America will proceed upon an era of prosperity and peace without
precedent.
"I shall address no audience in America this year without
puncturing the smoke screen of hypocrisy and insincerity which
has been raised, in order that the reactionaries might creep in
behind it and claim their main objective, the spoils of office.
That smoke screen now is the statement that the League of
Nations increases the probabilities of war. It would have been
just as absurd to have said to the boys at the time our fathers
won their freedom, that if you proclaim your independence you are
going to have war, because you will have to fight to retain it.
Every school boy in Ohio understands there are three branches of
Government, Judicial, Legislative and Executive, and when war
has been brought to an end, the head of the Executive
Department, the President of the United States, makes the treaty
with the power with which we have been at war, and then we find
that limitation of power. The President can go no further. He
submits it to the Senate for ratification. The President of the
United States has very definite power, and there are also very
specific powers reserved to the Congress of the United States.
The Congress can do nothing contrary to the Constitution; the
President can do nothing contrary to the Constitution. The
Constitution provides that war can be declared by Congress, and
Congress only. In order to give point and truth to what the
reactionary leaders are now contending for, it would be
necessary to change the Constitution of the United States.
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