Life — March 26, 1914 — page 18: what you’re looking at

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

MARCH 26, 1914 ‘* While there ts Life there's Hope"’ Published by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY J. A. Mivewent, Pres’t. HE public mind con- tinues to possess itself in a state of considerable tranquillity. Here in New York pick and cart are freeing the streets from ice and frozen snow, and citizens are waiting with happy antici- pation for spring to set in a little stronger so that our new city adminis- tration may feel it safe to line the curbs with potted crocuses. If we had daffodils and hollyhocks or hyacinths anywhere except in the flower stores, they would be out the first warm day. The tulips will be out very shortly, and it will be in order to remark that ours don’t compare with those in the Boston Public Garden. Outside of the Hearst papers the public mind is very little agitated, and the disturbance of the Hearst papers declines to spread. There is no mani- festation of public impatience about Mexico. No one except Senator Cham- berlain, of Oregon, lost any sleep over the rumor that Ambassador Page had mistreated the Monroe Doctrine at dinner, or believed he had been cau- tioned by Mr. Bryan to go on hunger strike till Easter. Nobody except Mr. Nixon and a few Pacific Coast states- men seems to care much about the canal tolls one way or the other, except to hope that our deportment as to them will square with our treaty obli- gations. As for the Coast statesmen, those that current political majorities have put into office are curious persons. They seem to feel that the North American continent was created and A. Mitten, Sec’y and Treas. 17 West Thirty-first Street, New York English Offices, Rolls House, Breams Bidgs., Londo, E. C. peopled and should be governed and conducted for the benefit of its west coast. They feel this with intensity, and even with violence. Their man- ners about it are far from being diplomatic. One recalls the back-acting vehemence of Governor Johnson, of California, when he stumped the East for Roosevelt two years ago, the gen- eral disgust the other day at the brutal- ity of Harry Lane, of Oregon, in attack- ing in the Senate the religious faith of Mr. Morgan, and now the activity of the other Oregon Senator in reading mischiefs into inaccurate reports of what Ambassador Page said in London. The Coast is all a geological after- thought thrown up long after the rest of the continent was dry and getting into shape. The very land of it is restless and threatens from time to time to leave the Union and slide back into the sea. Perhaps it is this new- ness and shakiness of the land that gets into the people who go to the Coast, and makes them so hospitable to all the novelties and distrustful of all the stabilities of political and social life. The whole shore is just now a sociological museum and laboratory of political experiment, run as though the whole world was newly made and civilization was in its first stages of “discovery. It must be trying to that part of the Coast population that does not care to live in trees and has prejudices in favor of social order, but no doubt it is a passing phase, and the Coast will come in time into enjoyment of its share of tranquillity. Meanwhile its representatives will do wisely to be civil. Its most conspicuous exponent in the East is Mr. Hearst. It cannot hope, of course, to exercise any salutary restraint upon him, but with the Panama Fair coming on, and a good deal in that particular, and in general, still to be expected from its hinterland, the Coast might very well suggest moderation in speech and urbanity of deportment to its repre- sentatives in Congress. R. CHARLES MURPHY has been dismissed from the Demo- cratic Club, but no one is much agi- tated, least of all Mr. Murphy. It may be to the interest of Tammany Hall to dislodge Mr. Murphy, but it is hard to see why anyone not in Tam- many Hall should be concerned about it. Tammany’s progress under Murphy is fairly satisfactory to the un-Tam- manyized public. Why not let a good work go on? There are reports that Mr. Bryan's voice shows signs of wear, and it is intimated that he needs to rest more between speeches. That is another thing that it is useless for us to excite ourselves about, though Mr. Bryan's voice is one of the cherished properties of the nation. We must just leave it to Mr. Bryan to ease up, if necessary, in whichever branch of his duties he thinks can best spare him. He is a very strong man, but two men’s work, in only one of which he has practised skill, may be too great a strain even NOTHING that goes on is more interesting to more people than the Feminist agitation. Few people had real opinions about the details of the currency bill; few people have more than general ideas about the pending bills affecting the trusts; comparatively few people have positive views about our course with Mexico, but almost comichooks.com