Judge — May 21, 1932 — page 14: what you’re looking at

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

Not That It Matters ow and then Bill White of wanders east to tell us what goes on out where men are theoretically men and not mic A few weeks ayo he came and r marked that, “if an election were held today the country would be lucky if anything so conservative a Democ would be achieved in the rural West.” Sut, as he added, the election is not held today. There is still half a year to go before the curtain rings down on the quadrennial farce. There is a month to yo before the end of the Nomination Nonsense and the Platform Platitudinizing. The only thin rtain is that Hoover will be named. We still don’t know whether Frank Roosevelt has pala- vered himself out of the best chance a candidate ever had, whether Al Smith has split his party so wide that the Republicans will walk in, whether, Will Rogers su sts, the people will vote the Dem ie ticket in spite of the Democratic party, or whether business will take an upturn in spite of the Republican adminis- tration and so prepare for it the usual silver platter. 4 FZ Not that it matters much, except to the professional job-gette amateurs, the “forgotten men” they pretend to remember such seasons, the whole thing hooey, however you pour the applesauce on it. Neither party is genuine or sincere. As William B. Munro says, “Broadly speaking, we have no long any political issues. Politics has be- come economics.” There is one great economic which, if ed upon, might made this election a really great and To us whom JUDGE UDGE on THE solemn referendum. It is, of cour: unemployment, and the nece: for a vast program of public works paid for by a bond issue sold on a war- time basis. Senator Wagner had the idea. Al Smith it, though half-hearted]. The Progressives had it, in the LaFollette-Costigan bill. But Roosevelt v d of it and Hoover damned it. Professor Munro quotes the ¢ ser n of the two major partie us “like two bottles, with distinctive labels on each, but both of them empty.” So we get the familiar chatter yout a realignment, the vague, pale hope that the radicals cf both parties might yet together and confront the united conservatives of both parties. It won’t happen this year. Party jobs are still too soft and the voters’ heads are still too soft, too. are stacked against it. actically speaking, our constitution forbids it, through the medium of the electoral college. There will be a third ticket in the field, the Socialist, led by Norman Thomas. He is a good man, able, honest, cou ous. But as Harry Elmer Barnes points out, he is under the terrific handicap of wearing the sc label, which is anathema in this land of propaganda. Recently Barnes said, with fine can- dor, “For an American liberal to take on the socialistic label seems to me to add a handicap without any ad- vantage. If at any later time intel- lectual integrity forces me to concede that the present social and economic order cannot be rehabilitated and adapted to the furthering of human well-being, I shall espouse commu- 12 nism, not socialism.” M. said, “we liberals may compromise, evade Herculean patience.’ Perhaps the present campaign will exhaust such Herculean patience Anyway, it is likely to make us pretty sick. That may be v yood for all of us. Just possibly, it may set us off on a new. start, beginning nex November, toward handling our pub- lic problems by some means more realistic than this dismal skullduy- - of party polities. “S59 anwhile, he have to hedge, and cultivate Funny Little Ar OOKING over various college pa- pers lately, we find evidences of ome good hard thinking. For example, the Harvard Lampoon prints this excellent definition: “A political y an big, happy fami of voters who think differently on all minor issues and do not think all on important ones.” And the Vassar Miscellany News has a fighting editorial, which sa “No feeble romanticism, no tionalization, no love of the earth, is going to save us from having to take a part in the desperate struggle of y ation to preserve itself. have to face revolution, or or more crises. Whatever it is, the people who are young today sxoing to meet it. . We nnot dare to be above faith; ‘and we can- not afford to mince our way through college, railing at fate, discrediting human nature, swimming like Alice, in a pool of tears with all the funny little animals.” Perhaps our best hope is that some of the young folks are showing a tendency to join in the sadly-needed campaign of Getting Mad. —R.J.W. comicbooks.com