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As long historical documents were read, as the examination rambled over them without startling disclosures, as day by day the evidence showed no visible connection between the House of Morgan and Secretaries McAdoo and Lansing, who alone appeared to have urged President Wilson to let war loans be floated in the U. S., the Press grew disgusted with the whole proceeding. Between sessions newshawks flocked around the old financier, who was the soul of amiability in answering questions and posing for photographs. Finally one morning when, as oldsters will, Mr. Morgan closed his eyes and quietly dozed off during the proceedings, the scandal hunt was rated a complete flop so far as the Press was concerned.
Actually, only Senator Clark made any noticeable effort to stir up scandal. Committee Counsel Raushenbush, far from being a bitter prosecutor like Ferdinand Pecora, was obviously making no effort to send his witnesses to jail, had no belief that the men before him were villains, aimed at no more than to show that war trade and war finance are a danger to peace. Chairman Nye, too, was content with building up a ponderous record which might be used to prove that: 1) In time of foreign war the U. S. should not trade with or finance belligerents; 2) There should be a limitation on war profits; 3) Munitions-making should be under government control. Already, however, neutrality bills introduced in Congress forbid war trade and war financing. And the War Department is strenuously opposed to the Government's making munitions a Government monopoly.
The Devil's Due. By & large Senator Nye's Committee, during its first week's effort, was not very successful in rewriting U. S. War history. Partner Lamont lately declared: "Like most of our contemporaries and friends and neighbors, we wanted the Allies to win from the outset of the War. We were pro-Ally by inheritance, by instinct, by opinion." But no evidence was adduced last week that the House of Morgan, for all its pro-Ally, sympathies, created the Allied demand for U. S. goods. And if J. P. Morgan & Co. indulged in secret skulduggery to steam up the U. S. for war, the Senate Committee had yet to make it a part of its record.
Two months ago Newton D. Baker, Wartime Secretary of War, in a letter to the New York Times undertook to rebut the new interpretation of history: "From the beginning to the end of my official life in Washington, I never heard the President or any member of his Cabinet, either in conference or in private conversation, express any opinion that the United States ought to go into the War or that any commercial or financial interest, either of the United States or of any group of our citizens, would be promoted by our going in. ...
"I feel sure that all of my surviving associates in President Wilson's Cabinet . . . will agree that President Wilson and we, as his associates, did all we knew how to keep our country out of war, and that none of us ever heard the fable, which is now the gospel of the uninformed, that we ever had the slightest concern about the foreign loans of bankers or the industrial ambitions of the few American munition-making companies."