Details
TAFT, William H. Typed letter signed ("Wm. H. Taft"), as former President, to E. M. Moore, On Special Train, Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, 2 October 1920, ENCLOSING A 3-PAGE DRAFT STATEMENT, HEAVILY CORRECTED BY TAFT AND ANOTHER HAND. Together 4 pages, 4to, all on stationery of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, emendations all in pencil, light pencil doodlings on portions of the document.
PANDERING TO THE IRISH VOTE: TAFT ATTACKS DEMOCRAT COX FOR URGING IRISH INDEPENDENCE IN THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS
With the 1920 Presidential election campaign entering its final month, the former President--an international law expert--condemns the Democratic nominee James Cox for ethnic pandering. To the editor of the Chicago Public Ledger, he sends a scathing three-page statement which he wants put on the news wire: "Mr. Cox says he proposes, after the United States shall have entered the league of Nations under his presidency, to move a resolution in the League in favor of giving Ireland independence, in accordance with the principle of self-determination. This statement is made to propitiate the Sinn Fein vote," Taft charges. And as a matter of international law it is nonsense. Nothing in the League's articles allow for such actions. If third-party nations could move for independence of subject peoples in foreign nations, Taft argues, then the Algerians, Tunisians, and Indochinese might "each apply to be released from the government of France...not only Ireland, but India and all the crown colonies of Great Britain, might present their claims for self-determination to the League. The Philippines, or the negroes of South Carolina or of any other state where they are in the majority, might apply to the League to be made an independent state...Such an absurd construction would furnish the strongest kind of argument against the league as a busybody meddling agency encouraging rebellions in every country."
PANDERING TO THE IRISH VOTE: TAFT ATTACKS DEMOCRAT COX FOR URGING IRISH INDEPENDENCE IN THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS
With the 1920 Presidential election campaign entering its final month, the former President--an international law expert--condemns the Democratic nominee James Cox for ethnic pandering. To the editor of the Chicago Public Ledger, he sends a scathing three-page statement which he wants put on the news wire: "Mr. Cox says he proposes, after the United States shall have entered the league of Nations under his presidency, to move a resolution in the League in favor of giving Ireland independence, in accordance with the principle of self-determination. This statement is made to propitiate the Sinn Fein vote," Taft charges. And as a matter of international law it is nonsense. Nothing in the League's articles allow for such actions. If third-party nations could move for independence of subject peoples in foreign nations, Taft argues, then the Algerians, Tunisians, and Indochinese might "each apply to be released from the government of France...not only Ireland, but India and all the crown colonies of Great Britain, might present their claims for self-determination to the League. The Philippines, or the negroes of South Carolina or of any other state where they are in the majority, might apply to the League to be made an independent state...Such an absurd construction would furnish the strongest kind of argument against the league as a busybody meddling agency encouraging rebellions in every country."