The Elk Mountain pilot., 1921-10-20
WE CAN'T AFFORD 1T


facturers and bankers of the whole
world want peace. Those who are not
inspired by humanitarian motives
want it for business reasons. The
idea that anyone can make a profit
out of war and keep it has been ex-
ploded. The theory that the world
can continue its armament expendi-
lures and keep out of bankruptcy has
gone the way of the ZR 2.
Who is it then that wants war?
Who then stands in the way of dis
armament and world peace? When
an overwhelming majority of the peo-
pie everywhere want something that
will above all else make for their
happiness and prosperity-why can't
they get it? Is it because the worlds
leaders are fumblers, untitled for the
responsibilities they have assumed?
We are going to find out We are
going to have showdown in Novem-
ber. We shall know then whether
these leaders are sincerely for peace,
secretly for war, or just incompetent
trimmers; whether they are really
statesmen or merely politicians with
the vision and ideals of ward heelers,
dressed up in broadcloth. In many of
it's aspects the Versailles fiasco was
like a partisan convention where
every petty politician of the domi-
nant faction got his. We can't afford
another like it.
The purpose of the conference has
been carefully limited, but so far as
the people are concerned there is no
limit to what they can see, hear and
learn about the wishes and qualifica-
tions of their leaders. And the limits
have been imposed by the will of the
leaders and not by the will of the
people. The conference cannot go too
far in the direction of disarmament
and peace to suit the world
Closed sessions, barred doors and
stuffed keyholes will not keep the Sc
crets of the conference. Platitudes,
buck-passing, postponements until a
more convenient season will not avail
to excuse a failure to arrive at a
clear-cut decision. This is the con-
venient season; this is the appointed
hour in the history of the world; this
is the leaders big chance to prove up.
For this is not only conference but
it is trial. The world will not stand
for another Versailles. Peace or
sword? is the fundamental question
before the conference. Works, not
words must be the answer.
The names of the conferees are be-
ing announced. Some inspire conf
dence. Some were figures in the Ver-
sailles fiasco. Too many represent
politics; too few represent commerce.
One wonders why Hoover with his
experience and his passion for peace
was not chosen. One wonders, too,
why the farmers who furnish the
bread and the boys; the laborers
whose Drawn and whose sons are con-
scripted; the manufacturers who give
over their plants and their children
to fight wars are not able to make
their voices heard when their future
and their very lives are at stake
Among the representatives of the
nations there should be none who has
gained honors, preferment and politi-
cal advantage as the result of wars,
though there are in this class many
men who are sincere and patriotic
according to their lights. But even
if some of the delegates are chosen
from among them their presence will
not be so important as it might be
under different circumstances, be-
cause other delegates, though unin-
vited, will sit with them in the con-
ference watch their every action,
weigh their every word and then, un-
asked, render final judgment on them
and their work.
These unlimited delegates are those
millions with nothing left to them
but the memory of their dead-dumb
peasants toiling in the fields on which
their husbands died-for what? Moth
ers in France, in Britain, in Belgium,
in Italy and in America, whose sons
were shot down in the trenches-to
what end? They were told that their
men died to end war. Will this con-
ference try to redeem that promise?
These wives and mothers of the
world will listen, weigh, judge, brush
ing aside sophistries, impatient of
political juggling. With them the
MANNED and the blind, terrible in
their futile mutilation, will sit in the
conference, and beside them those le-
gions of our youth who came home
physically unhurt but spiritually
MANNED and bereft Of their rightful
inheritance; and those other millions
who planned, sacrificed and toiled,
buoyed I'M in their Labor of waste and