P THE NEW PROPAGANDA. -Halladay in the Providence Journal. IT DIDN'T WORK. THE LIGHTNING-ROD. -Tuthill in the St. Louis Star. PRESIDENT WILSON TO FACE A REPUBLICAN CONGRESS RESIDENT WILSON'S APPEAL for the unconditional surrender of partizanship in politics has been answered by the country, but with implications and under conditions capable of almost as many interpretations as there are party managers, great national leaders, and others who can command a newspaper hearing. "If you have approved of my leadership, and wish me to continue as your unembarrassed spokesman in affairs at home and abroad," wrote the President in a general appeal to his "fellow countrymen" on October 25, "I earnestly beg that you will express yourself unmistakably to that effect by returning a Democratic majority to both the Senate and the House of Representatives." A Republican majority in the House, and apparently also in the Senate, is the answer, but, even in the moment of victory, the New York Evening Sun (Ind.) cautions these new Republican members: "They are not put in power by the people to run amuck against the President or the Democracy. They are not sent to Washington to undo anything that has been well done. Above all, they are not chosen to obstruct or harass the Administration in any way. "Their mandate is to add their energy and their efficiency to those of the President and his advisers." The Republican New York Tribune accepts the Republican success rather as a "rebuke" to the President's desire for a "complete subordination of the legislative branch to the will and mind of the Executive" than as a repudiation of Mr. Wilson's leadership, and both independent and Democratic organs are strongly of the opinion that the country's Republican answer to Mr. Wilson's request for approval applies to matters less vital than the Presidential leadership. Says the New York Globe (Rep.): "The election, altho it repudiates the proposition that it is improper for any citizen to differ with the President in the domain of ideas and that all Americanism and wisdom are inside his head, is not a repudiation of the war-policy of the Administration or even of its peace policy, now that he has ceased lonehand playing and consented to clarifying interpretations of his fourteen articles." An "all-American Senate. and House" is the one result most generally admitted, with mutual felicitations, by Republicans, independents, and Democrats alike. "I consider it a victory for Americanism rather than for Republicanism," declared Mr. Roosevelt, in his after-election statement, and the New York World (Dem.) publishes tidings of the same import from its Washington correspondent. Even in the case of this one point of agreement, however, some are pointing out that Victor Berger (Socialist), of Wisconsin, under indictment for warobstruction, has been elected over his more patriotic opponents, and, in the words of the Democratic New York Times, "Senator Norris (Republican), of Nebraska, is borne back to the Senate in the rejoicing arms of the solid pro-German vote." Republican explanations of their own success fall generally under the head of their unqualified support of the war, including a policy of unconditional surrender. The state of opinion in the West, where the swing from Democracy to Republicanism was one of the surprizing features of a generally surprizing election, is indicated in some measure by frequent editorials calling for that same "unconditional surrender" which was to come sooner than any of the editors seemed to suspect. Says the Denver Rocky Mountain News (Ind.), one of the papers which feared most lest the "fruits of victory might be lost by diplomacy": "If President Wilson had gone into the innermost vault of the Treasury building and filled his ears with insulated cotton he would have heard the sound of the American Voice. . . "That vibrant Voice spoke in measured terms against notewriting or having dealings with, a government and a people that had committed the Unpardonable Sin. It warned Diplomacy that it must not turn into Duplicity or there would be a terrible accounting. "The Voice was heard in New England and it gathered strength and took its way out across the nation, into the great manufacturing cities, into the prairie States, out into the West and over the Rocky Mountain regions to the Pacific coast. As it passed with the swiftness of lightning it said in a single American sentence, 'Unconditional Surrender!"" An English interpretation, following this current of American opinion, is given in the cabled editorial comment of the London Daily Express: "The victories of the Republican party show that the American people are not only ready to follow Wilson, but anxious to get in front of him. America is for victory unqualified and complete. America is determined to see the end, once and for all, of Prussian militarism." The New York Times differs with all such critics when it declares that "the fear that he (the President) would be too lenient with Germany had nothing to do with the return of the Republican majority to the House." Nor was his "appeal to the country for a Democratic House the cause of the reversal. It is more probable that by that appeal he saved many districts to his party." One "great cause," at least, was taxes: "That party must be powerful indeed that could withstand the dissatisfactions necessarily flowing from the imposition of such gigantic levies. Still, it may be Mr. Claude Kitchin's talk rather than his taxes prompted the rebuke. Laying taxes in billions, the author of the bill would be wise to temper his budget speeches with a note of sorrow; Mr. Gladstone often did that. The present Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee always exulted. He had a fierce joy in