The man in the street: Papers on American topics

by Meredith Nicholson

Had I been in the Senate, I would have voted for the league and treaty as submitted; and I advocated its ratification accordingly. I did not think and do not now think that anything in the League Covenant as sent to the Senate would violate the Constitution of the United States, or would involve us in wars which it would not be to the highest interest of the world and this country to suppress by universal boycott and, if need be, by military force.

In response to a question whether, this being his feeling, he would not support Mr. Cox, Mr. Taft made this reply:

No such issue as the ratification of the League of Nations as submitted can possibly be settled in the coming election. Only one-third of the Senate is to be elected, and but fifteen Republican senators out of forty-nine can be changed. There remain in the Senate, whatever the result of the election, thirty-three Republicans who have twice voted against the ratification of the league without the Lodge reservations. Of the fifteen retiring Republicans, many are certain of re-election. Thirty-three votes will defeat the league.

Smith, placidly fishing, made the point that a man who believed in a thing would vote for it even though it was a sure loser, and asked where a Democratic landslide would leave Mr. Taft. When I reminded him that he had drifted out of the pellucid waters of political discussion and snagged the boat on a moral question, he became peevish and refused to fish any more that day.

The league is the paramount issue, or it is not; you can take it, or leave it alone. The situation may be wholly changed when Mr. Root, to whom the Republican league plank is attributed, reports the result of his labors in organizing the international court of arbitration. Some new proposal for an association of nations to promote or enforce peace would be of undoubted benefit to the Republicans in case they find their negative position difficult to maintain.

The platforms and speeches of acceptance present, as to other matters, nothing over which neighbors need quarrel. As to retrenchment, labor, taxation, and other questions of immediate and grave concern, the promises of both candidates are fair enough. They both clearly realize that we have entered upon a period that is likely to witness a strong pressure for modifications of our social and political structure. Radical sentiment has been encouraged, or at least tolerated, in a disturbing degree by the present administration. However, there is nothing in Mr. Cox’s record as governor or in his expressed views to sustain any suspicion that he would temporize with the forces of destruction. The business of democracy is to build, not to destroy; to help, not to hinder. We have from both candidates much the same assurances of sympathy with the position held nowadays by all straight-thinking men—that industrial peace, concord, and contentment can be maintained only by fair dealing and good-will among all of us for the good of all.

From their public utterances and other testimony we are not convinced that either candidate foreshadows a stalwart Saul striding across the hills on his way to the leadership of Israel. Mr. Harding shows more poise—more caution and timidity, if you will; Mr. Cox is a more alert and forthright figure, far likelier to strike “straight at the grinning Teeth of Things.” He is also distinctly less careful of his speech. He reminds the Republicans that “McKinley broke the fetters of our boundary lines, spoke of the freedom of Cuba, and carried the torch of American idealism to the benighted Philippines”—a proud boast that must have pained Mr. Bryan. In the same paragraph of his speech of acceptance we are told that “Lincoln fought a war on the purely moral question of slavery”—a statement that must ring oddly in the ears of Southerners brought up in the belief that the South fought in defense of State sovereignty. These may not be inadvertences, but a courageous brushing away of old litter; he is entitled to the benefit of the doubt.

VII

Smith rose from his morning dip with the joyful countenance of a diver who has found a rare pearl. We were making progress, he said; he thought he had got hold of what he called the God’s truth of the whole business. What those fellows did at Chicago and San Francisco was to cut the barbed-wire entanglements in No Man’s Land, so that it doesn’t make much difference on which side of the battle-line we find ourselves on election day. The parties have unwittingly flung a challenge to the independent voter. An extraordinary opportunity is presented to citizens everywhere to scrutinize with unusual care their local tickets and vote for the candidates who promise the best service. As Smith put it, we ought to be able to scramble things a good deal. Keep the bosses guessing: this he offered as a good slogan for the whole Smith family. In our own Indiana we would pick and choose, registering, of course, our disapproval of Senator Watson as a post-graduate of the Penrose school, and voting for a Democrat for governor because Governor Goodrich’s administration has been a continuous vaudeville of error and confusion, and the Democratic candidate, a gentleman heretofore unknown in politics, talks common sense in folksy language.

We finally concluded as to the presidency that it came down to a choice of men tested by their experience, public acts, and the influences behind them. The imperative demand is for an efficient administration of the federal government. The jobs must be given to big men of demonstrated capacity. Undoubtedly Mr. Harding would have a larger and more promising field to draw upon. If it were possible for Mr. Cox to break a precedent and state with the frankness of which he seems capable the order of men he would assemble for his counsellors and administrators, he would quiet an apprehension that is foremost in the minds of an innumerable company of hesitating voters. Fear of continuance of Mr. Wilson’s indulgent policy toward mediocrity and a repetition of his refusal to seek the best help the nation offered (until compelled to call upon the expert dollar-a-year man to meet the exigencies of war) is not a negligible factor in this campaign, and Mr. Cox, if he is wise, will not ignore it.