The Columbus Dispatch

ALL ABOARD FOR EUROPE

Five thousand passengers sailed out of the Port of New York on fast ocean liners, one day last week, bound for Europe. It is estimated that one hundred and fifty thousand more will go. They will spend five hundred million dollars in pleasure seeking before they return. This amount will pay the refunded interest on Europe's debts to us for the present year. In anticipation of the coming of these new-rich, Europe is licking its paws.

It is to be a gold-feast in celebration of the end of the war and the return of America's survivors.

In fact, European capitals are already over-run with men squandering war profits with a prodigality never before equaled. One poor absinthe-soaked simp the other day in Paris threw away five thousand dollars to the street urchins of that city and imagined he was having a good time. The chances are that if the folks back home had asked him for a three-dollar contribution to the Salvation Army Drive he would have darkened up like a smoke screen. Another liquor-lit thimble-brain tipped a Wagnerian waiter one hundred bucks for bringing him crab meat and cocktails, mostly cocktails. Back home, no doubt he said, "This giving is getting my goat."

A little frizzled Flossie Pound and a Half came wiggling down the streets of Paris the other day, leading a pen-wiper pug attached to an elongated gold chain, and said: "Oh deah, Paris is so dull." The chances are that if she had been asked to canvass the twelfth ward back home for the Red Cross she would have said at that hour she had not had her morning "bawth."

And so it goes—America handing back to Europe about all she got out of the war—money.

This republican congress up here at Washington is skedaddling and skirmishing around trying to locate sources of untaxed wealth with which to pay the soldier bonus, and a lot of other things that they are throwing money away for. Here's a source. Nail every one of these departing patriots with a good fat fee—an emigration tax. Make it a hundred dollars per, straight. Then when they get over there, double the tax to get back. The government could pick up $60,000,000 with which to pension some poor "Hog Islander"—and the way congress is spending the people's money it looks like they will need it.

Seriously, why should all these beneficiaries of boodle be allowed to depart from their native shores to squander their money without the government extracting some of it for the privilege? If a man has money enough to throw away in Europe, he ought to be made to throw some of it at the government that gave him the opportunity to make or steal it. That is nothing but justice.