Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 February 1918 — THE REPUBLICANS ARE PATRIOTS. [ARTICLE]

THE REPUBLICANS ARE PATRIOTS.

It does not lie in the mouth of a bitter partisan such as Senator Stone of Missouri to indict the Republican citizens of the United States as unpatriotic. Neither they nor their leaders in Cognress or in the Separate States need have the slightest concern over the tirade of a man who has been so recreant to his trust and so unfit for his position that the President himself has been indebted to the Republican minority for protection against his opposition and desertion at a critical period in the history of our international relations. Every one knows that the charge of Senator Stone is grotesquely untrue. Every one knows that the. Republican masses throughout the country have risen as one man to the support of the President. Every one knows that this Republican support in Congress and out of it, has been unparalleled in the history of the country. President Wilson, unlike Lincoln, has been confronted by no secret cabal of Republican Governors or Republican leaders, conspiring with a Republican Vallandigham to hamstring his administration and interfere with his management of the war in the interests of the enemy. To state such a situation is to make clear the fact that it does not exist and has not existed. • That neither the President nor the Democratic leaders have recognized Republican support in an ungrudging manner is unfortunate. But it is worse than unfortunate that the defender of the party in an issue of the Senator’s own raising for purely personal and political reasons should be this egregious politician from Missouri, who has been denounced by his own party in that state for disloyalty. In.a way, Senator Stone is his own answer. His futile effort to quibble as to certain state appointments only sets out more clearly the unflinching patriotism of Republican executives. If he invites comparison a?,, to the proportion of Republicans in office in the war service and their fitness with the Democrats who have been recognized, he will uncover as unsavory a mess of favoritism as the country has ever known. —Philadelphia Ledger. t