Life — May 5, 1904 — page 12: what you’re looking at

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

Zou VOL. XLUIL. | MAY 5, 1004 17 West Tuiety-Finst Staee No. 123. tT, New Vorx. will be returned untes stamped and addressed contribution companied by The illustrations in LAY. are copyrighted, and ave not to be reproduced. Prompt notification should be sent by sub- HE President, being asked to send a message to the Repub- lican women of New York, “Tell them I shall women of and that I the home, hon- So he doubt, and a picturesque he makes, but we trust he will not stand for those Judge Pa crats should choose them all on both fee said : appeal to the this country, stand for esty and purity.”” ac does, withe RTM stand have to estimable obje ker, if the Demo- him, st , and ke Has the President any cows the agricultural interests as well as for nds for Ss COWS besides. worth mentioning ? he stand for domestic virtue and political morality ? Judge Parker stands for these, and also. The most the against Colonel Roosevelt is that with legalit particular charge of Democratic leaders ter- in effect, that he makes up his mind what to do and him legality is too apt to be thought. They asse: does it, and leaves it to some one else to find out afterwards whether the thing he did was les his to do, and The President 1 ntry and jj Barriers are not to his mind, and, of cc irse, they are He likes to promote by huge leaps; he likes and_ pension e legislation. That is burden of the Democratic some things. army offi “constructive recesses,"" rulings that sa the chief complaint against him. ‘They claim that no ‘poke can be adjusted to him which will keep him from jumping out of the White House lot, and they ar *LIFE- going to try hard to convince the voters that it is safer to elect some one else. It is fair game, and a clean one. We shall all be interested in seeing it played. But it won’t be enough for the Democrats to cry that Roosevelt is not ‘They must convince us that they and their man are safer, which will be quite an undertaking. And more than that, they must disclose, definitely if not precisely, what they stand for; what specified reforms in the tariff, for example, and what kind of expanston. safe. If they have something to offer in place of the Republican busine: “stand pat,” we want to know what it s policy of is. The President has the defects of his qualities, but he also has their virtues. The defects are not obstreperous and ominous enough to secure the success n opposition whose virtues are not both ve and visible. No * pig- campaign will serve the Democrats this year. he truth is that if Colonel Roose- velt himself could arrange to receive and accept the Democratic nomination, he would be acceptable to more different kinds of Democrats than any Demo- cratic candidate we can think of. The Bryan men would rather vote for him than for Cleveland ; the Cleveland men would rather vote for him than for any Bryanite. He is a Democrat by tem- peramen' If he Democratic Administratic ood for a . he would onl suit most Democrats remarkably well. rumored resignation of Ad- al Alexieff as Viceroy in the East is significant of the Czar’s ap- jon that Russia has bitten off somewhat more than she can conven- iently chewattnistime. Itis understocd that Alexieff, and a commercial person who is screened from censure be: his name (beginning with B) is i practicable to remember, were the chief advisers of the stubborn policy which resulted in wa Alexieff, on whom the Czar counted for expert informa- tion, despised the Japanese, as all the Russians do, and was sure they wouldn’t fight, and couldn't do much harm if they did fight. It hy ause appeared that he was not a good judge of affairs in his diocese. is res- ignation and its acceptance would be virtually the Czar’s admission that the v was a mistake. ISTAKE or not, it is exceedingly interesting. Some eminent au- thority has been proposing to rule out mines and torpedoes from civilized warfare on the ground that they lack formality, or are too destructive, or something. Nonsense! The business of war-machines is destruction, If a comparatively cheap thing like a mine can spoil a big, costly battleship and kill eight hundred men, it is an immense triumph of thrift. and submarines mak If torpedoes, mines the sea unsafe for the big warships and put an end to building them (as may happen), that will be a greater triumph stil clean gain to civilization and the world. The cheaper, quicker and more effectively we can do our killing, the better taxpayers and everyone else, and the Battleships are one of the greatest of existing nuisances; a nuisance to those who have not got them, a still greater nuisance to those who have them and must go on building them. They embarrass rich countries, and are a horrible burden to poor ones. To have them driven off the seas would be almost as great a blessing as the extirpation of mosquitoes. The natural way to get rid of them is through the perfecting of some kind of small, inex- pensive machine t an do them up. A good flying machine would be best, but anything that will make modern warships thoroughly unsafe deserves for worse for war, encouragement, It is pretty clear that the Japanese are giving naval experts some object lessons in the use of the sr naval machin They have passed the imitative stage in their use of western war tools, and in doing so they have made it expedient every American who has capacity for thought to inform himself as diligently as he for may about the commodious continent of Asia, and the folks who inhabit i comicbooks.com