taxing wealth, not merely wealth as commonly understood, but wealth in the most modest degrees, represented, for example, by the ability to own a shirt costing more than $1.50. He openly exprest his purpose to put his taxes chiefly upon the North, because the North had wanted us to go into the war. That was more resented, perhaps, than the taxes themselves. It was an amazing blunder, and we think the regret most prevalent in the country to-day is that Mr. Kitchin could not pay the penalty for it by defeat in Scotland Neck." While Republican papers throughout the country, which have been howling for Mr. Kitchin's scalp for some months, speak with less restraint of the coming end of his financial reign, "the present Congress," admits the Democratic (New York) World, "acquitting itself admirably in many ways, is chargeable with grievous sins of omission and commission. . . . Condemnation was invited." After mentioning its disapproval of the President's "interference with the nomination and election of members of Congress," this stanch supporter of the Administration continues: "We shall have no more Democratic Congresses until the people of the Northern States have some reasonable assurance that such bodies will not be controlled by vengeful and parochial politicians from the South who pose as Democrats, but in fact are political nondescripts. "In three or four Northern States there are more Democrats than in all of the Old South. How are these Democrats, devoted to correct principles and yet progressive in the truest sense, to gain victories under the leadership of men who trim and dodge on bed-rock principles and are true to nothing but their demagogy and their all-controlling desire in the presence of anti-Democratic fanaticism to save their own political hides? "This Democratic Congress has at least one hundred working days in which to show that it is a Democratic Congress. It can persist in measures calculated to wipe out the States and the rights of individuals. It can reaffirm its inexcusable sectionalism in matters of taxation and otherwise. It can adhere to policies as to the press and the mails notoriously despotic and discriminating. It can deal with the North as in most of the Southern States the so-called Democratic party deals with the 'nigger-if it will. But it will write Finis on the career of the Democratic party. "If we are to have a Democratic party hereafter, it must not by its classism belie its name. "If the South is to remain sectional, it must beware of a sectional North." The New York Evening Post (Ind.) is equally sure that Congress itself was responsible for the results of the Congressional election. "The fact of the matter is," telegraphs the Washington correspondent of this daily, a man who has frequently shown evidence of being close to Administration councils, "it was confidentially whispered by those in touch with the outlook for the Democrats that they had no chance to hold Congress." These men, in common with numerous other Democratic sympathizers throughout the country, "confidently THE TEMPTATION OF ST. ANTHONY. -Morgan in the Philadelphia Inquirer. cases of individual weakness in that membership." Particularizing, this authority declares: "Resentment against Representative Claude Kitchin, the Democratic chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, was strong in Northern States. Mr. Kitchin himself disagreed often with the President. Yet Mr. Kitchin's leadership swung many Democratic votes in the House, and the country judged the individual Congressmen not by what they might do in the future, but by what they did in the past. Mr. Wilson's name was not on the ballot. The names of the individual Senators and Representatives known intimately to each community were before the voters. They were unable to recognize Mr. Wilson's appeal for an indirect vote of confidence." Forgetting those things which are behind, and taking a hopeful view of those things that are before, the New York Evening World (Dem.) invokes our present need for unity, in the interest both of our national and international destiny: "Whatever political leaders may profess to believe, Americans generally, at the present time, are not markedly inclined to number themselves as Democrats, Republicans, or members of other political groups. They tend much more to think of themselves as citizens of a nation which has been unifiedpolitically as well as morally-to an unwonted degree and for a great purpose. "Instinctively they feel the nation would do well to be in no hurry to divest itself of that unity while so many questions of moment affecting the combined interests of all Americans remain to be dealt with. 'Allowing for the exigencies of the party system, and the "All the people of the United States, of all parties, have felt "All the people of the United States, of all parties, wish to feel themselves represented in the victory and in the reconstructive program to be entered upon with peace." 