The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, September 9, 1918, Page 7

b > > 188 2 R L E { " 1 1 ‘nable battle line. _ misinterpreted. .and dignified thinking at a time when too many e tenance of peace” plunged the world into a horrible war. America and the allies, when victory comes, will take Germany’s gun away. We are now giving our wealth and best blood to wipe off the earth persons and institutions standing for this Prussian kind of “prac- tical maintenance of peace.” Yet the colonel all his life has advo- cated “preparedness”—in other words, militarism—=the thing which plunged Europe into war and later drew us in. When the colonel, in aftacking Mr. Ford, made the rule that - a man’s patriotism and fitness for office were to be tested by his acts and views PRIOR TO OUR DECLARATION OF WAR ON GERMANY, he “laid himself wide open,” to use a common phrase in expressing it. Patriotic Americans will accept that test and subject Mr. Roosevelt himself to it—and find him wanting. PATRIOTEERS LOSING GROUND HESE are war times. They are times when the energies of the people are devoted to the supreme task of maintaining national unity, so necessary in order to support an impreg- With that necessary and justifiable object in view, there has been a spirit, perhaps excusable and unavoidable at first but now fortunately subsiding, which has caused us to be suspicious of each other. There have been too many false dis- loyalty charges. Suspicion has too often been held tantamount to guilt. There has been an effort to conscript opinion, and to per- . Secute neighbors for harmless divergence from the accepted trend in politics and economics. . Unorthodox war views have nearly all been evidences of healthy thinking in a democracy at war. Too often the tendency to hysteria has been deliberately capitalized by sinister interests, which have 'seen advantages te themselves in - fanning instead of subduing popular prejudices. But, while thoughtful citizens frequently have déspaired of the return of tolerance and sanity, most of us have believed too deeply in the American people and their traditional spirit of de-- . mocracy and fair play to think that a better understanding would not eventually prevail among us. We have the right to " demand that fellow citizens be - with us in word and act in the common defense of our country. But we can not expect, let alone demand, conformity with a rigid dogma, too often enforced by selfish interests, as to how the war shall be conducted, how it shall be financed, who shall be our presidents or governors or lawmakers, and what views we . shall hold on politics, religion or economics. ; . The Leader has been watch- : ; , ful for indications of the return of a better understanding of the rights of individual citizens in war time, and we have not watched and waited in vain. From now on it is going to be increasingly difficult to get up mobs to tar and feather somebody, to trump up false charges of disloyalty to use GETTIN' ALONG PRETTY CLOSE ELeCTION in political campaigns and ‘in personal feuds, and to prove one’s. : We are beginning to * patriotism by questioning that of others. _ ! realize that there is too much at stake in this war—that national unity is too precious to permit its undermining by hate, suspicion, intolerance and hysteria among fellow citizens fighting for a com- mon- purpose and a common country. : s itself into the belief that all the poison-spreading editors and news- papers, all the hate-infested politicians, all the patrioteering big interests, have been laid low. But we have seen the dawn of a healthy reaction. There are straws whose meaning can not be A JUDGE WHO IS A JUDGE to bribe a local draft board to exempt his son from military “Crucify ‘him,” the ‘papers demanded. The case ; a FARMER in Burleigh county, N. D., was accused of trying service. " went before a fair judge, Judge Amidon of the federal bench in North Dakota. Because so few papers that demanded that this farmer be drawn and quartered have published it, because it is such a splendid and eloquent inter- pretation of the draft law, and because it is calm judges are running amuck, the Leader herewith publishes Judge Amidon’s remarks about the case as they were reported in the Fargo Daily Courier- News: 4 : St Tt is the first time that a charge of this kind ~ has been brought before the court: ; : .