normal population of eighteen or twenty million people, on terms of amity and concord with all nations-a special ally or bitter foe of no other country-controls the western approaches to Europe. It will make for the freedom of the seas and for free and unrestricted trading among all nations, as will no other single contribution that can be made. Think what it will mean to the commerce of America-not alone Irish commerce, freed for the first time in centuries from English control, thrown open to the markets of the world and growing by leaps and bounds; not alone the population of Ireland increasing to normal size, but its value as a point of debarkation and distribution for American commerce with all the countries of Europe.

Out of the chaos that is now Europe, must come in due time again, the prosperity and commercial activity which go with the return of ordered liberty. Out of the chaos which now exists must come with the return of order, unnumbered demands for the American commodities which the devastated sections of Europe will require for reconstruction. With the return of a reign of law and order among three hundred millions of civilized people will come renewed commercial intercourse on a large scale, with America.

We must seek some points of distribution for such commerce. Where can we so well find them as in Ireland, with its position of comparative proximity to America; its unrivaled harbors; its sympathetic people; its ideal location for sending goods in every direction to the different parts of Europe? Add to all this that it is in no sense our rival as a manufacturing nation, as are England, Belgium, Holland, France, as was and will be again, Germany. Add to that that its harbors are not crowded with shipping as are those of England. They are not dotted with piers and wharves and quays that belong to our competitors and that will, if we use English or Dutch or Belgian harbors, compel us to load and unload after the ships of our rivals shall have loaded and unloaded, or in out of the way places under difficulties and in some places without needed security.

English statesmen are always ready with excuses to explain the situation in their own interest and to show how a competitor is at fault but they can not now explain the facts that the continued existence of the British Navy is a menace only to America, and that it is to continue to exist only on the ground that use will be found for it in serving the interests of England.

Its upkeep is a tremendous charge upon the impoverished masses of Great Britain. That can only be excused on the ground that it is to be used in their interests in the immediate future and it can be used only as a weapon of defense or of offense. It can not be any longer alleged with any probability of belief that it is to be used for the defense of Great Britain, for no one now threatens England with invasion. No one now threatens to shut off the food supply of England, for which she is dependent upon the outer world for more than 40 weeks in every year. No longer can she point to the navies of Russia or Germany as a menace only to be met by her gigantic navy. Those fleets have actually ceased to exist so far as they have not been annexed to the British Navy. The only navies left are those of America, of Japan, and of France. The others are negligible. Only very timorous statesmen of England will fear France, their old rival, whom the subservient and stupid policies of Clemenceau and his associates have made into a broken vassal of England upon the continent.

Japan, the pagan Empire, with which the ruling classes of England choose to ally her against all the white races of the world, has a fleet which is no longer a menace to any country save America. Japan has voluntarily put herself into a position where she is tied by the closest kind of an alliance with England. There remains America alone.

Some of the great liberals of England-of whom there are a few in every generation-speak of her desire to lead in a movement for world disarmament. They are splendid special pleaders for her but they never have been able to influence her actions, eloquently as they asserted that they spoke of her aspirations. Her Morleys and Brights and Massinghams are useful for ornaments and for foreign effect, but they have not governed England or swayed her actions. Let her now show that they really speak for her let her disarm, not her army, for that is comparatively negligible, but her navy, which is, humanly speaking, all powerful. If she does this, she will prove that the leopard can change his spots. If she does not, then let our statesmen awaken and beware, lest Imperial England, running true to form, shall seek for permanent world domination by the destruction of the American fleet just as she temporarily has got it by the destruction of all her erstwhile competitors and rivals.

With general disarmament the future of American liberty is secure. England uregd the peace-loving people of America to go into the war on the theory that they were going to bring the right of self-determination and the application of the principles of democracy to all the nations of the earth. How rude has been our awakening? The spokesmen of England have accused us of many things in the past not alone her diplomats, her generals, and her admirals, but her novelists and poets, but no one of them has yet the distinction of asserting that we were fighting for democracy in order to overthrow her government, or take away any of her wealth. That fact should dispose of any apprehension that the British Navy must continue to exist for the defense of England as against us and leaves it no possible use except as a weapon of offense against a rival of England.

