Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 95, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 August 1908 — STAR SHINES STRAIGHT FOR REPUBLICAN TICKET [ARTICLE]

STAR SHINES STRAIGHT FOR REPUBLICAN TICKET

(Indianapolis Star of July 13.) What la to be the attitude of The Star-in this campaign may already have been surmised. But if there has existed any doubt, it may now be dismissed. Every consideration of the public welfare demands the most positive, unequivocal, alert and unremitting effort for the success of the Republican ticket, not only national, but state, congressional- and legislative. Therefore the Star will not palter, trifle or pretend to balance until the eleventh hour on a plea of indecision, waiting to see which way the cat is going to jump. The nominees are in the field, the platforms have been enunciated, the issues are definitely known. The chanoes of success are not the measure of right and wrong. It will be a worthier rule to fight for the best and leave the rest. The reason for this action may be appropriately and briefly summarized. To begin with, there must be exercised in this campaign a choice between tjro great parties, whose respective natures are denoted by their past, as truly as the life of the tree is denoted by the root from which it sprang. To understand the significance of the Democratic party today it is needful to reflect upon its attitude toward the war for the Union, the war for honest money, the war for redemption of the new world from the' last surviving oltadels of Spanish anarchy and misrule; its attitude throughout long years toward pensions for men who wore the blue; toward the army and navy of the United States; toward liberal measures for advancement of the national dignity, wealth and power; toward the extension of American sovereignty whereever destiny and humanity call it, and especially its always accessible and Inviting harborage for all forms of economic heresy, propagandas of class hatred and socialistic unrest. - ' : - Historic Parties in Contrast. No man can Intelligently apprehend the Republican party of today who does not reflect upon its birth pangs in the struggle with slavery and disunion; upon its rise through internal dissension and force of external circumstance to beoome the exponent of honest money; upon its honorable conduct of the war with Spain and its conscientious discharge of the obligations by that confllot imposed; upon its uniform solicitude for conditions under which the Industrial efficiency of this nation might pursue its ends with safety to the investor and comfort to the laborer; upon Its instant and constant response to the needs and problems created by the undeveloped resources of the great West; upon its jeroeful and dignified foreign policies, blending forbearance with justice and promotion of peace with readiness to unglove the iron hand of war in a worthy cause; and especially upon the underlying disposition of its masses to apply the moral conviction bequeathed by the age of Lincoln, Sumner and Morton to the military and financial activities of McKinley’s day and the enthronement of a higher moral order In the business world under the firm and courageous leadership of Theodore Roosevelt. The lessons of history are not profitable to recall for the base uses of recrimination or revival of seotlonal or partisan hatred; but they are always necessary for the reasoning mind that knows how inexplicable the present is except by reference to the past, and how Inscrutable the future would be but for the light that streams upon it from the background of human experience. No man can wisely frame his decision as to what a great party may be counted upon to do, unless he studies unshrinkingly what it has done. There is only one analysis of every earthly organism, nurtured and matured by nature’s inscrutable but unvarying processes. Its leaves and branches wave in the atmosphere of the passing hour, but its roots are anchored in the soil of its immemorial past As a man is bound by the blood and the inheritance of his fatheq-s, so the Democratic party as a historic entity starta upoh the raoe in this campaign weighed down with the memories and the inherited tendencies of its unhappy past The "Change” In Bryan. It suits the ardent hopes of Democrats to persuade themselves that their twice rejected candidate for the presidency has been so transformed by study and travel, chastened by defeat and instructed, by the flight of years that he is now everything he once was not, and that polish has made real silver out of the pewter cup. But no mature utterance of Mr. Bryan has yielded any fruit of wisdom, discernment or lofty principle, nor Is there anywhere a guarantee or promise that a single one of the crude, subversionary or mischievous notions that were wont to spring so fruitfully from his teeming brain has been extirpated there, but only subordinated or concealed until such time as he may have opportunity or occasion to put them into effect. The Nebraska candidate has changed—true. But such changes as he and his friends ever and anon think it profitable to disclose are not those of a man who has seen a light break in upon disordered views and now beholds more clearly; but they are simply such as denote the wary politician, putting forth no deep-seated or rock-rooted convictions but may be courteously modified or covered up in the hope of galbing some votes here or influence there by which the long-sought and self-chosen prize of the presidency may be obtained. If Bryan at Lincoln the last two weeks has not presented the spectacle of a sear aoned and worldly-wise schemer in the political field, intent upon no assertion of conviction or achievement of statesmanship higher than the manipulation of men and measures alike in the hope of out-jockeying an opponent for position in a race for spoil, then no such spectacle ever has been or ever can be presented. That Mr. Bryan is now devoted to honest money as he once Invoked all the most unworthy heresies of cheap money and fiatißm; that he feels a loyal attachment t' the integrity of the courts, where formerly he sought to arouse hostility to their sacred traditions and orderly processes; or that in general he has displaced a passion for appeal to class hatred and discontent with a solemn and trustworthy comprehension of orderly government and wise statesmanship has not been affirmed, and will not be affirmed, we think, in any quarter; but instead we find men whose character and training justify the expectation that their words may be taken seriously asking us to elevate the creator and exponent of Bryanism to the care and custody of the government, on the plea :hat Bryan has yielded this and that to Charles Murphy and Roger Sullivan in the Interests of party harmony, and on the ground that Democrats of resources and determination have undertaken the task of keeping the candidate from giving utterance to his well-known views until he can be safely bestowed in the presidential chair. On the Other Hand, a Statesman. Opposed to this doubtful and dangerous quantity is a man whose extraction, whose character, whose training, whose history and whose responsible utterances are justly described as fitting him for the presidency as no men haa been fitted for a generatidZT A lawyer of learning, accomplishments and power, a judge with a noble regard for acumen, fearlessness and poise; an executive and administrator of infinite discernment, diplomacy, resources, patience and unvarying success; a man v ,ose scholarly attainments, cosmopolitan equipment, Judicial temperament, serenity of poise, urbanity of manner, fidelity of soul And broad charity of spirit—there seems no reason why the voter who is guided by reflection rather than by impulses of protest and innovation, which it is dangerous to trust, can reject W. H. Taft for the apostle of unrest *nd disorder, whose multitudinous possibilities of mischief no man can calculate. Here In Indiana. The national will take care of itself. It is surpassingly important for Indiana to look well to her own affairs. The size of the Republican victory in La diana this fall will be the measure of Indiana’s part in the national welfare and also of her own civic consciousness. The national issues are state Issues. Not less important than a vote for the Taft and Sherman electoral ticket Is the election of a Republican governor, Republican members of congress and a Republican United SUtes senator at the hands of a Republican legislature. Here in Marion county, especially, where the liquor traffic and the saloon vote are relied upon for a Democratic victory, there are no considerations, national, state or local, which should be able to seduce the thoughtful Republican away from his duty, or lead the serious minded independent voter into the support of Bryanism in the nation and the unsavory Democratic machine in this state. Not in years has the Republican party In Marion county put up for the proval of the people ao unobjectionable and meritorious a legislative ticket. Its members are solid oitisens. known for their character, accomplishments end capacity. On their individual merits they won their nominations fairly at the polls on primary day. Such abuses.as have been unoovered at the court house can in no war be connected with or attributed ut s single man es them. Their election is demanded as much by Justice to thHr ow» merits as men as by the larger Issues for which they stand. It i* the especial hops of tho Star and will be its spuclal effort in this campaign to see that tho olalms of victory In this county on behalf of the brewery saloon are refuted by the verdict of the people when the votes are counted in November.