Life — July 4, 1912 — page 9: what you’re looking at

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

“SAM, HERE ARE project him; to accomplish by other hands all the improvements and re- forms that reasonable people could hope to see accomplished by means of him. He is not really the mainstay of Progressiveness, but no more than an incident of its course. It will go on with him or in spite of him; who tries to stop it will be run over, and the real statesman’s job for some time to come will be to moderate its velocities, limit it to what is practicable and guide it wisely. If Mr. Roosevelt really runs as a bolter, his platform, it seems, will be: Thou shalt not steal! And Mr. Taft's platform, as against him, will be: Thou shalt not lie! Certainly the Baltimore delegates will have to use more than ordinary dexterity to pick a candidate who will not draw a flood of Repub- lican votes. The real was the and hero at Chicago Mayor Harrison, who policed convention. Heney was there, Flinn and Dixon, and Roosevelt was close by, erupting, geyser-like, at fre- quent intervals in boiling language. Yet, thanks to Mayor Harrison's abun- dant provision of cops, not a man OME, was killed, and hardly an eye was blackened in the convention; a won- derful triumph of preventive treat- ment. 8 R. TAFT’S nomination seems un- favorable to the Democratic backers of Governor Harmon and Mr. Underwood, and helpful to the hopes of Governor Wilson, but the prospect that Roosevelt will run, too, compli- cates the situation and will deprive the Democrats of much of the advantage they expected from knowing what the Republicans were going to do. To nominate someone to run agsinst Taft is one thing, but to nominate someone fit to run against both Taft and Roose- velt is quite a different job. If the Republican vote is going to be split, to our niind it would be easier to detach conservative Republicans from Taft and draw them to Underwood or Har- mon, than to detach Radicals from PATRIOTS DESERVING PENS PAPE VRIES Roosevelt and draw them to Wilson. Roosevelt's adherents seem to want him, but Mr. Taft is a had-to-be can- didate to a large proportion of his company, who were much more bent, and rightly, on beating Roosevelt than on saving Taft. Wilson would get the Bryan Radicals, but, perhaps, not the Hearst ones. Altogether, the game to be played at Baltimore looks mighty compli- cated, and perhaps it is the large pos- sibilities of strategy which it began to offer as events matured at Chicago, that induced Brother Bryan to rise there in his seat among the reporters and hurl a preliminary javelin at Judge Parker. To us the Judge looks harm- less as a temporary chairman, but per- haps Brother Bill, following the scrim- mage before him, scented afar off a similar difference at Baltimore and wanted to have the advantage of first blow. For in the Democratic party, too, there are two sections, and though they are not so wide apart as the Re- publican sections, circumstances are conceivable to the observer looking towards Baltimore, under which they might split asunder. comicbooks.com