the time for keeping it is far distant and to evade keeping it when the time arrives"
 We learn also from the article the Metropolitan that Roosevelt did not favor world pact in the be ginning. He advocated a league consisting only o the allies and the admission of other nations as the conduct through term of years seemed to warrant He said further, and this has bearing upon the mat