Surely it can not be needed against the broken remnants of Russia or the Central Empires, the little neutrals, her vassal France, or the vassals of France. It can not be that they distrust England's close ally, Japan. It leaves us back where we started. The British Navy can only be used as a weapon of offense against the navy and commerce of the sole remaining solvent and serious economic rival of England, to wit, the United States of America.

England owes America billions of dollars. England has lost to America the financial leadership of the world. England by the destruction of America would regain the financial leadership and rid herself, as the victorious opponent, of her debt to America.

English statesmen can see nothing in the continued growth of America except the strengthening of England's great economic rival. They, to their credit be it said, never work in the interest of any country but England. These men now rule the world, as they believe, know that with the elimination of America they could securely hold the world for centuries.

Our destruction would mean the overthrow of the greatest experiment in democracy that the world has ever known. It would

throw back the world, England included, into the hands of the special privileged and ruling few. In every country of the world to-day the masses are raising their heads against the classes, insisting that government must exist in the future only for the welfare of all-and not for the exploitation of the many by the chosen few. The destruction of the greatest experiment in democracy as founded in America would mean the renaissance of special privilege; the triumph of monarchial institutions. It would be a greater set back to the world than was the destruction of Rome and mankind again would be compelled to struggle for centuries before it could lift up its head to bring liberty and freedom to any quarter of the globe.

The struggle between America and the British Empire is inevitable. It has already begun. It has entered upon its economic stage, driven by the stress of circumstances which no group of statesmen or philosophers can control. The two countries are driven to seek the same markets; to strive for the same trade in order that their people may live in comfort. The contest in its peaceful stage could be prolonged, but not avoided, if some division of the markets could be made, if some arrangement whereby there would be business enough for all were possible. But such a condition exists only in the dreams of the philosophers, not in the hard matter of fact concrete conditions of everyday life.

The struggle is not to come, it has already been entered upon. England has already shut us out from her own markets for many articles and commodities which we produce. In every one of her colonies England has a school of politicians who are openly urging closer trade relations with the mother country at the expense of her rivals. She controls to-day, among other things, the rubber and wool of the world. She is seeking the control of the oil fields upon which depends the future of transportation. Through her control of the cables and her system of trade permits and passports she has already shut out the American trader for all practical purposes from many of the markets of the world. She is only as yet feeling her way, intent upon going at present as far as she is permitted to go on and in the end as far as her power will enable her to go. She has filled our country with her exchange editors, lecturers, ministers, professors, and propagandists in order to flatter and cajole us and put the people off their guard. This is no new device for her. She strives to weaken and to destroy, as enemies of America, those here who are her opponents and who can not be cajoled or coerced into taking her point of view of every question that is to her interest. She is well served here not only be recent importations and by her casual visitors to our shores, but by her Carnegie Fund group and those of similar ilk, by the descendants of the Tories who honestly believe that the United States should never have been separated from England and who would rejoice to see it again united with the British Empire.

A grave crisis confronts the statesmen of our country.

No greater problem has ever addressed itself to the courage and foresight and statesmanship of any group of elected freemen.

We stand at the parting of the ways. After years of bloody war which destroyed millions of lives and billions of treasure, the hopes of mankind turned to the spokesmen of our country who appeared in Paris, to have them end war, destroy tyranny and bring liberty to all the oppressed peoples of the earth. The outcome of that eventful

conference is one of the outstanding failures of history. The marshalled forces of special privilege have once again triumphed and_to them that had, has been given. The fly has walked into the pailor of the spider. The ingenuous novice has learned the lesson of the ages that the amateur must bow to the skill of the professional and the amiable Wilson has succumbed to the wiles and guile of the artful Lloyd-George, and to the grim arbitrariness of the practical Clemenceau. But with the art of the experienced politician, he has presented to the world the shadow of his performance as if it were the substance of his promise and has tried to coerce the Senate to adopt without amendment, or even examination, the British prepared League of Nations which would give to England under another name, the supersovereignty of the world, and reduce us to a position of humiliating subservience that would destroy our independence and exhaust our power.

