The daily star-mirror. (Moscow, Idaho) 1911-1939, 1919-10-02

were never his real confidants and
advisers.
Presidents often get to point
where they cannot quite realize that
government is Of the people, and peo-
pie never quite realize government as
of themselves. To them it has al
ways been thing apart, higher
power, machine that shapes them
rather than one that they shape. They
have bowed their heads to taxation
while the money was wasted There
is a popular delusion that taxes come
out Of Scotty's Death Valley mine;
that you can take more out of a
business than you put into it; that
you can blow in nations surplus
and still have it; that you can get
and keep-high wages, cheap food
and short hours by passing a few
laws.
Government can do much by seeing
that the rules Of the game are fair,
but it cannot change the game itself
or the players. Over and above every
Congress-ma law there is a natural
law that inexorably nullifies any stat
ute that does not conform to it.
Old Mother Nature drew the one
and only constitution that cannot be
amended
Every penny wasted by incompet-
ent government, every dollar grated
by dishonest state and city govern
ment must be raised by taxation, and
in the end it inevitably passes on to
the consumer and is added to his rent,
his food, his clothes and his amuse-
ments. National, state and city gov
ernments that are wasteful are first
in the long line of profiteers. The
buck in the game of politics is always
passed along to the people.
The man who thinks that laws can
make food plentiful, work light and
hours short might begin by asking
why Europe, with eight or ten million
fewer mouths to feed than it had four
years ago, is hungry? Why Russia,
having decreed all those things that
the red radicals say will bring US
peace and plenty, is starving? Then
let him go on from there.
The problems that confront us are
first of all at home, not foreign. 1t
will help US but little to put the
world in apple-pie order if the rough
house is to continue in our family
circle. Nor can we hope to solve
Europe's problems without the CO.
operation of Europeans. Whenever
one gets in white heat of sacrifice
cursory glance at the foreign press
rather sends ones sympathies back
home. That America should lose much
of her wartime popularity was to be
expected and it to be borne with equ
animity. There is such thing as too
much popularity; and gratitude is
sometimes more tiresome than in
gratitude. Also, it is more expensive.
Too many men are still under arms
in Europe; too many self-determined
countries are showing a determination
to raise disproportionately large
standing armies; too many workers
are still engaged in the manufacture
of war material; too many show a
Discrimination to go back to work. But
unless more of them go into the fields
and the factories America will be
shipping food and materials abroad
to enable Europe to maintain her
standing armies-a ridiculous anti
climax to a war that was waged to
end militarism.
The past year has necessarily been
a series of anticlimaxes, because the
fourth year of the war was the great
climax and what comes now is a dull
and drab but very necessary fifth act.
In it we must untangle the plot, dis
pose of the villain and set ourselves
resolutely to the business of living