He could say to Belmont and his employees: “You are blocking the streets. You are interfering with the rights of the people who paid for the Subway and who want to use it. You and your disputes are as nothing to me in comparison with the duty which I owe to the city. Arbitrate your difference, or I will exert the full sovereign power of the municipality to seize the Subway and to open it to travel.
“And you needn’t run to any judge for an injunction, either. In the exercise of supreme executive authority policing the city and keeping open its streets, I shall tolerate no interference whatever from corporation lawyers or corporation judges. I give you fair warning: Arbitrate, and do it quickly—else the city takes what is hers, and operates the cars which you have tied up!”
Who doubts that a threat like this, made by the right kind of Mayor, would bring Belmont to his senses in a couple of minutes? Arbitrate! Of course he would arbitrate—quickly and gladly.
And the Mayor would have the enthusiastic support of ninety-nine men out of every hundred in New York.
The Patriot
HIS eyes ashine with ancient memories, His blood aglow with subtle racial fire, For him are quenched the stirrings of desire. The pageant of the world has ceased to please; Hushed are the evening songs—the lutes of ease; In the war flame, that old ancestral pyre, He casts his hopes of home, wife, child or sire; Instinct of race, a passion more than these, The spirit of his country, holds him thrall; In him forgotten heroes, forbears, rise, Strengthening his heart to common sacrifice; Out of the darkness generations call And martyr hosts, that unrecorded fall, Salute him from the void with joyful cries.
London Daily News.