International Morality
Everyone knows that Senator Johnson has been opposed to the treaty in any form and objects strongly to us entering the League of Nations in any way. When Senator Johnson states that the Republican platform is satisfactory to him and that Senator Harding feels as he does regarding the League of Nations, it naturally makes the League of Nations the primary issue of the campaign and places the contest between Cox who stands for internationalism and Harding, Lodge, Smoot and Penrose who stand for a strictly nationalistic policy. In this connection Mr. Cox stated as follows:
“Senator Harding makes this new pledge of policy in behalf of his party. It is as follows:
“‘I promise you formal and effective peace so quickly as a Republican Congress can pass its declaration for a Republican Executive to sign.’
“This means but one thing—a separate peace with Germany. This would be the most disheartening event in civilization since the Russians made their separate peace with Germany, and infinitely more unworthy on our part than it was on that of the Russians. They were threatened with starvation and revolution had swept their country.
“Our soldiers fought side by side with the Allies. So complete was the coalition of strength and purpose that General Foch was given supreme command, and every soldier in the Allied cause, no matter what flag he followed, recognized him as his chief. We fought the war together, and now before the thing is thru it is proposed to enter into a separate peace with Germany. In good faith we pledged our strength with our associates for the enforcement of terms upon offending Powers, and now it is suggested that this be withdrawn.
“Suppose Germany, recognizing the first break in the Allies, proposes something we cannot accept. Does Senator Harding intend to send an army to Germany to press her to our terms? Certainly the Allied army could not be expected to render aid. If, on the other hand, Germany should accept the chance we offered of breaking the bond it would be for the express purpose of insuring a German-American alliance recognizing that the Allies—in fact, no nation in good standing would have anything to do with either of us.”
Honesty vs. Dishonesty
“This plan would not only be a piece of bungling diplomacy, but plain unadulterated dishonesty, as well. No less an authority than Senator Lodge said, before the heat of recent controversy, that to make peace except in company with the Allies would ‘brand us everlastingly with dishonor and bring ruin to us.’
“Then America, refusing to enter the League of Nations (now already established by over forty nations) and bearing and deserving the contempt of the world, should, according to Senator Harding, submit an entirely new project. This act would either be regarded as arrant madness or attempted international bossism....
“The League of Nations has claimed the best thought of America for years. The League to Enforce Peace was presided over by so distinguished a Republican as ex-President Taft. He, before audiences in every section, advocated the principle and the plan of the present league. Regarding Article X, our own Monroe Doctrine is the very essence of Article X of the Versailles covenant. Skeptics viewed Monroe’s mandate with alarm, predicting recurring wars in defense of Central and South American States, whose guardians they alleged we need not be. Yet not a shot has been fired in almost one hundred years in preserving sovereign rights on this hemisphere.
“These reactionary Senators hypocritically claim that the League of Nations will result in our boys being drawn into military service, when they know that no treaty can override our Constitution, which reserves to Congress alone the power to declare war. They preach Americanism with a meaning of their own invention, and artfully appeal to a selfish and provincial spirit, forgetting that Lincoln fought a war over the purely moral question of slavery, that McKinley broke the fetters of our boundary lines for the freedom of Cuba, and carried the torch of American idealism to the benighted Phillipines. They lose memory of Garfield’s prophecy that America, under the blessings of God-given opportunity, would by her moral leadership and coöperation become a Messiah among the nations of the earth.”