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Fifth. That if with the aid of the insurgents or otherwise, Zelaya is apprehended by the United States, the territory within which he is taken becomes conquered territory pro tanto, and he becomes a military prisoner of the United States who has been guilty of the crime of military murder against citizens of the United States.

Sixth. That under these circumstances Congress has the right either to organize a tribunal itself or to authorize the President to do so for the trial of Zelaya in order to determine upon his participation in the proceedings aforesaid and upon his guilt or innocence in the premises.

Now, before closing, let me give one or two more authorities upon propositions I have referred to. I read from another document of Mr. Webster in reference to prisoners of war:

Prisoners of war are to be considered as unfortunate and not as criminal, and are to be treated accordingly, although the question of detention or liberation is one affecting the interest of the captor alone, and therefore one with which no other government ought to interfere in any way; yet the right to detain by no means implies the right to dispose certain duties, among them that of providing the prisoners with the necessaries of life and abstaining from the infliction of any punishment upon them which they may not have merited by an offense against the laws of the country since they were taken. (Mr. Webster. Secretary of State, to Mr. Ellis, February 26, 1842, MS., Inst Mex., XV, 151.)

The law of war forbids the wounding, killing, impressment into the troops of the country, or the enslaving or otherwise maltreating of prisoners of war, unless they have been guilty of some grave crime, and from the obligation of this law no civilized State can discharge itself. (Mr. Webster, Secretary of State, to Mr. Thompson, Minister to Mexico, April 5, 1842, Webster's Works, VI, 427, 437.)

I read now our own regulations to show that these men were not guilty of treason:

A traitor under the law of war, or a war traitor, is a person in a place or district under martial law who, unauthorized by the military commander, gives information of any kind to the enemy or holds intercourse with him.

In this connection, let me give you an article from the Nicaraguan code, to show that these men were not guilty of any crime that deserved punishment by death. This is from a dispatch sent by Estrada to the State Department:

SUB-SECRETARY OF STATE MOREIRA.

Article 472 of the military ordinance of Nicaragua bears on the penalty to be inflicted upon prisoners, and stipulates expressly that the penalty of death can be legally enforced only when there is undisputed evidence of military treason. Evidence in the cases of Leroy Cannon and Groce show that this was not the case, according to officials of the State Department, who hold that President Zelaya's own version makes this point clear.

And then General Estrada goes on to say:

Señor Castrillo, representing the provisional government here, received telegrams from General Estrada, provisional president, today, saying: "Groce, who was ex-general manager, or ex-superintendent, of the La Luz y Los Angeles Mining Company, and Cannon were men held in highest esteem, gave their services voluntarily to our liberating army, each having the rank of colonel. In neither case was the death sentence justified. They were not in the service of Zelaya. There has never been in the history of all Central America a similar monstrosity perpetrated as the shooting down of these two Americans.

"ESTRADA."

In an interview in the Washington Post, a paper that has kept in close touch with the situation, Zelaya says:

The coercion of the United States will not redound to the credit of that nation, whose motives are questioned in all Latin America.

There is not a word of truth in that. Our motive is not questioned anywhere in Latin America, except by him.

The initiative in the shooting of Groce and Cannon was not mine

That is not true

I simply refused to extend clemency to them after a properly constituted military tribunal had passed upon the case.

This is not true. Under the Nicaraguan code no sentence can be executed except by command of the commander-inchief, and he was the commander-in-chief.

While I am ready to surrender the presidency, I can not do it precipitately

He wants time to get the money out of the treasury

as it would result in uprisings by several factions, each of which is eager to secure power.

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I am in negotiation with the revolutionists

There is not a word of truth in that, as the dispatches of this morning show

I am in negotiation with the revolutionists to secure their indorsement to a successor who will be acceptable to all parties, and have submitted the name of Jose Madriz, Judge of the Cartage Court.

He is no more acceptable than Zelaya is acceptable. He is the man who was made judge by Zelaya. He is the one who helped to break the treaty of arbitration made among Guatemala and Honduras and Salvador and Costa Rica and Nicaragua.

Allow me to read this before I finish, from a biography of his:

In 1906 there were three candidates. Two were unknown, a Don Jose and a Don Santos. The third was, of course, Zelaya. When the returns were counted all three had been elected in the person of Don Jose Santos Zelaya.

Two of them were fictions. He thus had himself elected.

Human life has been a much lesser consideration in his mind than the anger of a moment. Not long ago an arsenal exploded, probably from spontaneous combustion. The colonel commanding the garrison was ordered into the middle of the ruin and shot, and his body was burned, without trial.

Lately he has moderated some of his punishments. But when Roy

Cannon reached Nicaragua this President was having pepper and alcohol rubbed into the wounds of those who had been flogged.

With his almost fabulous receipts, he has erected two palaces in Nicaragua and one in Belgium, and has stored a fortune abroad-so that if ever he shall escape the fox-like counselors who surround him a harbor will be open.

You understand, Mr. President, there is money in the treasury, and his counselors are watching him. They are watching him so that he can not take the money, and he is watching them so that they can not take it. Those are what he calls the factions.

He has thrust editor after editor in jail for publishing items that only inferentially reflected upon his management.

He has made religion a mockery, allowing a paganism to develop into forms worse than atheism.

He acknowledges 45 children, of whom 7 are those of his beautiful Belgian wife, formerly Mlle. Cuosin.

How many does he not acknowledge? I will read this further. I do not know whether I ought to read it or not. However, I see nothing objectionable in it.

He orders any pretty girl who catches his fancy into his great palace, and the father who protests-there are yet fathers and mothers in Nicaragua who do protest-is condemned to jail or to convict labor.

And this, Mr. President, is a Republic. Oh, Liberty, what Republics have been created in thy name! I do not desire upon this occasion to go any further in this discussion.

I insist, therefore, before this body, that this is not a case alone for indemnity nor for the severance of diplomatic communication. No such recreant move as this will satisfy the demands of justice. If he had the right to sentence these men to death and execute them in cold blood, then we must acknowledge that right and recognize it before the nations of the world. If he did not have that right, no matter how petty and insignficant he may be in the eyes of diplomacy or upon the sphere of the world's action, no matter how trivial and unimportant a sta

tion his Government may occupy, this Government is his accuser, and if he is guilty he must be awarded the doom and fate that he deserves, so that every tyrant on this earth in every nationality under the sun, and in every government, large or small, and especially these dictators in several of these Central American States who have received every favor and consideration at the hands of the United States, and to whom has been extended the official hospitality of our land, and who in return therefor, have exhibited to us at times the bitterest hatred and visited upon our citizens the most cruel indignities and outrages, shall be told once and forever that our flag follows our citizens wherever they go, and that when an assassination like this occurs the malefactor must take his place like any other culprit at the bar of criminal justice, and must answer for the deed with his liberty or his life.

POSTAL SAVINGS DEPOSITORIES.

During the long debate in the Senate upon the bill to establish postal savings banks, Senator Rayner on February 7, 1910, assailed the measure as unconstitutional, in one of the most profound arguments of his career.

I shall not discuss the policy of this legislation. Whenever a measure is presented in Congress to which my attention is directed, I propound to myself the antiquated question: Is this legislation authorized by the Constitution? I apprehend that this is a question everyone should address to himself. I have not been able to find any constitutional ground whatever for this measure. No one who has read the Constitution of the United States will contend for a moment that it comes under any of the express powers of the instrument, and the utmost that will be claimed for it, I suppose, is that under the eighteenth clause of section 8 of Article I, it is the necessary and proper law to carry into execution the delegated powers.

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