The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, December 16, 1918, Page 6

% /////l// 'é//f/ / e; Do TNonpartisén Teader _ Official Magazine of the National Nonpartisan League—Every Week Minnesota, under the Act of March 8, 1879. OLIVER S. MORRIS, Editor Entered as second-class matter September 8, 1915, at the postoffice at St. Paul, A. B. GILBERT, 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. NO MORE WAR! HERE must be no more wars. Wars can be pre- vented. The world today for the first time in his- tory is in a position to prevent wars. A League of Nations to enforce peace and prevent the develop- ment of any arbitrary war-making power anywhere in the world is necessary. Disarmament of all nations is a necessary part of the program for the League of Nations. The abolition of secret treaties, the freedom of the seas and the internationalization of colonies not capable of self-government, of canals like Suez and Panama, and waterways like the entrance of the Mediterranean and the Dardanelles, are also necessary. Do YOU want another war? If not, say so! Boost for a League of Nations and disarmament! Think about it; write about it; talk about it! Every man and woman can help. Write your repre- sentative in the legislature to introduce a memorial de- manding it. Write your representative in congress how you feel about it. Imperialists and militarists do not want a League of Nations and disarmament. They want con- ditions to remain so another war will be inevitable. They are thinking, writing, talking against a League of Nations and disarmament. Will you let them get away with it? VICTORY FOR FREE SPEECH HE LEADER believes that one of the bulwarks of our. liber- - ties has been preserved by the decision of the United States senate committee not to prosecute Senator Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin on the charges filed 14 months ago by the Minnesota Publi¢c Safety commission, which demanded his gjection SAFETY COMMiSSIon. from i;‘lle- ufiper ~house; “In these days .vihen, for the filoment lat least, the junkers and reactionaries seeém to have the upper hand : in America, the decision of the senate committee will give heart to liberals. : : i . When Senator La Follette made his speech at St. Paul, Minn., i - in September, 1917, before the great Producers’ and Consumers’ conference of the Nonpartisan league, the Leader pointed out what it believed to be serious errors in Mr. La Follette’s viewpoint on the war, and we also published the statement of the Nonpartisan i league that the League did not agree with ‘Mr. La Follette’s opin- ' _ions on the causes of the war and the position of the United States. However, we very emphatically defended the senator in his right, as a United States senator—an elected representative of the people —to hold what views he chose on the matter, no matter how mis- taken, and to express them if he cared to. ‘ = It will be remembered that the senator from Wisconsin was only one of several senators and public men invited to address the it fhis Noam s b s o APAGR A BEX At o big League "conference on vital questions, chiefly the matter of war profits taxes, and that among other speakers were representatives of the Liberty loan and Red Cross campaigns, who were accorded _ a warm welcome and given a leading place on the program. That the Minnesota Public Safety commission’s charges against a senator for exercising the right of free speech on war questions received even serious notice was evidence that America’s liberal political institutions were menaced. The United States senate could not remain a deliberative body if the right of senators to vote and speak against declarations of war was denied, or if senators were prohibited from working and speaking for peace, after the war declaration was made. If we permitted a precedent of that kind to be established, what safeguard would we have against getting into an unjust war, or getting out of such a war once we got in? : The right of members of congress to oppose war-has, in fact, much precedent. Abraham Lincoln and other notable statesmen during the war with Mexico in the ’40’s were bitter critics of the government and branded the war as a crime. . During the late war the utmost freedom of criticism has been granted men like Roosevelt and Lodge, who attacked the state- - ment of war aims we made to the world and bitterly assailed the president. " Yet, because La Follette was known as a progressive, he was pursued with malice and hate by the junker press. The decision of the senate committee was that, even if he said what the Min- nesota commission charged him with saying, it was not ground for ejecting him from the senate. Any other decision would have struck at the very foundation of our free political institutions. WE ANSWER THE- PIONEER PRESS HE newspaper hack hired by the publishers of the St. Paul ' Pioneer Press to write editorials against labor and farmer organizations probably holds his nose with one hand while writing with the other. Right now his orders are to build up a tradition against farmer and labor organizations by continually insinuating that they and all measures they favor are “bolsilevik” and are working for a “red revolution” in America. Consequently the Leader’s editorial of two weeks ago, entitled “Peace—and Then . What?” which was an argument for well-considered and orderly reforms as opposed to violent and bloody changes, was rather dis- concerting and had to be “answered.” - The Pioneer Press “answer” appeared in its issue of Novem- ber 26, and was an attempt to prove that the Leader did not mean what it said and that we really wanted bloodshed and anarchy in America. The whole editorial was an ignorant appeal to prejudice. It was merely a part of the present systematic campaign by the big newspapers to prejudice the public against all reforms, no mat- ter how moderate, on the ground that they will lead us to con- ditions such as exist in Russia. : The Leader editorial made no defense whatever of the Russian soviet republic nor of the radical socialistic regime set up in Ger- ‘many. We._did, however, say that these people should be per- mitted to work .out their own salvation, without outside interfer- ence, the same as America worked out hers in 1776. The govern- ment we set up then in.America was, to those times, fully as rad- <7cal as the Russian and German governments are today in these . {imes. - Yet 'we would have taken it as'a-very particular and studied kind of persecution if the world powers had formed an alliance agalzlst us in 1776, and attempted to dictate our form of govern- ment. - : After referring to our demand for the self-determination of European peoples in accordance with one of America’s announced war aims, the Pioneer Press editorial hack delivered himself of the following petty appeal to passion and prejudice:- e " In other words, let the dear, slandered Lenine and Trotzky con- tinue their “people’s government” of blood and terror, imprisoning and slaughtering all who express a difference of political Views and - . all convicted of the crime of owning property or taking a weekly bath - ..—let them forever and aye prevent the holding of a popular election until they are reasonably sure that the opposition - in-the jails and cemeteries. s R ; £ Then let the bolsheviki of Germany and Austria arise and do like- wise, substituting for the reign of William and Charles the reign of the red guard, setting up in place of the partially expressed voice is safely cared for . :