Jasper County Democrat, Volume 23, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 June 1920 — ISSUES A SIGNED STATEMENT [ARTICLE]

ISSUES A SIGNED STATEMENT

General Wood Says Butler Is a Liar and a Faker. Washington, D. C., June 16. —The statement of Nicholas Murray Butler that a “motley group of stock gamblers, oil and mining promoters, munition workers and other like persons” backed General Wood’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, brought a signed statement from the general last night in which he characterized Butler’s declaration as a “vicious and malicious falsehood.” General Wood said that he regretted to make the statement but that it was necessary to “brand a faker and to denounce a lie.” Declaring that the men who managed his campaign were of “extraordinary high character,” the general said that the attack on them “is infamous” and that Mr. Butler’s action was “an attempt to Ingratiate himself with certain elements which exercised a determining influence at the convention.” The statement follows: “I have just read the statement issued in New York by Nicholas Murray Butler to the effect that a motley group of stock gamblers and others tried to buy the presidential nomination for me and that the forces who were defeated in their insolent attempt to buy the nomination represent all that is worst in American business and political life.

“The statement is a vicious and malicious falsehood. I would ignore it if it were directed at me alone, but I can not remain silent when my loyal friends and supporters are vilified. “Colonel William Cooper Proctor, who was chairman of my campaign committee, is a man of extraordinary high character, known throughout the length and breadth of the land for his absolute Integrity and honesty. His associates were men of like character, most of whom responded to their country’s call during the war. They typify a group of progressive Americans. The attack upon them is infamous. “The forces which brought me before the convention with preponderant force were hundreds of thousands of patriotic men and women in every walk of life who have indorsed me at nation-wide state conventions, nation-wide state primaries and in a nation-wide poll of unprecedented size. “This action of Nicholas Murray Butler is an attempt to ingratiate himself with certain elements which exercised a determining Influence at the convention and possibly to explain his own political weakness. It is a self-seeking, cowardly attack, made under the cloak of an alleged public service, which was never intended or rendered. “I regret to make a state of this kind, but it is necessary in this .instance to dehounce a lie.”