ANOTHER WILSONIAN BLUFF.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 15834, 3 June 1919, Page 4

ANOTHER WILSONIAN BLUFF.

A Paris cable states that, in a speech a day or two ago. President Wilson said that private meetings of statesmen would no longer decide nations’ destinies because the people were now in the saddle. Are the cable people having a joke with us, or, as seems more likely, was President Wilson speaking with his tongue in hia check? No matter what form of Government we may have, whether Constituent, Soviet, or anything else, it will probably be just as imjiossiblc to dispense with private meetings of our leaders as it is for the Peace Conference to sit otherwise than in secret, for a Cabinet to conduct oelicatc negotiations in public, or for a Trade Union to discuss the terms of a dispute with the reporters present. In rny case. President Wilson is hardly the man to advocate open meetings. He it was who despatched a secret mission to Russia (was it in the interests of American trade?) without informing the other Allies of the fact, and no one protested more loudly than he at the leakage of information regarding matters secretly discussed by tho Peace Conference. As for the people being “in the saddle,” this is perhaps more untrue of President Wilson’s own country than of any other civilised Stale, excepting, perhaps, Germany, Austria, and Turkey. President Wilson conceived his peace notions and his League of Nations scheme without any 'reference to his own people or tlicir representatives. Ho sailed for Europe without discussing the natter with Congress, or asking for the least expression of public approval. To all the protests and opposition of the United States Senate, he answered, in effect, that he had decided on the matter, and if they or the American people rejected his dictum the responsibility of any trouble that might arise would be tlvirs. And the latest cables inform us that, though Congress is assembling, the President is not submitting his peace policy to it even by cable, but will permit them to wait till ho gets back before telling them what he has done without consulting his people. President Wilson is now generally recognised as a great bluffer, which makes it harder to understand why he has been tolerated for so long. The way in which he has led the Aliks “by tho nose,” and carried his own point against all others time after time is one of those mysteries about which the world knows nothing however much it may like to, and has an unwelcome flavour- of some “secret” understanding somewhere, without reference to tho “people” whom the President Hatters by telling them that they ars “in the saddle.”