Our country, hailed a year ago as the moral leader of the world, with friends on all sides, is now scoffed at as a hypocrite and looked upon by many of the nations of the Old World as an enemy. We, who won the war and destroyed militarism, are now in danger of setting up the rule of navalism so as to again enthrone might as the arbiter of all disputed questions among the nations.

Only the Senate can prevent this great wrong and restore our country to the proud position it held so short a time ago. The Senate is now the bulwark of America's liberty, and the hope of suffering humanity. If it falters in its duty to safeguard the rights and sovereignty of our country, America will fall as have fallen mighty democracies in the past. If it lives up to its high traditions and considers above all things the interests of America, it will preserve our country, save human liberty, and destroy, with injury to none who seek liberty, the grim curse of navalism which hangs like a heavy cloud over the fortunes of mankind.

Mighty forces are working from without and within to swing America away from her old moorings; to take her away from her moral leadership of mankind, and to subordinate her to the position of a satelite swinging around the British Empire. Mighty are these forces; numerous are their weapons, potent are their agents; plausible are their arguments; but mightier still is the love of liberty among the great mass of the plain people of our country, and in the end, bitter as may be the struggle, dark as may seem the way, the forces of justice and right will triumph and America will be preserved from these attacks as she has been from those which seemed about to overwhelm her in the past-preserved to remain a beacon light for those who seek liberty and value it as the greatest gift which a beneficient Creator has bestowed upon mankind. America will triumph in the end in any contest which the British ruling class may force upon her, but it would be a blessing to all mankind and to no portion of it greater than to the masses of England, if the United States Senators, the statesmen who control in the last analysis the destiny of America and through that largely the destiny of the world, should bring about by the defeat of the British proposed League of Nations, an international conference which will consider as its first and most important problem the real freedom of the seas and by insisting upon naval disarmament, will destroy navalism— twin brother of militarism-and thus bring permanent peace to all the nations of the earth.

AFTER RECESS.

The committee reassembled at 3 o'clock p. m.

The CHAIRMAN. Representative Gallagher, of Illinois, is obliged to leave the city this afternoon, and desires to make a short statement at this time.

STATEMENT OF HON. THOMAS GALLAGHER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ILLINOIS.

Mr. GALLAGHER. Mr. Chairman, and gentlemen of the committee: I regret I must leave Washington this afternoon, at 4 o'clock. The Committee on Rivers and Harbors, of which I am a member, is going to New Jersey to look into waterway improvements much needed in Newark Bay, but before leaving I desire to say a word or two to the committee with reference to the Mason bill, to provide for the salaries of a minister and consuls to the Republic of Ireland.

When we entered the World War, President Wilson laid down as one of the principles for which we were to contend, "That no people must be forced under a sovereignty which it does not wish to live. He said, "Shall the military power of any nation or group of nations be suffered to determine the fortunes of peoples over whom they have no right to rule, except by right of force?" Through the military power of England, Ireland has been held in subjugation for over 750 years, her industries were destroyed, her trade and commerce wiped out, and with ruinous taxation forced upon the people, to-day Ireland has about one-half of the population it had 75 years ago, but Ireland has never surrendered her national rights. On the other hand, she has struggled throughout all this period of time for national existence, for freedom and liberty. On five different occasions the people of Ireland have endeavored to regain their rights by armed rebellions against English domination in Ireland, the latest being the Easter uprising in 1916. As a result of the determined stand of the leaders of the Easter week rebellion, the Sinn Fein, or the Irish Republican movement, has grown and is supported now by a great majority of the people of Ireland.

Let me tell you what the Government stands for. the proclamation of the Irish republic:

I quote from

The republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally.

These are Jeffersonian sentiments, gentlemen.

In December, one year ago, an election was held throughout Ireland for members of Parliament. In the nine counties, comprising Ulster, that were entitled to 25 seats, the Sinn Feiners won 10 seats in those counties, the Irish Party, who were not Sinn Feiners, but were opposed to the Unionists, carried 4 seats, so the Unionists or the Carson Party, only carried 11. Four of the eleven came from the city of Belfast, the stronghold of the Unionists, which has grown quite rapidly in population in recent years, due to the large number of workmen who came from Scotland and England with their families because of the shipbuilding industries and the opportunity for employment in that city; so that outside of the county in which the