The New York herald. [volume] (New York, N.Y.) 1920-1924, 1920-10-28

QlClOnS ana WOrlQ needs mas pTOCeeueu.
Developments here and abroad indicate
that the presidents demand that the
American people subscribe, to stereo-
typed covenant of European workmanship
with arabesque Wilsonian trimmings is
an unwise and impossible demand. 1t will
not suffice to point to the long array of
nations that have subscribed to the cove
nant and ask why they accepted it if it Oe
not altogether desirable. They had their
own reasons for so doing, and as yet they
have not succeeded in making it march.
We Americans will accept it, or will not,
for reasons of our own, reasons deemed
sufficient by us. If we reject the present
covenant that action will not be due to
selfshness, as the president asserts, but
to the promptings of true American
idealism.
The democratic party, responding with
notable dociity to the coercive guidance
of President Wilson, demands in it's ma
tional platform the acceptance of the
covenant without material change. So
does Mr.. Cox, it's nominee It's most all
thoritative spokesman, President Wilson.
charges critics of the covenant with
'gross ignorance and impudent audacity."
1t is a shameful charge. 1t is leveled at
very many sincere Americans. It smacks
of intolerance. 1t is refuted by the rea-
soning of able minds here and abroad. It
is an unpleasant backwash of the free
flowing tide of self-sufficiency that carried
the president, surrounded by his per-
sonally selected satellites, to the Paris
peace conference, there to exchange tha
specific pledges Of his fourteen points for
league of nations so devised as to re-
quire the American people to guarantee
the permanence of many glaring in
justices embalmed in harsh peace. Bitter
words, now spoken against his opponents
by the executive who has failed to force
his will upon the nation are mere UNI
couth debris from crumbling dictator
ship.
That dictatorship is after all the domf-
nant issue of the present national cam
paign. 1t has been acclaimed by the
Democratic party and by Mr.. Cox. It's
shadow rests upon Mr. Cox's candidacy
with the ponderable quality of a solid
substance and it also saturates that candi-
dacy with fluid thoroughness. Indeed, the
movement to make Mr.. Cox president
upon an issue dictated by Mr. Wilson has
come to mean, if not an attempted pro-
longation of. the Wilson regime, at least
an effort, to win an impressive popular
vindication of its harmful policies and
practices. -Four years ago, in advocating
the election of Mr.. Hughes to the presi-
dency, The Daily News said President
Wilson not only has tanned. but he has
drugged the democratic leaders of the
present congress-" 1t said also of those
and other democratic party leaders "They
have now so regulated their own little
mentalities that these minor mechanisms
keep time in complete obedience with the
thinking machine in the white house. This
synchronism is beautifully harmonious.
but it plays the mischief with repre-.
sentative government" That char
acterization still stands as applicable to
the present situation. For the sake of
sound democratic principles the Wilsonian
legend of infallibility should be rejected
by the voters on Nov. 2.
Not merely, nor even chiefly, that there
may be a redrafting from the American
point of view Of world peace formulas
though that is exceedingly important, as
Mr.. Harding so earnestly insists-but
mainly because the American people owe
it to themselves and to their cherished
system of democratic government to re-
pudiate the heresy of one man rule, with
Aeo ihSNic'DiO oWdl iio VI grave cITOTS anu
costly deficiencies, its confusions and
fatuities, its putting of petty men in high
places to be seen and not heard, The Daily
News advises voters of independent minds
to oppose the candidacy of Mr. Cox.
1t has been the good fortune of Mr..
Harding in the present campaign to stand
as the advocate of the nations return
to true representative government. His
avowed preference is for an adminstra-
tion resting upon the joint wisdom of the
president and men in executive Offices
under his supervision, all consulting
freely with other representatives of the
people. He lays no claim to wisdom sur
passing that Of his fellow countrymen.
He promises to lead by harmohizing diff
ferences, to make decisions in the light
of public opinion and with the assistance
of competent advisers 1t is a policy not
only simple and rational but truly
democratic =