EDITORIALS
Why War? WHY IS THE PRESIDENT massing troops on the Mexican border? What reason has he for making a warlike demonstration which is sounding an alarm in every quarter of the world? What canon of...
...Did President Taft's affable hobnobbing with President Diaz last autumn open a new chapter in American history...
...Pressure of the most powerful kind was brought to bear upon McGoVERN to let him go...
...Is it to be found in any former law associations between Henry W. Taft and Attorney General Wickersham, which did business under the name of Strong, Cadwallader & Co., a firm now reprasented heavily in Mexican interests...
...This is quickly laid aside and correspondents traveling with the President on his southern jaunt announce that the purpose is "to stamp out the Mexican insurrection," and if necessary to this end, to "intervene...
...His record, his friendships, his associations clothe him with the confidence of the public...
...A Lasting Service BY REAPPOINTING J. Q. EMERY as Dairy and Pood Commissioner of Wisconsin, Governor McGovern served well the progressive cause in his own state and elsewhere...
...The constitution vests in the Congress the right to make war...
...Taft had before him the example of a line of Presidents from Grant to McKin-ley who for a period of nearly thirty years exhausted every resource of statesmanship and diplomacy to avoid intervention...
...The removal of a public officer, whose only offense was that he actually enforced the laws he was sworn to enforce, whose only dereliction was that he refused to cater to those Food Interests that sneeze every time snuff is taken at No...
...By standing firm against it, Wisconsin's governor maintained the high standard of public service set by his other appointments, notably to the University Board of Regents, and performed an act of far-reaching and lasting benefit to all people who must buy what...
...We did not use our ships and army to uphold the tyranny of Spain...
...Not until the United States battleship Maine was blown up, killing 266 men and officers—and even then, NOT UNTIL CONGRESS AUTHORIZED INTERVENTION DID PRESIDENT McKIN-LEY ORDER THE AMERICAN FLEET TO HAVANA...
...Our commerce with the island valued at more than a hundred million annually was totally destroyed and intervention was not suggested...
...It is right that they should be consulted...
...The people pay the bill, and give their lives...
...It is unprecedented...
...Can he forecast the complications with foreign powers which may result...
...Their wisdom and foresight should have admonished him to pause and consider the consequence likely to result from his acts as he rushed his orders that Monday night to mobilize an army on the Mexican frontier and then hurried away to Augusta to play golf...
...Is it possible that the army and navy of the United States are being used as a side show of a gigantic Wall street gamble...
...And in Cuba we intervened to help a people struggling for their liberties...
...Again we say the whole affair is monstrous and beyond belief...
...The extremely laudatory nature of the President's letter accepting Ballinger's resignation suggests the same authorship...
...Congress should require the President to give a strict accounting of this extraordinary use of the army and navy...
...What canon of international law can be invoked, to justify rushing a formidable army, equipped for battle, to the very boundary line of a country at peace with our government...
...they eat...
...Is it because J. P. Morgan & Co., or Kuhn, Loeb & Co., or Speyer & Co., are the fiscal agents for the bonds issued by the Diaz government, and heavy holders of securities and concessions obtained from the dictator Diaz...
...While you are reading it, remember the Little Red School House of your grandfather and grandmother and the vital and wholesome part it played in all their social activities...
...Never In our history have we done this thing before...
...Millions upon millions of the property of American citizens was laid waste and yet no President advised intervention...
...His illustrious predecessors knew that intervention spelled war...
...The whole affair seems incredible...
...The start was made under the thin pretense that it was a "Military Manoeuvre...
...Three states already are following Wisconsin in this respect by arranging for social center and civic work, similar to that now carried on by Edward J. Ward at Wisconsin...
...The time is past— at least we thought the time had passed—when wars were made by kings to serve their selfish purposes...
...Big Business had marked the militant, people-serving Emery for removal...
...Never was the Public Domain more in need of watchful administration...
...And rightly so...
...Is it because Henry W. Taft, brother of the President, is a director in the Pierson and Son, an English corporation—the largest single financial interest in Mexico...
...What precedent of intervention can he offer as an excuse for meddling in the internal affairs of Mexico at this time...
...American citizens in Cuba were imprisoned and cruelly maltreated in violation of treaty and international rights and still the then President did not call for intervention...
...Our troubles with Spain are fresh in mind...
...In the case of Cuba more than two hundred thousand helpless natives were killed in the long struggle for liberty and still intervention was not invoked...
...Have wa come to this point, that patriotism, valor, and life and death are openly made the pawns of Wall street's politicians, to be moved about as suits the greater profits of Wall street's master spirits...
...To all intents and purposes it is the beginning of hostilities against the Mexican republic...
...Have you noticed how fertile is the soil to-day in which to plant seeds of human betterment...
...Authorship THE BALL1NGER INVESTIGATION discloses that President Taft's report, exonerating Ballinger from all blame in the Cunningham claims, had been written by Ballinger himself...
...Is it because Attorney General Wickersham was until lately a director in the American-Hawaiian company, the corporation holding contracts for the transportation of raw sugar from Hawaii via the Teheuntepec railway, one of the properties of the Pierson company...
...Yet we are told by the President of the United States that "the Mexican insurrection will be stamped out" at any cost...
...We "intervened" in Cuba, but it was Congress,—not the President,—who took that action, and it meant war...
...We did not intervene to throttle insurrection...
...What is the reason for this unauthorized declaration of war against the struggling Mexican people and this unwarranted and unaccountable use of the military establishment of our republic against a peaceful neighbor...
...The story of that conference is told on another page of this magazine...
...26 Broadway, would have been a serious blow against the movement to protect the public from misbranded and adulterated foods...
...Since when has the government taken sides against an oppressed people struggling for liberty...
...A quarter of the standing army is put in the field with equipment, ammunition and supplies as for active war...
...It is a friendly inspection...
...That is to say, to invade this, our neighboring republic...
...It is a relief to have it at last under new guardianship...
...Social Center Idea is Spreading THERE MET at Dallas, Texas, February 17, the first Southwestern Social Center Conference...
...If this means anything it means war...
...Is there any connection between the warlike demonstration against Mexico and the recent conferences in New York, participated in by such men as the American minister to Mexico, Henry Lane Wilson, the fiscal agent of Diaz, Jose Limantour, and Morgan...
...PEOPLE ARE ASKING, quite perversely doubtless, "If the United States Army and Navy is to be sent to Mexico to help old Diaz crush out insurgency against his 'iron rule,' what country is going to lend its military force to J. P. Morgan, et al, to stamp out insurgency against his dominion over the land of the Stars and Stripes...
...Fisher WALTER L. FISHER takes up his new duties as Secretary of the Interior with the eyes of the nation upon him...
...At the Texas conference it was said, "The history of the extension work of the University of Wisconsin is the program of the extension work of the other state universities...
...But we are told this is not war...
...In a time of profound peace the President hurls the army and the navy to the borders of a friendly nation...
...It is "intervention...
...They knew that "war is hell...
...Then think of what an asset to every community our present-day schoolhouses will be, when they are turned into neighborhood centers where men and women, as well as the young folks, may meet in true democratic fashion to study common interests, establish common ideals and work for common ends...
Vol. 3 • March 1911 • No. 11
