013 982 977 3 * Hollinger pH8.5 Mill Run F3-1955 I WHIT.BT | WOODROW AND THE GRANDDAUGHTERS OF A PRESIDENT SOUTHERN PROGRESSIVES APPEAL FROM MISS TARBELL'S VERDICT BY HELEN DORTCH LONGSTREET PRICE lO CENTS E.7 61 By transfer Tbe fbita House, To THE PATRIOTS OF THE WEST i No crisis in human history has ever sought in vain for lead- ership. Aaron Burrs may plot and Benedict Arnolds betray, but, thank God, there are Ethan Aliens and Nathan Hales on every plain and hillside and in every valley of this wide land, with one i more round of ammunition for human freedom — that its holiest heritage, the Democracy toward which the unbought patriotism of a New World has travailed, shall not go down in a dark night of despair! WOODROW And The GRANDDAUGHTERS OF A PRESIDENT By HELEN DORTCH LONGSTREET Gainesville, Ga. Author of "Lee and Longstreet at High Tide"; "In the Path of Lee's Old War Horse"; "Around America's Camp Fires"; "The Travail of the New Slavery"; "Anahuac, the Land of Wrecked Dreams"; etc. • SEPTEMBER, 1916 PUBLISHERS PRESS k 33 ATLANTA. GEORGIA WOODROW WILSON AND THE GRAND- DAUGHTERS OF A PRESIDENT. To the Progressives of the West: The mental processes through which the always brilliant and usually intellectually honest, Miss Ida M. Tarbell, has steered to endoresment of Woodrow Wilson as fit to lead Progressive Christendom, are calculated to beguile and befuddle the public mind; already steeped in four years of beguilement and befud- dlement, under soulful words from the White House, with never a robust deed to back them up. Southern Progressives appeal from the accolade placed on the shoulders of President Wilson by Miss Tarbell. We point to four years of lofty essays un- iilumined by constructive legislation which should entitle Wood- row Wilson to. the support of a single Progressive, East, West, North or South. Progressives have been singled out by Woodrow Wilson for the most contemptuqus treatment visited by him on any class of his fellow citizens. He overlooked the fact that we were Americans. He conveniently forgot that due to our following the leadership of Roosevelt, he owed his accidental tenure of the White House. He might, at least, have cherished a tolerant feeling for us, but he didn't, not until the hour when he needs our votes. New World history has not furnished a more versatile talker than Woodrow Wilson. Theories, dreams, elegant essays — that's all there is to his record. The west has nurtured the doers of the deeds that have made our land great and held it free. There has never been a congenial spot in the wonderful region, beyond the Mississippi, for the man who does not trans- late valiant talk into the democracy of virile conduct. The stalwart Americanism which has flowered in unmatched splendor across America's western plains to the Pacific sea, is our country's hope, in this hour of great need. Southern Progressives appeal to the unbought patriotism of Western Progressives to support the candidate who stands for the preservation, in undiminished strength, of the constitutional liberties for which our fathers fought. I appeal to Western Progressives neither as a Republican nor as a Democrat. I was a delegate to the Progressive con- vention which nominated Roosevelt in 1912 and I was a delegate to the Progressive convention which nominated Roosevelt in 1916. And so long as a convention shall assemble on this con- tinent to nominate Roosevelt for President, I propose to be a member of that convention, for I know he is America's strong- est man and the world's foremost statesman. But this year there is no Progressive ticket in the field, and the question which each Progressive has to settle with his own soul is whether to support Hughes' or Wilson or be a quitter and skulker and refuse to support anybody in the greatest crisis save one, which this nation has confronted since the minute- men of Concord fired the shot which was heard around the world. There was a day when the section from which I write did not skulk or quit — a day when the South stood sponsor at the cradle of this republic, framed its constitution and furnished the commander who led its valiant armies. And while we honor Washington and quote Marshall and revere the Monroe doctrine, we must reach towards the standards of the great South of the greater day. A little while ago, my old black mammy came from her humble cabin in the nearby hills, to see me in the Southern village where I was stopping. She is one of the few survivors of the slave days. She was my nurse in the after-the-war period, and the young affection cherished for her has grown and deepened with the years of womanhood/ "Lawse, honey," she said, "you'se changed er powerful heap sence I las' seen you. What's you bin doin' ter yerseff ?" I told her that I had had trouble, along with millions of my countrymen during the reign of the "new freedom" calcu- lated to silver one's hair and deepen the lines in one's face. "But shorely, honey," she said, "they haint nobody had no sich trouble as we's bin er habin in dese parts eber sence