COMMENTS ON THE CABLES

Evening Star, Issue 13090, 24 October 1908, Page 8

COMMENTS ON THE CABLES

So many causations , are eoming from, the , , . United States that one is , Mr Boonrtlt'* .apt ..to get. confused.. /The i. ; latest , very latest, which is credited "v Seavatlob. to the irrepressible. activi.ties of the President, may possibly be misunderstood. Does the seni sation consist in the nature of the Presi- ■ dent’s charges or in the' fact that be is making himself so conspicuous on behalf - of his friend Mr Taft?; \Ve think it is the: s latter. Mr Roosevelt is defying precedent, and taking very great chances. It. is true , that he has done these things so .often, and has come out victorious, that he may suc- •; ceed in doing so again. Yet never before has, any President dared to force a oandi- ■ date upon the country, as Mr Roosevelt - :has done in the case of Mr Taft. Mr G. W. Smalley, ‘ The Times’s ’ American cor-respondent-in-chief, though favoring Mr Taft, is of that opinion too. He writes; A candidate nominated as Mr Taft was at Chicago by any President from General Grant to Mr APKinley would •have been, predoomed to defeat, no matter how well equipped he was for the office of chief magistrate. It was the exceptional circumstances that saved the situation. The President, however, once the nomination of his first lieutenant was secured, turned his attention to electioneering, and immediately flung himself into the fray with the ardor of a youth making his first essay. He has answered Mr Hearst, denounced Mr Haskell, and challenged Mr Bryan. An inhabitant of Marc, coming to the earth for the first time, might well ask: Is it Mr Rocsevelt or Mr Taft who is running for I President ? There is nothing in the matter of the challenge to create a sensaNothlng tion. Mr Bryan might well In U. content himself by answering that he is bound only by the “ platform ” that was formally endorsed by r.ho Denver Convention. It was known then that Mr Compere was not satisfied with the Republican attitude, and that he had stated that he endorsed the Democratic aiiti-injunotion plank. Although Labor is far from being solid in the United States, Mr Compere, neither then nor since, promised to do more than he was able. “1 he only vote,” he said, “ that 1 can pledge to Mr Bryan is my own.” The American worker resents the suggestion that ho can be delivered over to any party and directed to vote to order. He carries his independence so far that he has had practically no influence with either of the great parties. He has frittered away his strength by spending it on half a dozen causes, and on nearly as many candidates. Mr Gompers is seeking to remedy this evil, and it is thought, with two million votes distributed throughout the Federation of Labor, that this year they may be able to turn the scale on behalf of Mr Bryan. We conclude that it is this_ tendency to concentrate on the Democratic ticket, both among the ranks of organised Labor and among naturalised Amen oasis, that has. hurried Mr Roosevelt once more into the lists to break a spear. What Mr Roosevelt asks is not very clear, but it would appear that he wants to know whether Mr Bryan favors the boycott and the black-list because Air Gompers docs. Why should Air Bryan answer? But if ho were disposed to do so, he could turn out an effective campaign pamphlet. The boycott and the black-list, as applied by employers to workers who have offended them, have been ruthlessly exercised throughout the length and breadth of the United States. The names of all the strikers on the Southern Pacific Railway in 1894 were black-listed in every railway office throughout the country. If Mr Compare seeks to induce Congress to legalise the boycott as a weapon of industrial warfare, that is surely bis own affair, and no part of the Democratic “ platform,” by which Air Bryan has elected to stand or fall. Although Air Victor Grayson, the Socialist M.P., poses as an ad4*A Uitltn vanced thinker, his know*nd Idle ledge of Royalty is shockPareslt*. ■’ ingly behind the times. He still clings to a fallacy -very popular many years before he was born—viz., that kings and queens are persons who live in pomp, luxury, and self-indul-gence, regardless of the miseries of the millions over whom they profess to rule. So Mr Grayson informed a meeting of unemployed that King Edward Was “a useless and idle parasite.” The general belief, then, is all wrong—viz., that the King is a fairly busy man, who is keenly interested in the affairs of the world and of his own country, and who submits with unfailing good temper to a wearying, wearing round of ceremonials and functions. Mr Grayson, fresh possibly from the study of some more or less veracious, scandalous Court chronicle, told his idle hearers that the King is a mere “ parasite ”; in other words, a person who battens on the labors and lives of others. In some countries men have been put in prison for much less. It is, however, the boast of Londoners that, though more treason is talked and more insults hurled at the Throne in their great city every day of the week than in all Russia or Germany, no one, save under very exceptional circumstances, is. arrested. The result of this contemptuous tolerance is that no monarch in Europe is so free to wander about the streets of his capital in safety as King Edward. To arrest Air Grayson would be to confer a crown of martyrdom on him, and the authorities rightly reiuse to do so. He. would he changed from an irresponsible individual, whom few serious people honor with a reply, into a popular hero with hosts of imitators. Apart from this outburst, his estimate of the duties of kingship are all at sea. Ho has merely repeated in more polished phrasing the teachings of the gutter. To the poor wretch who. in the word? of the late Air Hugh Price Hughes, “is damned from his birth,” the sight of v. king in his carriage or in his palace, surrounded by the great and worthy of his Empire, may represent all that the heart of man need wish for. To such a one the idea of work and anxiety in connection with a king would appear the stupidest sort of joke. Yet tho truth remains that monarchs do real work, and that the hours which an ignorant public believe are devoted to idleness are often hours of unceasing care.