Greymouth Evening Star. AND BRUNNERTON ADVOCATE. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 19th., 1912. PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN.

Greymouth Evening Star, 19 June 1912, Page 4

Greymouth Evening Star. AND BRUNNERTON ADVOCATE. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 19th., 1912. PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN.

The eyes of the world are at present turned upon the United States of America, where a close and exciting contest is taking place for the Presidency between the two Republican candidates, and so far as the latest ad races go to show there is nothing much to choose between the two. If anything, the present, occupier, of the White House seems to be improving his position. Although the actual election does not take place until November the contest is for all intents and purposes decided on the primaries, anil it should be possible very soon to know the actual votes available for either President Taft or liis rival Mr. Theodore Roosevelt. The keenness with which the candidates are, seeking to procure even’ available vote is apparent from the way they are stooping to obtain the votes of the usually despised black delegates. For once in their lives, the representatives of tire .sons of Ham are having a really good time, and .recognising that the way to a negro’sjrenrt,is, through his stomach, the candidates are .feasting the negro delegates right royally. The sight of whites humbling themselves in this way must make the blood of the haughty Virginians boil, and, will sow the seed of many bloody acts aga.mst the negroes' when the election is over. The rival candidates have descended to mutual invective and recrimination, and the world has been rather startled and not a little amused at the turn affairs have taken. Mr- Roosevelt, since he threw his hat into the ring, has carried on the struggle with characteristic, firry, and is dealing out blows that, have been returned with interest. Both are now going “all in” with the gloves off. Mr. Roosevelt has accused this quondan friend, of .being a Louis XVI. ) a friend of reaction and privileged minorities and a manipulator of the political machine -to stifle the popular will. President Taft has retorted iu kind. He accused his rival with trying to stir up class prejudice and of aiming to occupy the Presidency for life. it is really, hard to -arrive at a correct estimate of the merits of the two candidates. An article in McClure’s Magazine claims to tell the truth about - .President Taft. The writer- contends that if Taft is reelected it will be because be represents exactly opposite forces in the community to those he was understood to represent in 1908. He is now declared to be the nominee of the great financial powers which are so extremely repugnant to the majority of the American people, and- he is generally credited with bringing the. weight of his hi eh office to bear to protect them from the law. ’ The insurgent Republicans' are thus strongly opposed to the ruling President, and have’ rallied round them all the radical elements in American public life to support his famous opponent A writer in the Fortnightly, on the other hand, claims that President Taft has proved himself an eminently safe, sagacious, high minded competent ruler. His handling of the fiscal question, which .Mr. Roosevelt consitently ignored, has resulted in a partial reduction of the tariff, in the establishment of free trade with the Phillipin.es, in the imposition ol a Federal corporation tax, in the adoption of a minimum and maximum tariff, and above all, in the creation ot a Tariff Board. He lias enforced the Am-i-Trust Acts . with salutary vigor and has promoted arbitration with Great Britain and reciprocity with Canaria —both of them popular policies, though neither, met with the fate it deserved. -The chief charge against Mr. Roosevelt is that he has “broken his solemn pledge to the American people ‘in no circumstances’ again to la- a carid-date.” The, precise -words •in which this solemn pledge was . eni-

bodied were uttered on November Stir, 1904, on the morrow of Mr. Roosevelt’s triumphant election as President and after he had already served some three years in the White House, not by popular election but by the laws which automatically instills the Vice-Presid-ent on the death of the President. Mr Roosevelt said : “On the 4th of March next I shall have served three and a half years and this constitutes my first term. The wise custom which limits the President to two terms regards the substance and not the form and under no circumstances will I he a candidate for or accept another nomination.” Three years later Mr. Roosevelt reiterated his pledge ; “I have not changed and shall not change that decision thus announced.’ There is no doubt that these words, construed literally and apart from the special circumstances -n which they were uttered,' do seem to bar Mr. Roosevelt 'permanently, but it is urged by Mr. Sydney Brookes in bis article, in the Fortnightly that there is equally no doubt that this is not the sense in which they were taken at the time, nor is it the sense in which Mr Roosevelt meant them to be interpreted. A custom, sanctified by Washington’s example adhered to by successive presi dents, prescribes that no man shall he president for three consecutive terms. Both before and after his election in 1904 a discusion raged as to whether the period already served by Roosevelt as President McKinley’s unelected successor did or did not constitute a first term. If it did, then he was .ineligible for the nomination in 1908; and while its meaning would have been clearer had Mr- Roosevelt specifically stated that what he was renouncing was a third consecutive term nobody at the time put any other construction upon it or thought that Mr. Roosevelt was railing himself out as a Presidential candidate for all time. His “pledge” of 1904, however, has been displayed by bis opponents in standing black-lettered type as the most serious ind.ictmeht against him. Then again, he is accused of disloyalty, even treachew. ro Iris successor. It was Mr. Roosevelt who in 1908 forced Mr. Taft’s nomination upon the Republican party and flattered him with the highest encomiums. It is urged that he was tints under peculiar bonds, both personal and political, to stand by him and do what Ire could to make his administration a success- He has not done so, but Iras been distinctly hos-. tile. The ex-President’s supporters reply that the disloyalty has not been on Mr. Roosevelt’s part but on Mr. Taft’s. Tire President, they •point out, began by making a clean sweep of nil his old colleagues; he fell foul of Mr. Roosevelt’s closest friends, both in and out of Congress, driving some of them from office, and altogether failed to clinch the Roosevelt policies. The Administration has gone more and more put of touch with the reforming spirit. In short, it is claimed, Mr-. Taft has not “made good. The Ontario Free Press shows to what lengths the candidates have gone.in their campaign of personal invective: —“The American Republic does not appear to advantage in the eyes of the world in the serious disputings between the President of the nation and an ex-Pre-sident. Though these two men are of the same political party, and were, until recently, close personal friends, they are to day going upon the public platform and declaring in words not capable of misinterpretation that each is given to falsehood and crooked dealing, and possessed of attributes which no self-respecting people could calmly countenance. President Taft is deserving of all credit for having maintained a silence" regarding ex-President Roosevelt until actually forced to speak. His natural instincts were opposed to the personal vituperation and discussion which, now characterises the contest for- the Presidency for the next four years. But so unfair and hurtful were the tactics of his opponent, in sheer self-defence he has been impelled to speak. The result has been to present Roosevelt in a most unfavourable light. Citizens of the Republic are wont at times to sneer at monarchical forms of government, but when has England afforded a parallel to the disgraceful controversy now go ing on in the United States?” The vetting in the primaries may be so close and the feeling engendered so bitter that disruption will, come in ihe Republican Paify, giving the Democrats

the chance they have waited for so long. It is hinted that the veteran W. J. Bryan will at the last moment be his party’s candidate once more, ami he would, no doubt, be a formidable opponent.