dem damned Democrats got control ob things. But 'scuse my onman- nerliness in cussin'. Endurin' ob dese hard times while Presi- dent Wilson hab bin chasin er sicology sarpint wliat he sez is de occasion ob hit, Ish, my ole man, hab took ter drinkin' corn liquor an' Pse took ter cussin'. I usen ter think hit wuz er powerful sin ter cuss. An' one night when I wuz down in de sackcloth an' ashes er beggin' de Lord ter fergib me for loosin' control ob my tongue; I hearn de bressed Lord speakin' com- fortin' lak' ez plain ez de hootin' ob de owl, and he he sez, sez he: 'Dat's all right, Mammy, I sho' wud cuss too, ef I wuz down dere in de midst ob de doggone devilishness which Mister Professer Wilson hab stirred up wid dem railroad brotherhoods." When 1 begin a discussion of Mr. Wilson's performances for the past four years, I always incline to asking the Lord to for- give me in advance for what I shall have to say. And I feel somewhat as my old black mammy expressed it, that the Lord understands, and would use strong language Himself should He again assume the form of a man and stand in the midst of the evils that today beset us on every side. For when the Master walked among men, did He not drive the money changers from the Temple, denouncing them for having made it the gathering place of thieves ? Along with millions of Americans, I felt when Mr. Wilson was nominated in 1912, that he was the strongest and cleanest man the Democrats had, and I was glad they nominated him and said so. I knew that race was between Roosevelt and Wilson, and if Roosevelt could not win, I was good enough an American to want the Democrats to elect their ablest and purest man. But after observing four years of Mr. Wilson's perform- ances, I know he was the weakest man the Democrats could have elected. Mr. Wilson's words never square with his deeds. With touching pride Mr. Wilson points to himself as an apostle of civil service. But he has done more than any President in our history towards breaking down the merit system. In the hour of a world cataclysm he has about wrecked the efficiency of our diplomatic service. He has removed foremost American states- men from European courts where their services were sorely needed, to make room for "deserving Democrats." With one stroke of his pen he removed forty thousand fourth class Post- masters from the classified serviee, to enable the reclassifica- tion of Democrats. He turned the Census Bureau over to the spoilsmen. Claiming to be a Southern gentleman it would be reasonable to expect that in his dealings with Southern women, he would not forget the proud traditions and stainless history of the brave and chivalrous South, that has ever held its womankind apart, as something holy. But in his mad adherence to a system condemned so long ago as when the Israelites took Canaan, he pitilessly deprived the widows and daughters of Southern soldiers of small post offices which furnished their only means of support, in the land whose battles their fathers had fought, in order that he might provide places for the ward heelers of Democratic Congressmen. In a country town in northern Alabama, the daughter of a Confederate soldier was ousted from office more than a year, before the expiration of her term. Her father fell at the battle of Peachtree under the tattered banners of the Southern Con- federacy. She had been appointed to the Alabama post office by our martyr soldier-President of hallowed memory, William McKinley, at whose dying couch, the North and the South knelt, like the sisters of Bethany, forever reconciled. She appealed to President Wilson, telling him that the salary of the office furnished her only means of support, and if he could not leave her the privilege of earning a living in the land for whose cause her father offered up the last, full measure of devotion, at least to allow her to serve to the end of her term. But the appeal fell upon deaf ears. Mr. Wilson was spending his Christmas down at Pass Christian and devoting his leisure moments to dedicating an ode to his civil service devotion. In a country town in the Virginia mountains, . the grand- daughter of rough and rugged John Tyler, tenth President of the United States, was holding a small post office to which she had been successively appointed by Presidents of Northern birth and lineage. There was never a President of this nation who was more stubbornly committed to "state rights," free trade, and the various time-worn issues to which Mr. Wilson still clings, than John Tyler. Like Wilson, he was born on the soil of the "Old Dominion." Miss Tyler had no means of support save the salary of the office and an aged and infirm sister was dependent upon her. The public believed that Woodrow Wilson would not be so conscienceless as to turn adrift to starve, the granddaughters of that Virginia President who saved to our country the rich territory out of which the State of Oregon was carved. But he did; because the henchman of a Democratic Congressman clamored for the "spoils." We hear much denunciation of