"VA 4 1 THE PROTECTIONIST A Monthly Magazine of Political Science Signed articles are not to be understood as expressing the views of the editor or publishers. JANUARY, 1918 No. 9 A GODSPEED By Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews (By permission from Scribner's Magazine for December) God speed Old Glory when she takes the road to France! Through the thundering of the legions where the bugles play advance God speak: "The fight is mine. Carry you my conquering lance. " God speed Old Glory on! God send Old Glory first and foremost in the fight! Fling her far, O God of battles in the van, for the right. God guard Old Glory clean through battle grime and sweat! God bring Old Glory home in honor, might and pride! Copyright, 1917, by Charles Scribner's Sons. MILITARY AND INDUSTRIAL PREPAREDNESS. Stop Procrastination, Begin Preparation-Peace Needs Its Preparedness As Well As War. "Too late" is the bitter characterization which Lloyd George applies to the Allied strategy during three stupendous years of war. "Too late" to save Serbia; "too late" to serve Roumania; "too late" to aid Italy; but there is some excuse for countries upon which was forced without warning the mammoth task of warding off the sudden blows of a militaristic empire that had worked out with satanic ingenuity the minutest details of a crushing European campaign. War broke upon a stunned and startled Europe with such suddenness that the marvel is that a sufficient force was mobilized at the Marne to save Paris, to save France, to save the world. But there is no such excuse for America. For two years there blazed before our eyes, in the flames of burning Belgium, of Northern France, of Serbia and Roumania, the terrible menace of Teutonic preparedness and power. we looked as a blindfolded man toward the warning. Through those wasted, drugged and doubting years we idly watched the conflagration spread to distant continents and flash in sombre import upon all the seas. But Deluded by the false hope that the war would be brought to a speedy end, that flesh and blood could not stand the awful strain, that economic exhaustion would reduce Germany to a condition of collapse, we became neutral instead of belligerent, and remained unprepared when we should have strained every effort to defend our honor, our rights and our liberties. With astonishing callousness we watched the brewing of the storm and with childlike ineptness we filled positions of the highest responsibility with theorists and pacifists. While the strongest men of the nation should have been summoned for concerted action toward preparedness all efforts to arouse the country to its danger were frowned upon and, with studious and painstaking care, there was built up the myth that "he kept us out of war." Months of valuable time were wasted, not to make a Roman holiday, but to assure a presidential election, and today we find ourselves-eight months after our formal declaration of the existence of a state of warwithout sufficient rifles, machine guns and artillery, and without enough ships to transport our splendidly spirited troops to the desperately held battle-line. We are making preparation now that a wise statesmanship would have inaugurated many months ago. All around are evidences of steady progress which should have been the culmination of efforts undertaken three years ago. And why are we pressing these militant preparations? "Because," as Mr. Davison said in a recent speech to encourage subscriptions to Red Cross work: "We are at war. We've been at war since August, 1914, but we didn't know it till April, 1917. We went into the war finally on the same principles that had existed since the war started. It was an admission by the people of the United States that they had been at war from the very beginning of the conflict and that the men who had been fighting on those hundreds of miles of hellish battle-front had been fighting for us as well as for themselves." We were lamentably slow in finding it out and disastrously derelict in mobilizing our men and material for the part that we were inevitably destined to play in the conflict. Two years ago the Central Powers were outnumbered in men actually enrolled in the armies and navies of the contending powers more than two to one. Today with Belgium, Serbia and Roumania crushed, with Russia eliminated, with France bled white, and Italy broken by the awful blow of the last two months, it is approximately an even thing, and will be until the United States can put millions of men on the battle-line. We were too late in declaring war and too late in preparing for war, to make the most effective use of our indisputable strength and power. It is not the old familiar way of Uncle Sam. It is not the spirit of the Minute Men, of the embattled farmers, of the pioneer, of the Indian fighters or of our small but superb navy of 1812. It should be our constant effort from now on, not only to meet in full the great demands of the mighty task to which we have set our hands and which we shall carry through to a successful conclusion, but also to see to it that we do not in the same unwise fashion postpone preparation for peace as we delayed and neglected preparation for war. The needs of post bellum days should be anticipated as wise leadership would have anticipated the needs of these war days. Every nation actively participating in the war is also actively preparing for peace. While equipping armies of enormous size, and incidentally lending to our laggard departments the artillery needed to train our troops, France and England are giving careful