Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 93, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 April 1915 — If Progressives “Come Back.” [ARTICLE]

If Progressives “Come Back.”

Indianapolis Star. • “The fifth district must be redeemed from democracy—-it can be, and at the next election, if we do our duty, it will be redeemed,” said William L. Taylor in his talk at Terre Haute. “How? By a reunited republican party,” he and goes on: The progressives in this district cast more than 5,000 votes. All of them were cast by former militant, active, progressive republicans. We want them all to be with us again, all having the same rights, powers and privileges with all other members of the republican party. We shall not deserve their support if all we have to offer is honeyed words and sugar-coated promises. We must act and not merely promise. We must adopt principles, forward-looking and progressive, and this we will do. We must present the very best that is in us—we owe it to ourselves and our state and our country to do this, for the country must also be redeemed from nation-wide democratic incompetency. Mr. Taylor has mapped out the ground which an honorable reconciliation can be effected. If he voices the sentiment of the republican party leaders the way seems open for negotiations that may lead to renewed comradeship in cause of good government. His utterance will be heard with interest and respect by those former “militant, active, progressive republicans” whose help is needed to redeem the state and the nation from the misrule of an incompetent democracy. But let the terms of reconciliation be clearly understood. There must be a definite adoption by the republican party of “forward-looking and progressive” principles, supported, not by “honeyed words and sugarcoated promises, but by action, and there must be an acceptance into full and unconditioned fellowship, with equal “rights, powers and privileges” of those who, for conscience sake, left the party in 1912. And this implies that aid feuds shall be forgotten; that the bitterness engendered by the strife of the recent election shall be eliminated, that no man or group of men shall-be marked for reprisals. If there is to be room and welcome in the republican party for any of the men who took the name of progressive pi the cause 'of decent politics and popular rule, there must be room and welcome for all. Each must be accepted on his merits, with the recognition due his ability and achievements, whether he be of the rank and file, or whether he be of those who lead. The men who left the republican party in 1912 did so from the highest motives. Many of them sacrificed much for the principles in which they believed. Old associations were broken, and a lonely trail of defeat has been followed in, order that Indiana and the nation might reap the advantage of a splendid and courageous protest against wrong and injustice. If the republican party is cleaner and stronger today, if it has turned its face toward the morning with a new consecration to the service of the people, it is because these, men made the sacrifice and forced upon it thq necessity for repentence. The republican party’s recognition that it was wrong in 1912 is a confession that the progressives were right. It is obligated in all honor, if it seeks reconciliation, to acknowledge its inedebtedness to the men who were brave enough to stand for principle when it was inviting ruin by dallying with what it deemed to be expediency. We beMeve the republican party will not repeat the error of 1912. We believe there will never be again such a state convention or such a national convention as was held in that year of disgrace. No state or national committee will again dare to set itself against the expressed will of the peopel. The steam-roller belongs to the era of primitive and unscrupulous politics from which, we hope, the party has forever emerged. It is certain it can not be used with safety to achieve the ambitions or, satisfy the personal grudges of any group of politicians. That has been made evident by a sufficient number of the voters of this state, who stand ready to give further proof if it should be needed.