German raids on helpless women and children. But Woodrow Wilson has nothing on the German Kaiser. There are some things that are worse than death, and these have been visited by President Wilson on the defenceless daughters of the South, descendants of those who led the South's armies and made Southern history. During successive administrations of magnanimous Northern Presidents, the widows and daughters of Southern Democrats have been appointed to important post offices in the South. One almost glimpsed the dawn of the millennium, when President Roosevelt appointed Mrs. Atkinson, widow of a Democratic gov- ernor, to one of the most important post offices in Georgia. And he did it with all the beautiful chivalry that could have been expressed in extending a courtesy to a Princess of the royal blood; although no Southern politician had ever been more re- lentless in denunciation of Republican policies than Governor Atkinson. We Progressives had to choose between Hughes and Wilson. And we feel that we have scarcely been given the chance of a real choice. In intellectual honesty, in robust Americanism, in sincerity of purpose and courage of action, Charles Evans Hughes, the stainless jurist and progressive American states- man, is about as far removed from Woodrow Wilson, the school teacher and time server, as the farthest fixed stars from this planet. WOODROW WILSON HAS SHAMED SOUTHERN IDEALS AND DARK- ENED SOUTHERN HOPES. We Southern Progressives are supporting Mr. Hughes be- cause we know he is immeasurably the strongest man in the field. Mr. Wilson has been occupied for four years mainly in for- mulating various and ever-changing programs of his own, to which he has proven as faithless as he has been disloyal to the platform on which he rode into office. Does anybody know what Mr. Wilson really believes in? I doubt if he knows himself. He believes one thing today, another thing tomorrow and something else next week. If one can prophecy what Mr. Wilson is going to do in the future by what he has done in the past, it is safe to say that he is dead certain to do exactly the opposite of what he says he believes in. Since the last guns were stacked at Appomattox no ques- tions more stupendous have tested the strength, power and ef- ficiency of this republic, than will have to be handled within the next four years, following the close of the European war and in the Mexican troubles which Mr. Wilson's administration will have bequeathed to us. The times do not call for a weak and uncertain man. The times call for a man of dauntless courage, of unafraid action, of a patriotism that knows no wavering and a devotion to' American ideals to which a despairing people may look, as the mariner on the stormy sea looks to the southern cross. Charles Evans Hughes is the hope of the nation in this hour. In the fiery furnace of political test his mettle has been found to be eighteen karats pure. He will snatch up our flag from the grime in which Mr. Wilson's course has degraded it before every nation of the earth, leaving America solitary in her friendless- ness among the world powers. So pure and high an authority as Dr. Samuel Woodrow, cousin of Mr. Wilson and Pastor of Pilgrim Congregational' Church of St. Louis, has been courageous enough to denounce President Wilson's method of averting the threatened railway strike as "a menace to free government." In the railway matter Mr. Wilson stepped aside from the straight path of truth and deliberately sought to deceive the American people in the effort to gain public sympathy, with the statement that the Adamson bill was to give the railway brotherhoods an eight-hour day. Mr. Wilson knows that he is deliberately untruthful. Mr. Hughes has been polite enough to name it "intellectual dishonesty." Another more plain- spoken American would have nominated Mr. Wilson for Presi- dent of the Ananias club. In the effort to control the labor vote for the Democratic party on the eve of a national election, Mr. Wilson was willing to undermine the foundations of constitutional government. The Democratic party must live though the republic perish! The American people intend to see that labor in this country shall receive fair treatment from capital. That was one of the big issues that called the Progressive party into existence. But we do not intend that our form of government shall be wrecked on the shoals of Wilsonian expediency! We are no more willing that any class of laborers should force a measure through Congress, than that the capitalists should go to Mr. Wilson and say: "Give us increased freight rates or we will discontinue service on every train that traverses this continent." If legis- lation can be accomplished that way, then popular government in the new world must go down in a dark night of despair. Mr. Wilson is a Democrat first, and after that, maybe, some- where away down in the scale, he is some sort of an American — the sort of an American who writes essays over the dead bodies of Americans beneath the waters of the high seas — the sort of an