Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 229, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 September 1916 — A CONTEST OF CHARACTER, NOT OF WEASEL WORDS [ARTICLE]

A CONTEST OF CHARACTER, NOT OF WEASEL WORDS

Cardinal Question In Thia Campaign la Whether the People Want In the White House a Phrase Maker or a Man Who Backs Words With Deeda. Woodrow Wilson excels In the artistry of politics beyond the capacity of Charles Evans Hughes to compete. Were tbe current campaign a game of professional politics instead of a contest of character between two. candidates for the highest office in the gift of the people Mr. Wilson would waft away with the prize next November/ All bls life he has made a study of form—first of literary form—and latterly of political form. In the first period he mastered a style peculiarly his own and peculiarly characteristicThe study of words and their multiplicity of meaning always fascinates him,' so much that a Princeton class mate recently said of him, “Tommy has lived with words so long be thinks they are real things.” Thence comes his collection of what Theodore Roosevelt’s Maine guide calls “weasel words.” That is—“he can take a word and weasel it around and suck the meaning out of it like a weasel sucks an egg, until it don’t mean anything at all. no matter what it sounds like it means.” Thence came also the series of catch phrases, so fascinating in sound, so false in suggestion; so easy to read, so hard to understand. So it is that he is able to be on all sides of every public question while covering his circuitous course with a flow of words that roll as easily from his pen as a brook threugh the meadow. It is his artfulness in the use of words that enables him to pose as “an amateur in politics” while playing the game with the skill of a professional. Whatever his Ineptitude in other respects, be is easily first among presidents in the artistry of politics, and he would win next November were that the test Compare the wiliness of Mr. Wilson with the straightforwardness of Mr. Hughes. Compare the smooth style of tbe one with the rugged diction of tbe other. The one Is as complex in the use of words as the other is simple. It is a case of sonorousness versus strength. Mr. Hughes is depending upon the strategy of straigbforwardness and the strength of sincerity; upon the force of facts instead of upon the fiction of a phrase, to win bis case before the jury of the nation. His appeal, Is to the head and not the ear of the people; to their intelligence and not to their emotion; to their heroic side and not to their hysterical side. It is an appeal to the courage of the country and not to its cowardice. Mr. Hughes could not if he would perform in a year the political tricks that Mr. Wilson can do in a day. The question to day is whether tbe people want in the White House for the next four years a phrase maker or a history maker, a man of many sayings or a man who backs his words with deeds. There is a fundamental difference between the two candidates which murks the line of cleavage in thisfextraordinary campaign—“ Hughes means what he says.”