The commoner. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-1923, July 01, 1921, Page 6, Image 7
K The Commoner YOL 21, NO. 7 w. u Reduction of Armaments Urgent (Prom Bureau of Research Robert Goldsmith, director; Democratic National Committee, Washington.) Tho Four Horsemen df the Apocalypse have ridden roughshod over the world leaving a trail of want and woo. Everywhere tho hand of industry is palsied with doubt and dread. Con fidonco is at a premium. Credit is all but un obtainable Disoaso is as universal as distress. There are probably 5,000,000 children i'n Europe on tho verge of starvation. Ninety six per cent of tho 850,000 children of Vienna aro undernourished and twonty-flvo per cent of the deaths there last year were caused by tuberculosis due to mal-nutrltion. In and around tho city of Budapest, Hungary, 40,000 people live in freight cars. Upwards of 25,000. 000 in China aro in diro distress because of the recent famine. The Armenians are be'ng ground to extinction between tho upper millstone of Rus sian bolshevism and the nether millstone of Turkish nationalism. INDUSTRIAL CHAOS . In many places industry is slowly starving to death for want of coal as people are starv ing to death for want of bread. The nations in need have neither the money nor the credit with which to buy from the nations that are surfeited with a surplus. Because of underproduction on the one hand and maldistribution on the other, unemploy ment is widespread. It is estimated that the . unemployed in the United States at the present time number 4,000,000, in Great Britain 5, 000,000, in France 500,000, in Germany 450, 000, in Belgium 100,000, in Switzerland 125, 000. Similar conditions prevail in Japan, Italy, Spain and the Scandinavian countries. RUSSIA . In Russia the Red regime is a talo of terror and tragedy. A glimpse behind the censor's curtain suggests that the dream of a happy humanity is in reality a nightmare of social in sanity. Instead of the liberty of the many there is the license of the few. Asking for freedom and justice the Russian people have been given pres ent misery and the promise of future bliss. Thoro is nowhere any freedom of speech, any freedom of the press, any freedom of assembly, any freedom of transit. Crops have failed. Mines are flooded. Factories are idle. Ship ping is congested. Transportation has gone to rack and ruin. There is military conscription. There is labor conscription. The deluded work ingman is no longer the wage-slave of capital ism; he is the bond-slave of bolshevism. FRANCE In France, the nightmare of fear is paralyzing enterprise and making recovery all but impos sible. The fear in France, together with the lamentable recrudescence of Chauvinsim there, 1b tho central fact in the world situation today. It explains why ships aro idle in every harbor. It explains unemployment while the world is waiting for the products of an accelerated in dustry. It explains the feverish competition in armament building. Notwithstanding the fact that the war cost Franco ?40, 000, 000, 000 in cash and one and one-half -million men between the ages of 18 and 40 France is today bowed under the weight of a standing army that numbers 800,000. , Living in morbid fear of the revival of German industrial and military power, and unfortified by specific guarantees that the other western powers will come immediately to her aid in the event of renewed aggression a generation hence, Franco feels, rightly or wronerty, that her only recourse is to gird herself in full military pano ply while civilization staggers beneath the bur den of crushing armaments. THE BURDEN OF ARMAMENTS There Is much talk today, in and out of con gress, about the criminal folly of competitive armament. But nothing is more certain than that plans look'ng towards disarmament are foredoomed to failure unless they Include tho structure of some sort of an international en tente some kind of league of nations that will lay tho ghosts of fear. Gigantic battle ships, built at the enormous cost Qf $40,000 -000 or $45,000,000 each are m'snamed. They are not "dreadnaughts." On the contrary they are the outward sigh and symbol of morbid dreads and doubts. We may be the richest nation in the world but a cusory study of proposed tax Schedules should convince any sensible citizen that wo can nof afford the costly luxury of competitive armaments. And if we cannot afford it then cer tainly no other nation on earth can. The burden of armaments has become intolerable. We have often been called a wasteful nation and cannot well deny the charge. Periodically we wax indignant over the waste of our water power and yet we keep on pouring out money like water for the maintenance of huge arma- -ments in a mad race for military or naval pre eminence. We grow nervously excited about the prevention of fires in cities while we con tinue to spend both our interest and capital, our time and our labor, for armaments that in vite international conflagration. Decade after decade we have spent from two thirds to four-fifths of our total ordinary dis bursements for wars past, present and to come. For the single year 1919-1920 the appropria tions for the American army and navy (exclusive of military academy, fortifications, etc.) was $13,187,368,342, or nearly four times as much as the expenditures for the same purpose for the fourteen years from 1900 to 1914. For the fiscal year ending Juno 30, 1921, our expenditures for what may be called past wars amounted to 67.9 per cent of our total expendi tures and for present national defense (main tenance and expansion of military and naval establishments) amounted to another 20.5 per cent. This means that 88.4 per cent went for past wars and present defense while 11.6 per cent had to suffice for all other government ser vices (public works; primary governmental -functions in the various branches and depart ments; education and research). The disburse ments f6r tho post office department are ex cluded from these calculations as that depart ment is supposed to be self-supporting. For the fiscal year that will end June 30, 1922, the total appropriations for past wars equals 57.6 per cent and for current national defense equals 26.7 per cent, a total of 84.3 per cent, which leaves 15.7 per cent. This