American who indites elegant epistles some times to Villa, some times to Carranza, when American women are outraged and our country's standard is trampled under foot by the bandits of Mexico — the sort of an American who sharpens his pencil for meaningless phraseology when the British King aims a blow at American commerce. Henry Watterson, sage of southern Democratic journalism, has said that Mr. Wilson has no heart, that if he had one, it would be "like an illegitimate garment, always in his way." Geo. W. Harvey, discoverer of Professor Wilson and who introduced the Professor to American politics, spoke later, in regretful tones, of his discovery, and confessed that Mr. Wilson's veracity could not be depended upon. Are Western Progressives going to vote for a man whose course is "a menace to free government," a man who has no heart and whose word is not dependable? These are indict- ments against Mr. Wilson by his friends and relatives and sup- porters. And the awful pity is that Mr. Wilson's record in office abundantly justifies the indictments. Woodrow Wilson, the first Southern Democratic President, since that flag of tender memories was furled over the great "lost cause" of American history, is an ugly spectacle before the American electorate. There was a time when Southern Presidents would no more stoop to demagogic subterfuge than they would steal or murder. There was a time when the power of Great Britain could not awe Southern men into submission. But, behold, the day has dawned when a group of brotherhoods can "hold up" a Southern President and make him scurry over C to Congress like a scared rabbit, and then seek to deceive about the purposes of the measure his action, forced through the na- tional law-making body. There was a day when Southern statesmen were afraid of nothing in the world but to fail in truth and duty. There was a day when Southern patriots wrote across the white flags of their statehood: "Not for ourselves but for others." There is an abysmal distance between Woodrow Wilson and the greater day in Southern history. He had much to inspire him, but he failed! Has Woodrow Wilson forgotten the proud beginnings of Southern history? How has he shamed our ideals and lowered our standards and darkened our hopes! Mr. Wilson's deeds never square with his lofty words. The platform on which he was elected spoke as follows: "We denounce the profligate waste of money wrung from the people by excessive taxation through the lavish appropriation of recent Republican Congresses, which have kept taxes high and reduced the purchasing power of the people's toil. We demand a return to that simplicity and economy which befits a Demo- cratic government and a reduction in the number of useless offices, the salaries of which drain the substance of the people." High sounding words! The Congress which has just ad- journed created numerous new and useless offices and appro- priated about $2,000,000,000 of the people's money. Never before in our history has an administration been so profligate in expenditures. Just how many millions of deficit four years of Democratic economy have produced will be learned under another administration. WILSON TREATED PROGRESSIVES WITH CONTEMPT. AS NATIONAL ELECTION APPROACHES HE'S WRITING ESSAYS ABOUT WHAT A GOOD PROGRESS- IVE HE IS. Viewing the junk heap into which Mr. Wilson consigned the platform upon which he was elected, I am reminded of a negro church known to fame as Zion Hill, which once flourished on one of the red old hills of Georgia. The African pastor, a relic of the old slave days, had partially mastered elementary reading. On a balmy June Sunday, he painfully read his text from the Bible; then carefully removing his spectacles and taking a copious draught of water from a well-filled pitcher that stood on the pine board pulpit, he announced in deeply solemn tones: "Bredren an' sistren, you hab jes' hearn de scriptures, but I begs leab to differ wid our Lord an' Master on dis important question;" and he proceeded to preach according to his own views. Mr. Wilson has assumed to differ with the main planks of the Democratic platform on which he was elected; and it is a reasonable conclusion that his mental processes are somewhat in tune with the unlettered negro preacher of the Georgia mountains. The Democratic platform pledged protection for American lives wherever the sun shines or the seas roll. The silent lipe of America's unavenged dead beneath the waters of the high seas and on the fields of Mexico, mutely testify to the quality of Mr. Wilson's faith with that pledge. Mr. Wilson declared against intervention in Mexico, but he intervened after the most dangerous fashion in assuming to dictate who should or should not be President of Mexico, and out of that colossal blunder have issued our Mexican troubles. Indeed, nearly all the troubles of Mr. Wilson's administration have been of his own making. He had no more right to interfere in the internal affairs of Mexico than the Mexican government had the right to refuse to recognize Mr. Wilson