PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXVI, Issue 11612, 20 April 1912, Page 5

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.

AND EX-PRESIDENT. BITTER ARTICLE ON ROOSEVELT. The San Francisco Argonaut Jast month ■ published a bitter article c-n Mr Roosevelt, from which, the - following is: taken : "It is /hardly possible that Mr-Roose-velt can hope in face of the many handicaps which beset his candidacy to:win the party, nomination at Chicago. Bright /pictures of the situation and its possibilities have no doubt been drawn for him by his personal satellites —the Pinchots, Garfields, Loebs, et al. It is to be remembered that he has always held extravagant estimates vOf the worth and wisdom of his immediate associates. But even the credulity of friendship plus the-credulity, of ambition and vanity can hardly have gone so far, as to convince a man of long political observation that he can fight his way to success against so and such formidalble forces. Nevertheless Mr Roosevelt's 'hat is in the ring;'. He is eagerly pleading for _a third: cup of coffee, though in his heart, we fancy, he knows: be will hot get it. "What can be the motive" which thus leads'Mr Roosevelt to/stake his established] fame upon 'an impossible:. attempt, to risk-almost certain humiliation in a cause foredoomed? His hunger for the eyes and ears, of the multitude, his invincible ambition to. be at the centre of things, his lust for power and primacy—these impulses may have something to do with- it.■ -, He is 'like '- the prizefighter who, even though, heknows that all the probabilities are against him, nevertheless-is drawn by forces lie is powerless to resist to ven-ture-once again. These impulses, we repeat, may have something tp do withit. But we believe, there is a deeper motive —nothing less than his resentment and hatred of his once close and beloved friend, Mr Taft. / . • "It is a fact which cannot hs denied "that Roosevelt as President was both : the sponsor and creator of Taft as a candidate. -In the Cabinet Mr Taft had been a willingly subordinate and even hidable figure. In his conceit Mr Roosevelt assumed that Taft./as President would be as Taft the' Cabinet Minister. He was not prepared for the enlargement of character, for the elevation of spirit which :a great, arfd personal responsibility often inspires m men of sluggish temperament,, and which these forces did in fact inspire in Mr Taft. ■ ■ ■',. , "Mr Roosevelt undertook to run ;Mr ■ Taft, • and in this effort lie sustained the humiliation of his life—tte only profound humiliation which the '. curious fortunes of his life had ever -brought to him. He had not the philosophy, the poise, the self-control /to meet the situation's became a _ man. Resentment, tortured by an .all-con-suming conceit, grew into a-vpassionto -which there has been subordinated every other motive of his being. Now his" consuming desire is to beat to destroy-the man whose independence so rebuked bis presumption, and vanity, whose character in office has won tor him a kind of approval which Roosevelt himself was never to-com-mand. Here, we suspect, is the secret of a candidacy which represents not so much the hope of success as a deeply fixed purpose of personal vengeance. -