is on the theory that the estimated expenditure of $376,904,981 for the military establishment and $412,250,605 for the navy will not be increased before the final passage of the pending bills. Paradoxical it may be, but it is nevertheless tragically true that international affairs are the most local of all issues. The relatives and friends of the ten or twelve millions killed in the recent war can testify that foreign problems are personal problems. The old diplomacy will have much to answer for on the Judgment Day of History. It has been not only secret, but selfish; not only blind but brutal. Diplomats have drawn a veil of vagueness over their machinations. They have made diplomacy synonymous with duplicity, and statesmanship with subtlety. Tho old diplomacy is archaic and must become obsolete, before there can be any ,real healing of the nations there must be a new diplomacy more modern, more practical, more public, more respons'ble, more ethical. In the relations between nations the force of law must take the place of the law of force. The most characteristic fact about antebellum diplomacy is that it was the ripo fruit of the politics of prestige in a word it was battle ship diplomacy. The perfect symbol of the old statesmanship was a sharp sword in a shining scabbard rattling with menace. The statesmen of the old school (and far too many of thorn still sit in the seats of the mighty) were convinced that the only way to play the game was with loaded TUce and loaded guns. To brag, to bluff, to bulldoze to Yiake other aUons cringe in fear this is what went by the name of "diplomacy" before the war And of course great naval fleets and mighty standing armies were the tools of the diplomats' trade. But the politics of prestige has had its fl'ntr and we have seen what it has cost unwardq to 10,000,000 in human lives and over $350 000,000,000 in property and productivity Battleship diplomacy must be torpedoed and sunk by the aroused and determined public opinion of the world. i'uuuc thAfnueaSter ressmaker is quoted as saving that it costs three , times as much to dresV"a woman now as it did.Wyears.agb. Xpplyinl'ull principles of mathematics to the relative quan tltjes used this would mean that .prices are about lix times what they were then; - TWO DEMOCRATS In the Fifty-second congress away back yonder, nearly thirty years ago two young men of eloquence and much, promise one from tho east", the other from the west held seats in the House. One had been a member of that body before, for one term. The other was mak ing his debut in national politics. Both wero assigned to the most important of tho House committees ways and means an unusual com pliment for beginners. Tariff reform was the issue of the day, and they were in full agreement on ' it, standing shoulder to shoulder in the advocacy of a tariff for revenue only. Four years, later the Democratic party made a shift, and put the financial question above the tariff question, and the young man from the west became the party's leader, taking the hon or in circumstances of dramatic intensity at the party's national convention. The young man from the east bolted the nomination, and stumped the country against the candidate; and with his aid the candidate was defeated. They have, not been in agree ment since, though both have remained Demo crats. Last year they met as delegates at San Francisco, the man from the east as the cham pion of the wets, the man from the west the champion of the drys. The two men were in the big stone building on Capitol Hill the other day the one again a member of the House chatting with friends in the chamber,-the other entertaining a knot of admirers in one of tho corridors. They are no longer young, but neither gives the sug gestion of age. The figures of both have filled out. The one has lost much of his hair, but what remains retains its youthful color. Tho hair of the other is still in boyish abundance, but white as snow. ' Upon the whole, time has dealt kindly with both W. Bourse Cockran and William J. Bryan. Washington Star. ... MR. BRYAN AND TJIE .SOUTH United States Senator Tom Watson, we learn from his Columbia (Ga.) Sentinel,' is so cock sure that William J. Bryan will never be elect ed to the senate from Florida that one not famil iar with the senator's lack of reputation as a prophet would be pardoned for concluding that Mr. Bryan's cake is all dough before he gets the ingredients mixed. Recently Mr. Bryan stated that on account of Mrs. Bryan's health he had decided to make his home in Florida. At cv?e a number of the political wiseacres jumped to the conclusion that this was tan tamount to an announcement of his candidacy for the senate from that state. Possibly their guess is a good one, but Mr. Bryan has not con firmed it. For the good of Florida, the balance of the south and the couritry generally, The Times h,opes Mr. Bryan Will enter the senate race next year in Florida and that he will he elected. He would make an ideal senator. His election would add brains to that body, of which it is sadly in need. No sectional issue can he raised in Florida or elsewhere against Mr. Bryan. For the last generation he has gone un and down the land speaking on every phase of government .as only one gifted as he is can speak and not one word has he said at which the people of any section could take offense. In season and out of season he has been a friend of the south. No sensible citizen of Florda would refuse to vote .for "Mr. Bryan be cause he formerly1 lived in Nebraska. From Fort Mill, S. C, Times. , " Ninety-one thousand persons spent $1,600,000 to see Jack Dempsey whip Georges Carpentier in twelve minutes. If money is" so scarce in the east as we have been told most of the per capita must have been consumed in that brief period. Large rents were found in his clothmg says the report of the finding of the. body of a New York man. Well, if such things must be we would much rather the victim would be a prof iteering landlord than anybody else. COMMONER BACK VOLUMES FOR SALE For lack of room to keep them, 1 offer for sale the first eighteen volumes of Tjie Commoner U901 to 1918) v unbound.- -Rl HUNGER FORD, 222.-N.St.fN. W-Washington, D. C. J 1l4JilMiNnr)hrw. v U.at , 1VWJM-fl!4tlHWi'V -.'" 'L.&'j.v.&tiM$&k