as President of our republic, because he chanced to be elected by the minority party, due to a split in the Republican party. If our government had any business at Vera Cruz, our fleet steamed out of the harbor without attending to it. leaving help- less Americans to be rescued by foreign ships. No wonder the Mexicans despise us, and spit on our flag and murder our men and outrage our women. They have learned that we have a President who doesn't care. When nineteen of our brave lads were brought back from Vera Cruz to be buried, Mr. Wilson delivered an oration over the dead bodies, saying they had gone down to Mexico to serve humanity. High sounding words! But again Mr. Wilson stepped aside from the path of truth. He sent the naval forces to Mexico to compel Huerta to sal ite the flag, and suffered igno- minious failure. Nothing- whatever was accomplished! by our country's jaunt to Vera Cruz, and every drop of American blood spilled and of unoffending Mexican blood is on the shoulders of Woodrow Wilson. When Huerta came to New York after being driven out of Mexico by Mr. Wilson, I sought an interview with him at the Ansonia Hotel. My first question was : "General, did you salute Old Glory when you stepped ashore." He laughed pleasantly and then said: "Tell the American people, Senora, that I salute their country's flag with all my homage. It stands for strength and justice." I asked the exiled President of Mexico how he stood on female suffrage. And he answered promptly: "I was pre- paring to appoint women to administrative positions in Mexico which would fit them to exercise the power of the ballot. But here in the United States your wonderful educational institu- tions have already qualified American women for the ballot." I saw Huerta many years ago in the republic of Mexico, in the vigor of robust manhood when he commanded the armies of Diaz. But it was a broken and worn old man who talked with me in New York, some times with a mist before his eyes and a sob in his voice, of Mexico's internal troubles. A little later, Mexico's exiled President lay dead on our western plains, hastened to his grave by Mr. Wilson. If it was our business to invade Mexico in pursuit of Villa, we have not attended to it. Villa is still among the uncaught. Meanwhile we have mobilized our national guards on the Texas borders, threatening to stretch to the Pacific ocean. After ridding Mexico of Huerta, for a time, Mr. Wilson boosted Villa for President. Growing tired of Villa, his verdant fancy lightly turned to Carranza. The next we know he may be flirting with Zapata. While these lines are running into type, the guns shipped into Mexico by American manufacturers, with Mr. Wilsons knowledge and acquiescence, are being turned on American soldiers. Mr. Wilson has never had any real Mexican policy and he has called upon the South American republics to tell him what to do. No wonder the Mexicans despise us, insult our flag and raid our towns. They know the "alue of Mr. Wilson's "strict ac- countability threats " The whole world knows what Mr. Wilson did to the Panama Canal tolls plank of his platform. But there is one plank of the Democratic platform which the American people are going to see that Mr. Wilson preserves — the one-term plank. For more than a year after the first guns of the European war Mr. Wilson did not lift his hand to make this nation ready to defend itself, and it was only when a robust American patriot went up and down the country, arousing the national conscience. 9 that Mr.. Wilson announced that America should have incom- parably the greatest navy of the earth. A few weeks later he weakened on the greatest navy program, and announced for adequate military preparedness. His Secretary of War set to work on this program but scarcely had he fully outlined it before Mr. Wilson went back on the program in such manner as to force out of his cabinet his strongest cabinet officer, Secre- tary of War Garrison. With every principle of liberty and justice which free peo- ples hold sacred; the issue in the world war, Mr. Wilson rushed to the front with a beautiful essay in which he declared that the American people should "be neutral even in thought." Right and wrong were battling on the ensanguined fields of the Old World, but the people of the great, free republic of the New World, must not even think right. But Mr. Wilson is changing his views these days about every twenty-four hours, veering to every quarter of the compass in the effort to gain votes for another term. The other day at "Shadow' Lawn" he renounced his "neutrality in thought" doctrine and solemnly proclaimed that "no nation can any longer remain neutral as against any wilful disturbance of the peace of the world." Nobody knows what Mr. Wilson believes in, because his words and his deeds are always widely at variance. Mr. Wilson says he's for conservation. But he signed away the imperial acres of Hetch Hetchy valley to a San Francisco corporation bent on glittering development schemes under the guise of supplying water to the