THE MARK OF DISAPPROVAL

In vetoing the Congressional resolution forbidding further recruiting, for the army until its standard strength is reduced to 175,000 men, President Wilson has but followed the course mapped out by himself in the halcyon days of the Versailles conference. He is apparently unable or unwilling to see that his plans for Armenian and Anatolian mandates have been rejected by the great majority of American voters. He still lives in the remembrance of his European travels, and would force upon the country the military requirements of his reconstruction promises so freely distributed at Paris.

In this policy he has been ably seconded by his two former-pacifist Secretaries, Mr. Baker and Mr. Daniels. Both have, against the wishes of Congress and public sentiment, endeavored to force the passage of Army and Navy appropriation bills far too large for present uses or requirements. The desire to spend has evidently not decreased with the cessation of actual hostilities; and their now martial tendencies are leading them to demand larger armaments than before.

Congress showed its disapproval of this policy last year by passing an army reorganization act reducing the strength of the regular army to 280,000. In spite of the Treasury's call for rigid economy, and the country's anxiety to minimize military expenditures, Secretaries Baker and Daniels have persisted in presenting bills necessitating large outlays. Congress has twice been compelled to cut them in half.

The latest development of this struggle between people and Administration came when Secretary Baker, ignoring Congress's appropriation for 1920-21 of just enough money to provide for an army of 175,000 men, started a countrywide recruiting campaign, and by increasing the army well beyond the appropriation limit, incurred a forty-million dollar deficit. The two houses, seeing what was happening, attempted to hold him in restraint by passing the resolution for-bidding recruiting. The President, faithful to the last, supported his theory and his Secretary by his veto. If the Administration cannot go out "in a blaze of glory," at least will never admit its mistakes. The House, however, has repassed the resolution; it should also be repassed by the Senate.

It does not seem credible that mere blindness could be responsible for this insistence that the country be burdened with an enormous army and navy that it clearly does not want and will continue to reject. It is almost impossible to believe that the Administration is so rapt with the dreams of the past that it is incapable of discerning "the signs of the times"--signs which have been repeatedly thrust upon its attention. Rather more is it probable that Mr. Wilson and his coadjutors are attempting, in a last-minute scramble, to make the country pay, in armaments, for its refusal to join the Wilsonian League of Nations, or else, by threats of the ever increasing military and naval debts to be incurred while enjoying "splendid isolation," force the United States to enter the League in sheer desperation.

Mr. Wilson has again misjudged the voice of the ballot. This country will eventually join the League in some way, but it emphatically will not agree to being forced in. It has twice repudiated the Administration and its methods; why continue the comedy any longer? Congress, by putting the seal of disapproval upon further military appropriations, even though they be backed by the President and the Secretary of War, has effectually closed the argument.