1 NATION'S RICHES SEEN IN THE LOAN A HOPEFUL SIGN for the reconstruction days coming is clearly seen in the magnificent display of national wealth evidenced in the overwhelming success of the Fourth Liberty Loan, which was oversubscribed in each Federal Reserve District by from 5 to 26 per cent. The unprecedented sum of $6,000,000,000 was asked, and it was not only paid in full, but the oversubscription is credited by the Treasury Department at $866,416,300. In addition, it is estimated by Secretary McAdoo that more than 21,000,000 subscribers participated in the Fourth Loan, whereas in the first three the buyers numbered 4,500,000, 9,500,000, and 18,300,000. graphic statement of the nation's riches is afforded by Mr. S. L. Frazier in The Northwestern Banker (Des Moines, October), Our resources are well up toward $300,000,000,000, or about equal to the combined resources of France, England, and Germany. Our annual production is close to $50,000,000000, amounts that stagger the imagination. Why it would who says: 66 A take ten thousand years to count the dollars representing our country's resources, counting one each second, and working day and night and Sundays." A financial contributor to the New York Evening Post points out that a six-billion-dollar loan would have been by far the largest public borrowing in the history of the world, for the high record to date was England's $4,943,000,000 loan of February, 1917. This "most gigantic feat in world finance" is called “a national victory of no mean proportions" by the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, and it will stand in all likelihood for decades, according to the Des Moines Register, as the "high-water mark of financing for all the nations of the world." If ten years ago, remarks the New York Tribune, any learned professor of economics had predicted that, on top of ten billions of government loans in one year a Fourth Liberty Loan would reach nearly $7,000,000,000, we know what we all would have thought. Yet this paper suggests that tho Secretary McAdoo calls it the greatest single event in financial history, it was probably no greater than floating what now seem the very modest loans of our Civil War. They too, were "the greatest in history" and incredibly more difficult to achieve. The real miracle is not the present outpouring of the nation's wealth, The Tribune thinks, but the vast expansion of that wealth in half a century and its "wide diffusion among a nation of a hundred millions." In the New York Times Mr. George E. Roberts, of the National City Bank, is quoted as saying that we have become richer through the war, tho if there had been no war we might have been still wealthier. That is another question, but the fact is "we have changed over from a debtor to a creditor nation, and I believe that in capacity for wealth-production-that is to say, in capacity to turn out a stream of products and services which minister to the comfort and welfare of our people-we are decidedly ahead of where we stood at the beginning of the war." The wealth-producing equipment of the world is only slightly impaired, and of this country it is greater than ever, according to Mr. Roberts, who is further quoted as saying: "We are going to be peculiarly situated in our foreign relations after this war. We have paid off the greater part of what we owe abroad, and we have lent to foreign governments some $7,000,000,000 or $8,000,000,000. Including all loans by the time the war is over, probably there will be annual interest payments coming to us amounting to $400,000,000 or $500,000,000. How are we going to receive our pay? I am not questioning the ability of our debtors to raise this amount from their people. I have no doubt they can do it, but in what manner are they going to make payment to us? They can't pay it in gold; they haven't the gold to do it, and the total production of gold in the world outside of the United States wouldn't be enough to do it. We won't want them to pay it in goods, for that would interfere seriously with our home industries. . . "There is only one way out, and that is by extending more D AIRCRAFT "DISHONESTY AND DISORDER" ARK HINTS OF "CRIMINALITY that might reach into high places," of the waste of nearly $600,000,000 in "ill-considered experiments, or swallowed up in plain graft," are recalled by various publicists as they size up the report of the aircraft investigation conducted by Charles E. Hughes. Since the days last spring when Mr. Gutzon Borglum's accusations helped to start three aircraft investigations there have been many gentlemen, as the New York Evening Post remarks, "licking their chops over expected scandals, graft, peculation, corruption." "To these allegations," confesses the Brooklyn Eagle, "the report of the Senate subcommittee of some months ago lent a certain amount of plausibility." Even the Democratic New York World, while alleging that the Senate committee was made up of "professional critics of the war," admitted, at the time when the excoriating Senate report appeared, that our aircraft had been "the one distinct American failure of the war." The World's revised, up-to-date conviction, based on Mr. Hughes's analysis, is that the record points to "two great failures." "These are the failures of the facts in the situation to support the chief charges from which the investigation started, and of Henry Ford to function well politically." The New York Tribune and most of its Republican contemporaries are substantially in agreement with this verdict, even tho they are more perturbed by Mr. Ford's shortcomings than are The World and others of its political faith. Authorities so widely separated in space and opinion as the Springfield Republican, the Des Moines Register, the Newark Evening News, the Philadelphia Press, the New Haven Courier-Journal, the Spokane Spokesman-Review, the Syracuse Herald, the Baltimore News, and the Boston Christian Science Monitor are ready to agree that while 'dishonesty and disorder" have been revealed, "the aircraft fiasco turns out to be not nearly so bad as the nation for a while was, perhaps, too ready to believe." The report, reduced to its lowest terms, states that "progress has been made in gratifying measure" under the direction of the reorganized Air Board, but delay, waste, and questionable practises have been revealed in carrying out the program. Of the five men specifically accused in Mr. Borglum's famous letter to the President, Mr. Hughes dismisses Major-General Squier, head of the original Board, as no worse than "incompetent," |