city of San Francisco. He signed away one of the world's great wonders and then wrote an apologetic essay about it. Mr. Wilson says he's for conservation, but he did not lift his voice against the iniquitous Shields bilk designed to deliver to the waterpower trust that last of our country's public treasu- ries, the waterpower of the entire nation. If Wilson's for con- servation, God save the republic when the anti-conservationists get a heavy hand on the land! Mr. Wilson announces in a loud voice that he believes in efficient administration of the government's affairs. But in all American history our government has never been so extrava- gantly and inefficiently managed as under Wilson's administra- tion. If he's for efficiency, God help the country when the inef- ficient crowd get control! Mr. Wilson's pet expression is his belief in "pitiless pub- licity," but he has been the first American President to convert the executive office into a "star chamber." In eloquent words Mr. Wilson has acclaimed himself Presi- dent of the whole American people. But this nation has never had a more sectional President. He has remarked the fast fading line between the north and the south. He has treated the Progressives with scorn and contempt. And now that he needs our votes, he is writing a few more essays setting forth what a good Progressive he is. 10 ROOSEVELT IN THE WHITE HOUSE WOULD HAVE AVERTED THE EUROPEAN WAR. Since Appomattox, the wonderful land between the Potomac and the Rio Grande, has been under the shackles of the Demo- cratic party, but the principles for which Jefferson and his colleagues battled, have been buried by Woodrow Wilson. We who followed Colonel Roosevelt into the Progressive party felt that the road had at last been opened for the political emanci- pation of the South. No intelligent person of intellectual hon- esty questions that it is a bad situation for any section to have only one political party. Where there are two parties measur- ing strength there is always cleaner government — more respon- siveness to the will of the people. . At the breaking out of the European war when the South staggered in the shadow of bankruptcy, Mr. Wilson did not lift his hand to help Southern farmers, because the South is solidly democratic. But when the South's cotton crop- had passed into the hands of Wall street gamblers he found the way to aid them. Instincts deeper seated than life — the angel with flaming sword which the South has planted at the pure sources of her racial streams — Mr. Wilson has scornfully flouted, because tin South is democratic anyway. The first Southern President in American history to elevate a negro to the federal bench in the District of Columbia, to pass upon the rights of the race which, through the long centuries of upward struggle since Hengist and Horsa landed on the shores of England, has proven its fitness to rule the republic of the western hemisphere with authority undivided. In explanation. Mr. Wilson confided to the American people that he bought the negro support in 1912, and was discharging campaign debts ! Paying campaign debts with freedom's last and holiest tribunal ! God witnesses that no President in west- ern world history has ever before made such a shameful admis- sion ! Mr. Wilson sent word to the St. Louis convention to incor- porate suffrage in the Democratic platform. In fact, Mr. Wilson wrote the suffrage plank, which is susceptible of so many dif- ferent interpretations that nobody knows what it really means. Mr. Wilson said the South was opposed to suffrage, but as the South was Democratic anyway, that made no difference; the Democracy had to try to win the free states of the West. Is the progressive West going to vote for a man who has proven himself a sorry time-server on one of the great issues of the century ? In the first months of Mr. Wilson's administration when his near free trade tariff had caused numerous industries to be closed and thrown thousands out of employment, a committee representing the army of unemployed called at the White House. Mr. Wilson comforted them with the assurance that the situa- tion was purely psychological. The man with an empty dinner pail doesn't have time to inquire into psychology. Now that Mr. Wilson needs the votes of the business in- terests of the country, he announces that he no longer believes in free trade and that the Sherman anti-trust act has about served its usefulness. He went gayly down to Atlantic City to stand before the national suffrage convention and proclaim his belief in equal suffrage. But he wasn't a suffragist until he needed the votes of the women of the free states of the West. For four years all factions of suffrage workers in America have labored in vain with Mr. Wilson. Even now, he limits his support to state legislation. If left to state legislation, a million years hence will find Southern women still shackled. . and Woodrow Wilson knows it. He merely uses language to beguile in his stand on suffrage as he has on every other big question that has come to