- 'The defendant, Johnson, is charged with hav. (. .ing offered to pay the officers of the local board - - $b00 to secure exemption of his son from military = ' .service. The board resented immediately any such = - - indecent assault upon their integrity. They took - the action which was x:g:es.sary in order to bring The Leader is not deceiving Nonparfisén Teader e ———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— Entered as second-class matter September 8, 1915, at the postoffice at St. Paul, Minnesota, under the Act of March 8, 1879, : OLIVER 8. MORRIS, Editor PAUL GREER, Associate Editor B. 0. FOSS, Art Editor Advertising rates on application. Subscription, one year, in advance, $2.50; six months, $1.50. Please do not make checks, drafts nor money orders payable to indi- viduals. = Address all letters and make all remittances to The Nonpartisan Leader, Box 575, St. Paul, Minn. MEMBER OF AUDIT BUREAU OF CIRCULATIONS’ THE S. C. BECKWITH SPECIAL AGENCY, Advertising Representatives, New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, Kansas City. Quack, fraudulent and irresponsible firms are not knowingly advertised, and we will take it as a favor if any readers will advise us promptly should they have occasion to _ doubt or question the reliability of any firm which patronizes our advertising columns. : could—the board, the United States attorney and myself. I think it is the opinion of us all that Mr. Johnson, when he made this offer, was acting through ignorance and misinformation, without any crim- inal intent. He is an old man, rather broken in body and mind. There was the possible loss of the only healthy child he had, his only stay and staff in his old age. ‘He talked with some neighbors who had very incomplete information in regard to the matter, and they told him that they thought he could get exemption for his son, not by paying money for the purpose of corrupting the board, but sim- ply by substituting a money contribution in lieu of his son. There is enough in the- experience both of this country and of countries in Europe to leave upon an ignorant mind the impression that such a thing as that g 2 could be done. Under the old draft in the Civil war it was possible to do that. It is pos- sible to do it in some of the countries in Europe—to pay a certain considerable sum, and thus buy exemption from military service. -I am con- vinced - that that was what Mr. Johnson had in his mind. = The only proper way to deal with any such subject is to deal with it according to -~ the actual facts, and not simply according to some le- gal stagework that may be built up. - I think the district at- torney has acted wisely in .bringing the matter into this court, where it can be publicly dealt with and where, perhdps, some loose thinking can be cleared up. ‘Under the present conscription act we are in a field where money can not_enter. The son of the rich and the poor stand on a plane of absolute equality.-under that act. There is no possibility by which wealth can buy exemption from military service under that act, and it is one of the fine things in our country today that wealth has mnot attempted it. United States of America knows only one thing—its duty, its needs—and it calls upon every son that it has who falls with- in the age of 21 to 31 to step up to the-line. ; Those artificial divisions which run athwart our life, of birth, of culture, of education, of fortune, they are all of them sponged out here, and all men stand together in a common service to meet a com- mon need. If this small case, in some of its aspects, can be made the means of fetching that sublime fact to the thought of every man, that this war has leveled .all those distinctions which have counted for so much in our life, it will have done a good service. - Now, the capital wrong of Mr. Johnson was that he went counter to the whole scope and‘purpose of this law. - " Mr. Johnson, you may stand up. =~ 1 . j I am convinced that you were not actuated by a corrupt purpose in the offer which you made to buy exemption for your son, but you _have put us all to.a good deal of trouble along with yourself, and you have put the board here, who are giving of their time just.as bravely as. any soldier who is following the colors, the trouble of dealing with" your wrongful conduct, ALLIED ¢ ORWES up as part payment, Upon your contributing $100 - more to be paid in combination with the $100 which the board has, to the local Red Cross, I will' -grant the motion of the district attorney and enter an:order dismissing this charge against you. We wonder. what would have been the fate of this misled but innocent farmer had he appeared - fore a senate committee that ‘many times filled Minnesota The board has $100.of your money which you put o before Judge Wade of Iowa, who sentenced a. - motherly old woman to five years in prison for: making an indiscreet Socialist speech and who, | | from-the bench, castigated her with asviolent and" - | - pompous speech; or before Judge M¢Gee of Min- "« nesota, who said citizens of foreign descent were ~vipers and that Nonpartisan leaguers “ought to - g be stood up against a wall,” and who boasted be- ‘he, 38 judge, had . state penitentiary! &, ., S ARG S S AN TR S P # 1