THE LEAGUE AND THE WAR 



Judge Ben B. Lindsay, whose war services 

 to his country made him an unimpeachable 

 witness on these matters, writes this : 



They [the enemies of the League] organized loyalty 

 leagues and public safety commissions, denounced the 

 Nonpartisan Leaguers as traitors, and proceeded to mob 

 them and deport them and indict them and tar and 

 feather them. The government at Washington sent 

 out speakers to the Nonpartisan League through the 

 Committee on Public Information. The local defense 

 committees refused to allow these speakers to address 

 public meetings of League members. The junkers did 

 not wish to have the farmers rallied to the support of 

 the war; they wished to have them marked as dis- 

 loyalists so that the Nonpartisan League might be 

 destroyed. 



Thirty thousand North Dakota men were 

 enrolled in the armies of the United States. 

 Throughout the war the state administration, 

 in the hands of the League, gave an unblem- 

 ished example of devoted and most loyal 

 support to the national government, and 

 when the war was over a legislature wherein 

 the League had a clear majority in both 

 houses passed, as we shall see later, the 

 broadest and best soldiers' bounty bill that 

 had been enacted in the United States. But 

 Judge Lindsay's diagnosis is probably cor- 

 rect. The hatred generated among the bene- 

 ficiaries of the existing system was so intense 

 that any means likely to destroy or weaken 

 the League was welcome to them. The great- 



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