THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS MONDAY, APRIL 9, 1928. ELECTION STRIFE IN CHICAGO

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19916, 9 April 1928, Page 8

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS MONDAY, APRIL 9, 1928. ELECTION STRIFE IN CHICAGO

News of the way in which Chicago, according to American testimony, enjoys itself at election time, is likely to make most folk share Tony Weller's high estimate of an alibi. When such things are due to happen in "America's second city," it is best to be elsewhere, so long as it is not in America's first city, where elections are similarly apt to become dangerously violent. The spectacle of "two mobs of jobholders, hoodlums, gunmen, bootleggers, gamblers, and just plain wastrels" doing battle with machine-guns and bombs is certainly not attractive to British people, accustomed to wage political warfare, even on election days, without recourse to firearms as a means of overcoming opposed opinion. This state of affairs in Chicago furnishes a strange comment on America's present activity in promoting an international treaty outlawing war. Like Russia, the United States should be asked to consider the advisability of putting things right at home before venturing to tell the rest of the world how to live in peace. In this instance, it is not the fostering of armed strife in other countries, as is Russia's penchant, but the toleration of armed strife within the national border. It is true that measures are being taken to reduce —from 75,000 to 25,000—the number of "stolen votes" flagrantly manipulated, as a rule, in the trickery marking these election contests. It is true also that some effort is being made to police the city. But neither of these efforts, if the experience of earlier times is any guide, will be of much avail. The election will be conducted amid circumstances designed to intimidate electors. Not without significance is the statue of Liberty, at the entrance to New York harbour, placed with its back to America. The city of Chicago, it cannot be forgotten, is th,e pride of its Mayor, Mr. William H. Thompson, who rejoices in the more intimate name of "Big Bill Thompson." He has lately been engaged in a very offensive campaign against all things British. In pai'ticular, he has made some derogatory references, painfully and childishly free, to King George, and has gone out of his way to decry the friendly allusions to Britain that appear in some school-books used in his State and elsewhere in America. He has abused his official position to ban some of these books. In connection with this scurrilous campaign he has found applied an unwarranted meaning in Abraham Lincoln's famous Gettysburg speech, concluding with , "We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." That sentiment, so expressed, was wholly noble. The sweep of its clear vision took in every nation. "Big Bill Thompson" prostitutes it to serve a petty and local end, and turns it into a weapon of offence against the British people. How his leading of bands of scoundrelly gunmen in an election contest comports with the sentiment, and what the great President would have thought of this distortion of it, are questions whose inevitable answer convicts Chicago's Mayor of insufferable effrontery. He has added a further chapter to the discreditable story of his city. There is recalled by it the damning indictment launched by Mr. W. T. Stead in his searching book "If Christ Came to Chicago?" Since that day there have accumulated irrefutable testimonies to the untrustworthiness ol the city's police,

and no confidence can be pufc in any employment of them to prevent the manipulation of votes and the riot of lawlessness. It should be noted that Chicago's Mayor has taken delight in a prediction he made in 1915. "If the people of the United States do not stop sending arms, ammunition and death-dealing implements of war to one set of belligerent nations in Europe," he then said, "the people of America will pay in American blood what they gained in foreign gold." He now adds to that statement, clearly applying to help thus given to the resisters of the Central Powers, "My prediction came true." Where he then stood in that struggle, and where he stands today, may bo judged without difficulty from his own words. He places little value on freedom, and uses with conscienceless abandon Prussian methods. Moreover, he has openly rejoiced in the fact that "every United States Senator who was up for re-election who voted for tho World Court, save one, was retired to private life by the vote of the American people," and has, with equal satisfaction, ventured the prophecy that "true Americans will retire to the background" those writers of history who have any good to say of Britain. He has vehemently protested against the suggestion, made by some of his own countrymen, that America should consent to the cancellation of war debts, which have enriched the United States at the expense of peoples lighting America's battle and ill able to bear the burden undertaken partly .in consequence of their service to America. No one supposes that this chief citizen of Chicago, enjoying a temporary sminence and power, is wholly typical of Americans; but his open engagement in a campaign of terror to preserve his position, and the meeting of his violence with similar measures furnish a strange comment on the claim that freedom once migrated across the Atlantic and is uniquely domiciled there.