South Bend news-times. (South Bend, Ind.) 1913-1938, 1919-11-02

- aIC happening Will ANiA Inv
raPidity in these latter days. 1t is even UNI
safe for an editor to finish an editorial at
midnight based on the status Of affairs at that
hour. Developments between midnight and press
time are likely to make him look foolish by day
light.
Thunderbolts from clear sky. and then the
vanishing of black and ominous clouds. revealing
a blue dome that to the naked eye. bodies sun
shine unchallenged as if for all time-only to
be suddenly concealed again, in short order,
from another storm king, threatening from an
other quarterl
If it isn't q strike here, it is a strike yonder, or if
not a strike. maybe 1t Is the moonshiners of Ken
lucky and Tennessee, possibly a poet at Fiume,
a United States senator anticipating America GO
ing to the damnition bow vows on the rocks Of
the Paris treaty and League Of Nations, or a
James Eli Watson pleading for the rescue of the
big five packers from the ruinous Investigations
of our "bolsheviki" Federal Trade commission.
Indeed. yes. these are troubIous timesl Just
now, at midnight, Saturday, we are entering upon
the second dav of a miniature Civil war; a war
between your Uncle Samuel and the United Mine
workers-the government having taken up the
cudgel. for once, determined to see whether the
American people, sovereigns if you please, in this
republic, shall continue to be the subjects of
either capital or labor. when these latter come to
invading the public domain as has been under
taken by the miners in this instance.
There must be no mistaking the issue. The
United States government, proposes here and
now. and once for all. to establish its superiority
over any of the groups within it, just as it once
established It's superiority over the Individual
states within it, squelching their traditional claims
to the right of secession.
Ii is Americanism versus bolshevism; the re-
public versus the soviet; democracy versus the
autocracy Of a class.-the latter of which is boil
shevism, end bolshevism only, regardless of
which class it is; capitalistic or laborite.
il
DzSORT to the courts-to the Injunction
N has a saving significance to it, well worth
the while. 1t shows that the United States-the
peoPle-are not afraid to arbitrate. which is all
the resort to the injunction amounts to; a forced
arbitration. not of the merits of the controversy
between the miners and mine owners, but be-
tween the miners and the public, anent the min
ers right to strike.
1t robs the quarrel too of the significance of
a Civil war; making Of it a Civil rather than a
military controversy. Uncle Sam approaches his
revolution. undertaking to restrain it in that or
derby manner, respecting the rights even of the
revolutionists to the point of giving them a hear
ing on such points OF law as they may see INT to
raise in their behalf while seeking to overthrow
the government that gives them force.
The military will back the civil process to be
sure. United States marshals will have at their
back the entire force of the secretary of war.
N = VI dSuIPGI NIiCn / res I CIV OF the
mine workers, hurled at the president, becomes
a boomerang under civil process.
The president, acting through the department
of justice, will feel his way by leaving it to the
courts to order the operations, such as the mill
tary may have to carry out-another good les
son for the bolsheviki. that this is an orderly gov
eminent that does things according to law, rather
than by the Lenine and Trotzky methods, such
as they pretend to condemn, yet try to emulate.
Then too. there is the criminal processes. open
to employment against the conspirators who CO.
operated to egg the mine strike into being; not
a court martial. as Lenine and Trotzky would
proceed, but a civil process, same as the injunc-
ion-only more civil still.
Under this the conspirators can have their
guilt or innocence established by a jury of their
peers. This is a civilized country; civil even to its
rebels. traitors. within
It. The United States government seems quite
void of that Russian barbarity of which Mr..
Lewis, while spouting 'usurper' at the president,
evidences a pronounced disposition to emulate.
He is vouchsafed a hearing on his cussedness,
here N America, that no other nation on earth
would afford him-but that Is not the point.
America is proverbially more considerable of
the claimed rights of its traitors, than is any other
earthly power. 1t is a part of our Americanism;
one of those things that all this trouble is about
whether or not the use of 1t shall be made sub
servient to the abuse of it; whether the sovereign
people, while protecting the rights of the midi
vidual and the group, are without rights to be
respected by such individuals, and such groups.
ill
FORMER PRES'T TAFT in an address the
other night, down east. touched the point
off pretty conclusively-and though we are liv-
ing IN an age of the most insane partisan bigotry,