Life — August 15, 1912 — page 9: what you’re looking at

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

——— HISTORIC AFFINITIFS—WOODROW AND MARIA THER excellent men have come through proc- esses like yours and with similar vio- lence to their affections, to the same conclusion you have reached. A great many more will certainly come to it in due time. It is sad, but there is no help for it. Do you remember telling in June last year how you had asked the Colonel if he would be a candidate in 1912, and how he “at once replied that he emphatically would not be, that he should regard it as a calamity if he were nominated, and that he expected and demanded that every friend and supporter of his would do everything in his power to prevent any movement looking towards his nomination”? He was right then, Wallace, and you should have held him to his word. It was a calamity for him and you when he became a candidate. Once he broke with all his past assurances and started again to get the Presidency, he was like a hound on a trail, oblivious to all considerations, except to get his quarry. To our mind your progress- ive way in politics is better than his. When the Republican candidate doesn’t stand for what you want, and a Democrat does, support the Demo- crat. Roosevelt is leading his present followers into a bog, out of which, with pains and grief, in due time they will have to flounder. It is a pity, and the more so because he has had his hours of insight, and perfectly appre- ated the messages they brought him and based sound purposes on them, hut circumstances and the adulation of blind adorers, and the teasings of the uneasy and the incitements of the headstrong, joined to the wiles of self- seekers and his own restless tmis- conception of himself, and life and duty, wrenched him from his sound position, and brought him where, as you now sce, the judicious grieve at his plight, and faithful followers like you are compelled to cut him loose. It is too bad, Wallace; too bad. We know how you feel. You had an cikon, and it’s gone, and in its place you have just a busted tin soldier. Ajter a while you may be able again to cherish these tin remnants, and de- rive from them some of the consola- tion of which the asperities of life make us so needful. Cherish them by all means, but don’t let yourself be snaked back to follow them to any Waterloo. UT to return to Dr. McArthur. Besides his story of the hate that killed a cat, he told of his prayer that “men like Carnegie, Rockefeller and 1589 J. Pierrepont Morgan would give their best brains to God for missionary work in China, Japan, India and Con- tinental Europe,” and the paper say he “declared that if these three men would get their hearts and wealth to- gether they would evangelize the world s, in twenty-five yea We guess not, doctor. It would be interesting to see them try, but we guess they couldn't fetch it. Say that between them they have a billion and a half. That's a good lot of money and, of course, missionaries can't live on the country, and a certain amount of visible financial support is desirable for their maintenance. t, wouldn't you find that too much money for mis- sionary enterprises was worse than too little? For our part, we can imagine that when word got around that about a Dillion dollars was awaiting employ- ment in evangelizing the world, there would arise all over the land such eagerness to participate that the de- sirable missionaries would be killed in the crush, You can do some things with money, doctor, but there is a heap of things you can’t do with it. It is funny about it. It helps forward to a certain point and then helps rapidly backward. Enough of the material blessings scems to be rather helpful to spiritual and ethical attainment. More than enough works against it. It's a wise and wonderful provision of Nature, like the rule about water, that cold water sinks, but ice floats. But what you might actually get out of Mr. Morgan and John D. and the Laird, their hearts and wealth and judgments continuing as at present, would not imperil the missionary cause. The Laird is not a patron of missions, and we don’t know that Mr. Rockefeller would think it good busi- ness to hurry the evangelization of the world. Very likely his philosophy favors eighteen holes to the game, one hole at a time, deliberate strokes, and no scrambling. But Mr. Morgan is different from those others, and seems to have views of life ple enough to understand and include mis- sionaries. He might underwrite your plan, doctor, and then perhaps give us Common and Preferred Evangeliza- tion shares and some twenty-five-year Millennium bonds. comicbooks.com