The Madison daily leader. [volume] (Madison, S.D.) 1890-current, 1920-08-31
SAYS WEST IS
FOR HARDING
ROYAL c. JOHNSON SIZES UP
POLITICAL SITUATION.

Washington, Aug. 31.-The slogan
OF the west is, He got us into war
and he kept us out of peace" ac-
cording to Congressman Royal G.
Johnson of South Dakota. who has
just completed non-political speak
ing tour of rs speeches in IL middle
western states. Mr.. Johnson has
written to Washington associates of
the close survey he made of politi-
cal sentiment in the territory COW
cred by him, and he declares that it
is certain that Senator Harding will
carry the middle west with an i'm
mense majority.
''If there is anything certain in
politics." Mr.. Johnson said, ''it is that
Senator Harding will be the next
president and that the republican
party will gain greatly in represen-
tation in congress. The people of the
west are for him. Not because they
know him particularly or have clear
impressions of exactly what he will
do if elected, but because they are
through with Wilson, wisconsin, in
ternationalism, initiation and socialis-
tic experiments under the direction
of temperamental idealsts.
They have had enough of profi-
teering with the tacit consent of the
attorney general, bolshevism under
the paternal direction of Louis Post,
assistant secretary of labor, with
sporadic periods of oppression under
the attorney general, with waste, eX-
trayagance and general debility and
lack of vision in the war department
under Secretary Baker and with the
continued fuss and loss of morale in
the navy under Secretary Daniels.
"They are done with any party
or set of them, who, for political rea-
sons, allowed ridiculous initiation of
the price of cotton with stringent
price fixing of western products.
They are sick to death of an organi-
zation that kept them out of war
youth to battle unprepared. Never
will they forget that by Wilson edict
the Kahn amendment to the army
bin of 1916, making as small an army
as 100000 men, was on March %,
1916, defeated.
'They know that the president and
his party talked kept us out of war;
publicly, but passed on Aug. 20,
1916, the council of national defense
act, and that committee, evidently
with inside information concealed
from the people, began to formulate
food control and conscription laws
soon after the 1916 election They
have not minded the fact that they
were fooled in 1916, but they refuse
to be quiescent under the process of
rubbing it in in 1920. They know
the democratic slogan should be He
got us into war and kept us out of
peace
''Ex-service men have not forgot
ten the courtmartial law so earnestly
defended by Secretary of War Bak-
er, nor the abuse of men under it,
nor that he punished men as idealists
who desired its reform, any more
than they have forgotten the GRIM
inal abuse of men in the prisons of
France, while the men responsible for
it not only go unpunished but are
honored.
League of nations! Not one man
in fifty discusses it. They rest firm
in the conviction that America will
take her place in the world after
March A, 1921, when it will be dem
onstrated that more than one man
in this country is competent to dis.
cuss and decide what we shall do.
"They have no spyglass in the
west, revolving swiftly towards all
directions of the compass, but have
their minds set on the ultimate desti-
nation of the little group of men who
perpetrated upon them the crime of
1916. AS one wise old farmer of
Kansas said to me: 1T was their
fault they did it to me in 1916, but
my fault If they do it in 1920
'"Fhe west has paid for its last
blunder in lives of men and money
and will pay to the limit, but when it
pays the balance it intends new
president and board of directors will
handle the cash.
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