EDITORIAL 



The President's Letter 



THE President has spoken on the 

 Ballinger case. 



On September 15 he wrote a lengthy 

 letter, indorsing the Secretary's position 

 on the Cunningham coal claims, the re- 

 opening of lands to entry, the cancella- 

 tion of the cooperative agreement re- 

 garding Indian forest lands, the vetoing 

 of the cooperative plan on the reclama- 

 tion projects, and every other point in 

 controversy. 



In a word, the Secretary has received 

 from the President a clean bill of health. 

 It would be easy to criticize this let- 

 ter, and to show that those who fur- 

 nished the President his facts did not 

 give him all the facts. 



It could even be shown that some 

 of the supposed facts furnished him 

 were not facts, and that numerous rep- 

 resentations made to him were mis- 

 leading. 



But the Secretary is highly pleased 

 with the letter. 



So are numerous others, conspicuous 

 among whom are those who favor a 

 wide-open policy on the public domain, 

 and who, for whatever reason, have 

 rallied around Secretary Ballinger as 

 their champion and have regarded For- 

 ester Pinchot as the one grand obstacle 

 to their plans. 



The people have had no opportunity 

 to see the materials placed before the 

 President by Mr. Glavis and riddled by 

 Secretary Ballinger. Necessarily, there- 

 fore, they can have no valid opinion 

 upon the case. 



Further, they are not reassured by 

 the emphasis laid by numerous publi- 

 cations upon the statement that the 

 President must necessarily give his Sec- 

 retary the benefit of every doubt and 

 uphold him in any event. 



They hope that the Secretary's case 

 is as good as it looks in the letter. 

 Meanwhile, they await further facts, 



some of which are said to be forth- 

 coming through the agency of Mr. 

 Glavis, congressional committees of in- 

 vestigation, and what-not. 



As to the question of law, the Amer- 

 ican people certainly believe in obedi- 

 ence thereto, howbeit there may have 

 been less of the same than might have 

 been hoped on the part, for example, 

 of "malefactors of great wealth," "land 

 skinners," et al. 



Deep as is the public interest in the 

 conservation of natural resources, the 

 people do not want those resources 

 saved at the expense of the law. 



So ardent is their love for the law 

 that they want it conserved until it can 

 be regularly changed. If, meanwhile, 

 their own interests suffer through the 

 abundance of bad law, or the paucity 

 of good, they will try to stand it. 



Nevertheless, the incessant, almost 

 gleeful, assertion by a certain class of 

 papers, since the appearance of the 

 President's letter, that President Roose- 

 velt and his governmental helpers pro- 

 tected the people's interests chiefly by 

 trampling the law under foot, does not 

 go down well. 



This claim, just now, it would seem, 

 is being considerably overworked. 



The "people know that President 

 Roosevelt made an earnest effort to pro- 

 tect their rights and promote their in- 

 terests. 



They know that, in so doing, he left 

 deep tracks on the geography and pub- 

 lic policy of the United States. 



They recall that the Reclamation 

 Service began with him; that, in him, 

 the National Forest Service found its 

 strongest friend and the water-power 

 monopoly its first formidable foe. 



They know he began the movement 

 to save for the people their coal, that he 

 called the two great conservation con- 

 ferences and created the National Con- 

 ^ervation Commission. 



