FOURTEEN SCRAPS OF PAPER
October 31, 1918
In my article yesterday I discussedMr.Wilson’s fourteen peace points which had been accepted by Germany. After the article was sent in,Mr.Wilson explained one of the points by stating that it meant exactly the opposite of what it said. A New York paper has asked for the election of a Congress that shall see eye to eye withMr.Wilson. But only a Congress of whirling dervishes could see eye to eye withMr.Wilson for more than twenty-four hours at a time.
When Germany broke her treaty with Belgium,the German Chancellor called it a scrap of paper. Any individual who proposes a treaty which plainly means one thing, and then, as soon as he finds it disagreeable to adhere to that obvious meaning, instantly interprets it as meaning exactly the opposite, is treating it as a scrap of paper.Mr.Wilson’s recent interpretation of what he meant in the point about economic barriers makes all the fourteen points scraps of paper unworthy of serious discussion by anybody, because no human being is supposed to say what any one of them means or to do more than guess whether to-morrowMr.Wilson will not interpret each and all of them in a sense exactly the opposite to their meaning.
Mr.Wilson’s language in the point in question was that he intended the removal “of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations.” By no honest construction of language can this be held to mean anything except that this Nation, for example, could have no tariff of its own, but must live under exactly the same tariff, or no tariff, conditions with all other nations. ButMr.Wilson now notifies a Democratic Senator that he did not mean any “restriction upon the free determination by any nation of its own economic policy.” If he meant this, why did he not say it? Why did he say the exact opposite? His first statement is wholly incompatible with the interpretation he now puts on it. If anybody in private life entered into a contract in such manner and then sought to repudiate it by interpretingit in such manner, there is not a court in Christendom that would not adjudge him guilty of having used language with deliberate intent to deceive.
Nor is this all. In his new interpretation of what he did not originally mean, the President now says that he proposes to prevent any nation, including the United States, from using its tariff to discriminate in favor of friendly nations and against hostile nations. This is what he now says and what he now means, but, of course, to-morrow he may say that in this new interpretation he again meant exactly the opposite of what he says. However this may be for the future, President Wilson at this moment says, for instance, we ought to abandon reciprocity treaties; that we ought to refuse to make such treaties with our friends, such as Cuba and Brazil, and ought to punish these friends by treating them on an exact equality with our embittered and malevolent enemy, Germany. I hold this to be thoroughly mischievous doctrine.
The great scientist, Huxley, who loved truth and abhorred falsehood, said that “the primary condition of honest literature is to leave the reader in no doubt as to the author’s meaning.” Evidently this primary condition is not fulfilled byMr.Wilson’s fourteen points. They should now be treated as scraps of paper and put where they belong, in the scrap-basket.