Judge — October 25, 1924 — page 17: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Editor, Norman Anthony. Come On, You Calvin! As the contenders for the Presidential swe thunder down the home stretch, oue hardly needs a pair of field glasses to see which is in the lead. leads; he is way out in front. You will notice that to outward view he is the poorest looking of the field. Neither so graceful and sleek as the thoroughbred running a péor second, nor yet with the handsome mane and dynamic gait of the little mustang running third, but gaining on No. 2. But he has the power! Whatever his peculiarities of appearance and stride he runs with an assurance that makes the efforts of the other two look like agony. You will notice, too, that he has this one important structural attribute of the born winner—a long nose. In a close finish we'd bet on the Coolidge nose. But the trouble is that this is a handicap race. To win, our champion must come in first by a big margin, and we shudder to think how many Coolidge noses laid end to end it would take to bridge it. In other words, to leave the metaphor flat, neither Davis nor La Follette seems to have a show of winning the election, but they have an outside chance of throwing the decision into Congress. On the consequences of such an outcome we prefer to. quote Secretary Hughes: “Confidence would be destroyed overnight. Enter- prise would halt, new undertakings would be abandoned, orders would be canceled. Throughout the country there would follow contraction and depression. We should be threatened with a serious fall in values, and immediate effort to cover outstanding risks and the conditions which create confusion and pan If such a prospect has no terrors for you, go ahead and vote for your minority candidate. Otherwise mark your ballot next Tuesday for Calvin Coolidge, who is unques- tionably the sound as well as the popular choice. Coolidge not only Balmy in the Crumpet Nothing in the line of legislative bodies could be much lower than the Congress that is now, fortunately, enjoying a recess. Practically everyone agrees about that. Yet not only does Senator La Follette wish to entrust this precious aggregation of nincompoops with the election of a President, but he would amend the Constitution to permit such a gathering to override the decisions of the Supreme Court. Surely this proposal must be one of the Senator's little jokes and we shall wake up Wednesday * morning to learn that he has been spoofing us all along. Whether because of our federal form of Government, Associate Editors, William Morris Houghton, William Edgar Fisher. Dramatic Editor, George Jean Nathan or because we breed a peculiarly pusillanimous species of politician, we enjoy the proud distinction in this country of supporting the most cowardly national legislature in the civilized world. Without the Supreme Court to act as a brake it would deliver us, bound hand and foot, to whatever Ku Klux Klan or Anti-Saloon League happened to hold the balance of power at the moment. ‘The Supreme Court is not infallible, but it is the only safeguard the individual has left against the further encroachment of bureaucratic tyranny and mob rule and the utter oblitera- tion of those rights that are guaranteed him in the Con- stitution. What does Congress know or care about such rights? In the words of General Dawes, not a gol dern thing This proposal concerning the Supreme Court is perhaps the worst plank in the La Follette platform. There are others nearly as bad which also propose that Congress shall have greater power over our liberties. But let us try to remember that this naive faith in salvation by grace of Congress, after the experience of recent years, is really a pathological phenomenon. We shouldn't electrocute La Follette and his followers. Imprisonment under observa- tion would better serve the ends of society. The New Nick Ever since prohibition inserted a little red-hot devil of revolt into the placid arteries of President Nicholas Murray Butler he has been concerning himself with fundamentals, and he has added immeasurably to the vigor and_ fresh- ness of his utterances. If only the thing might work the same degree of transformation in others of our public men we could feel more kindly toward it. In an address before the Institute of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University Dr. Butler argues that “every transfer of activity from the sphere of liberty to the sphere of government,” “every attempt to make uniform by the force of Federal power the conduct and activities of citizens in the several States,” is undermining the foundations of the Republic. He says that in the genera- tion since the Civil War a new American revolution has been taking place. It manifests itself in a carelessness for liberty, and even at times in a cynical contempt for liberty, accompanied with a violent intol ce, which are in amazing contradiction to the national temper and happenings of s gone by. It manifests itself in an impatient willingness to permit government to absorb a steadily increasing control over private life and occupation, and to build up at the national capital, with smaller replicas at the al State capitals, a huge, cumbrous and incompetent bureau- W. M. H. Wisconsin papers please copy.