consideration to future trade conditions. Foreign trade will be extended wherever possible, and domestic trade will be safeguarded with a care never exercised before. The overwhelming war problems which Germany has on hand do not prevent her from elaborate and painstaking preparations for the trade contest which will follow the war. Great as is the need of her army for young men, Germany is patiently training thousands of them to fill positions in manufacture, commerce and shipping. Japan even now is ready to enter the contest, stronger than ever in wealth, resources and experience. Against the foresight of these nations, armed for trade con tests, we shall cut as lamentable a figure as we have in our first eight months of war unless we start immediate and intelligent preparations; unshackle business; encourage co-operation; sanction combinations for foreign trade and encourage and protect our domestic trade. It is as unwise to trust our commercial interests and our industrial welfare to the favor and goodwill of foreign nations as it was to trust the preservation of peace, through three lamentable years, to the conscience, integrity, and historic friendship of the Imperial German Empire. We must not allow the legend "Too Late" to be written across the record of our industrial preparedness. comes THE PRESIDENTIAL POWER. Tariffs By Executive Order Unsound and Unwise. With the war there necessarily where present sense that we owe our It is manifest that the Democrats are uneasy over the tariff with which they have visited us, and which may, all too soon, visit them. They can find surface facts enough to cheer them. Mills are running full time, wages are high, employers hunt labor and often fail to find it. But these conditions may not make votes for 1918 and 1920. There is the every that our home market has not been shielded by our own lawmakers, that we have industrial activity simply because Europeans are slaughtering each other. Indeed, we have not the home market to the degree we should like to have it, for British and Japanese goods are coming in at a brisk pace. Labor unions say that we must have protection. Secretary Redfield talks vaguely of heading off unfair competition. The report of the Tariff Commission informs us that "political considerations" must be taken into the account, and that may mean anything or nothing. Something must be done for American industry, and yet the party now in power hates to reverse itself and enact a tariff such as McKinley or Dingley would have drafted. Hence the recommendation in some quarters that the President be given practically boundless juris diction over exports and imports. The alarm is real, the next election will be on us before the year ends, and there is a desire to put everything into the hands of the President, which may be a very different matter from strengthening the hands of the President. Verily, we move, and move rapidly. The Redfield idea of an antidumping law under which foreigners could be compelled to disclose what it cost them to manufacture goods was hazy, still it recognized the time-honored principle that our tariffs are to be made in Congress. Does any one seriously believe that the matter should be determined by the judgment of one man? Industry grows every day more complex, and the questions growing out of the imports in one cargo might require more time than a Presidential term affords to answer. were The manufactures of 1791 primitive affairs compared to those of today, and Hamilton's report discusses them in what we may call an encyclopedic manner. Alexander Hamilton could found a bank, organize an army, and have leisure for several other things, but he did not frame our first tariff, that measure represented the majority of Congress. It is not at all probable that the Federalists, had they retained control, would have asked Congress to yield its powers to any individual, even had that individual been the marvellous organizer from Nevis. Had there been such a move it is certain that Jefferson and Madison would have made protests. Half a generation later, Albert Gallatin was an honored financier, and John C. Calhoun was planning out public improvements wholesale. Setting these men on the highest round of the ladder their warmest admirers can claim for them it will not be pretended that either was as fit to draft a tariff as Hamilton. Industry had taken several strides, from the lumbering coaches of Hamilton's day to the new locomotive of Stephenson was a seven-league boot step. We cannot imagine Congress surrendering its functions to Webster, Clay, or Benton. Machine crowded on machine, patent followed patent, and it became more and more difficult to say what man towered above all others as Saul above his brethren. Perhaps Millard Fillmore had more special knowledge of the tariff than any other President for forty years after Jefferson. James Buchanan was a painstaking lawyer. He knew something about the construction of tariffs, yet no one can dream of him as exercising the powers which some would confer upon Woodrow Wilson. For years the leading orator on the side of protection rejoiced in the nickname of "Pig Iron Kelley," and the soubriquet is significant. In Samuel Johnson's day a scholar might write a dictionary, a century later the world recognized that fifty specialists may be at work ere a dictionary is well begun. William D. Kelley probably understood the metal schedule better than any of his contemporaries; he made no pretense to understand the schedules. Jefferson said that no American could reside abroad seven years, come back and be fit for |