him for handling. I appeal to the women of the West to help their Southern sisters to political freedom by voting for the man who favors an amendment to the federal constitution, the only route by which Southern women hope to reach political equality, and no one knows that better than Woodrow Wilson. Mr. Wilson said he believed in rural credit to which his platform pledged him. But in the last hours of his adminis- tration he handed out a gold brick to the farmers and it will be about two years before they learn how they have been tricked and betrayed, as it will require about that length of time to get the Wilson rural credits to operating. Meanwhile, Wilson's pale effigy of rural credits serves the Democratic campaign. When one hurls unanswerable facts at a Wilson supporter as to the failure of Wilson's administration, he may be counted upon to back into a corner, and say the only thing left to say: "Well, Wilson's kept us out of war, and if Roosevelt had been in the White House we would have been in war long ago." What right had Woodrow Wilson to plunge this nation into war? The power to "fear God and take one's own part" does not lead to war. It is the surest guarantee of peace. We want adequate preparedness to enable us to maintain peace on this continent; but peace with honor. Mr. Wilson has so stultified American ideals, honor and virility that a hundred years will not be long enough to undo the evil he has wrought. He has constantly held before this age, already steeped in commercialism, the advantages of ease and profit, as against the courage which leads to the performance of duty at whatever sacrifice or cost. With respect to Mexico and the invasion of Belgium, his 12 position has been exactly that of a robust man who would sit supinely on his front porch and witness the pitiless maltreat- ing of a helpless child on his neighbor's lawn, fearing to raise his voice on the side of right, lest he jeopardize his own ease and comfort. If Theodore Roosevelt had been in the White House, there would have been no European war. At the time of the assas- sination of the heir to the Austrian throne, and in the tense days immediately following, when the gathering clouds of war darkened the horizon of the civilized world, a strong man like Roosevelt would have taken steps to avert the world war. When Roosevelt was President every act of his was on the side of peace. He settled the war between Russia and Japan and for that great service to humanity was awarded the Noble Peace prize. Roosevelt assembled the American fleet and sent it around the world to show to the nations of the earth that we were able to maintain peace on this continent and to stand for peace on this globe, whenever and wherever the world's peace should be threatened. Under Roosevelt's administration we had the second greatest navy in the world. But during the term of the essayist, our navy has so deteriorated, that Wilson's Sec- retary of the Navy is ashamed and afraid for its real condition to be made known to the American people. This republic is not going to say at the ballot box on the 7th of November that we endorse the spineless course by which Mr. Wilson has shorn us of our self respect and lost us the respect of every nation of the earth. This republic is not going to announce to the world that we have forgotten our dead be- neath the waters that wash foreign shores. We are not going to say that we are not our sister's keeper — that sister prostrate under the bandit's heels on the far fields of Mexico. Charles Evans Hughes is honest. He is courageous. He has been tried and found true. He stands for an Americanism that must spring into vaster and more virile life from the depths of the degradation into which Mr. Wilson has trailed the nation's standard. The pure jurist! . The dauntless champion of the people against the encroachments of the corporations! Tested as chief executive of the northern empire state! He answers the call of a mighty nation in a world crisis! The unawed American electorate, gathering from busy marts, and from millions of happy homes on our broad commons, will march to countless voting places on the 7th of November to execute the freeman's will which will crown Charles Evans •Hughes President of the whole American people. My last word to you men and women of the West: Help us make his election unanimous. In that way it is given us properly to avenge the nation's outraged honor. And we will properly avenge it if the mighty West has not lost the vision which patriot's hearts hold on the commons c' 13 Lexington and on the heights of Gettysburg— the vision of a forward-looking, unawed republic, enshrining justice, liberty and equality, as dawn stars of that flag which, please God, shall still keep the hopes of men undimmed! J 14 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS I 013 982 977 3 i I llllll lllll lllli iiiii mil urn in""" 1 " 013 982 S Hollinger pH8.5 Mill Run F3-195 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS inn 013 982 977 3 * Hollinger pH8.5 Mill Run F3-1955