Life — May 28, 1914 — page 20: what you’re looking at

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

MAY 28, 1914 “While there ts Life there's Hope” No, 1648 Published by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY J. A. Mitcnent, Pres't. A. Miter, Sec'y and Treas. 17 West Thirty-first Street, New York English Offices, Rolls House, Breams Bldgs., London, E. C. RRESISTI- BLE emo- tions of sym- pathy compel us to offer condo- lences to the neighbors, all and several, who are trying to respond to the obligation laid upon them by the political leanings of their constituents to demonstrate that the administration is wrong in every- thing it has done or is trying to do about Mexico. Our critical friends are in bad in this matter, and the farther in they get the worse it looks for them. The general purposes of the President are so sound, and so heartily supported by the general sen- timent of the country, that it has seemed imprudent, even for his most zealous opponents, to attack them in- discriminately. But the critics are strong on technicalities, beginning with the refusal to recognize Huerta, and including everything that has happened since, down to the alleged confiscation of Lobos Island. But they don’t seem to get ahead any. Somebody ought to tell them about the great Dutch hero who never won a battle nor lost a cause. Heaven knows whether Mr. Wilson has been right or wrong about his details, but in his main contention and aspirations he has been so sound that details could not wreck him. When technicalities have become a disease of the mind, the mind so affected can see nothing else, but usu- ally there is something else which normal minds cannot help seeing. Nelson O'Shaughnessy, lately first sec- retary of our legation in Mexico, seems to have a fairly normal mind. When he got to Washington he saw the President, and he is quoted as saying : I was tremendously impressed with the clarity of his views and with the results of the thought he has given to the Mexican problem. He knows what he wishes to do, has a very clear idea of how to carry out his purposes, and I believe his policy not only is the right one, but the one that will bring about per- manent peace in Mexico. Others have had’ the same impres- sion, but Mr. O'Shaughnessy has had a fairly good chance to see the Mex- ican side of things and his testimony carries special weight. At least it carries weight with the dispassionate. Whether it will assuage any of the griefs of professional mourners of the old-style Republican stripe, like the Boston Transcript and the Philadelphia Public Ledger, or of the Bull-Moose variety, like our emo- tional neighbor, the Evening Mail, is impossible to say, but perhaps when the procession of the reconciled be- comes long enough, they will join it. Of all the critics of the President's course with Mexico, so far as we observe—not counting the Hearst papers—the most elaborate and whole- souled is the San Francisco Argonaut. Folks who like a thorough job ought to take it. OUCK WHITE, a Socialist clergy- man, and Milo Woolman, writer, both Harvard graduates, have got six months apiece in Blackwell's Island workhouse, for an attempt to intrude their sentiments about the Colorado mining strike upon the minister and congregation of Calvary Baptist Church at the Sunday morning service. No doubt Katharine B. Davis will take good care of Bouck and Milo while they are her boarders, and send them back in good order to Manhattan in November. Bouck has written a book, and his intrusion on Mr. Rockefeller’s min- ister and subsequent incarceration ought to prove a valuable advertise- ment for it. It is published by the firm which lately spared a member to he our diplomatic representative in London, and if they don’t sell it now, the author will be justified in asking why. Surely lots of people will want to know what particular kind of ex- citement has been agitating the Rev. Bouck White’s wits, so that they may form some notion of what he would have said to the Rev. Cornelius Woelf- kin if the Rev, Cornelius had let him talk. So with Milo Woolman, writer. He will get a fine advertisement and a complete outfit of Miss Davis's sum- mer board for nothing. People will want to know if he is descended from that celebrated John Woolman, Quaker, whose record of his pious life has been so highly recommended by President Eliot. If Milo has written anything he can sell it now, and if not, he can surely sell anything he can write, either now—if Miss Davis will let him print it—or when he gets out.. Both of these zealous men seem to be ahead, professionally, as the result of their spirited, though irregular, proceedings. UT how about Calvary Baptist Church and its pastor, the Rev. Cornelius Woelfkin? Are they also ahead in these proceedings? We cannot see it so. To us it looks as though they had met the enemy and were theirs, or, at least, as though they had let a great opportunity for self- help slip by them. Here’s everybody saying that the churches are dull and that people won't go to them, and that they are losing their hold on the mass of the population, and all that. And here come Bouck and Milo, educated comichooks.com