Life — October 25, 1917 — page 20: what you’re looking at

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

OCTOBER 25, 1917 VOL. 70 “* While there is Life there's Hope"* No. 1826 Publi: hed by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY J. A. Mircurtt, Pres’. A. Minter, Sec’y and Treas. t7 West Thirty-first Street, New York English Offices, Rolls House, Breams Bldgs., London, F. C. 4 ‘0 the common observ- er who docs not spe- =) cialize in politics the may stery. He knows, or thinks he docs, that Mitchel has been a good mayor, and that it is of the utmost concern for \the city to re-clect him, but he dyes not know whose busi- ness it is to do it. He knows that ordinarily it takes an organization to elect anybody to any office, but no organization that he knows about is backing Mitchel. He wonders who is running him, He knows, maybe, that at the primaries Mr. Mitchel’s name was not printed on the Democratic ballot, and that in the Republican primary Mr. Ben- nett beat him, and that by that mis- fortune he lost the chance of hav- ing the machinery of the Republican organization work in his favor. He knows that Mitchel can, and will, be nominated by petition and that on election day his name will be printed on tickets, which persons desirous to vote for him can mark. How many such persons there are likely to be the unpolitical observer has no idea. Neither does he know how their number can be increased. He could not tell you whether there is a permanent organization for the elec- tion of Fusion candidates. He wonders if there is, and if so, what it was doing when Bennett won in the Republican primaries. He knows there is a regu- lar Democratic organization, namely Tammany, and a Republican organiza- tion, controlled by whoever carried the primaries for Bennett, but about the way id means and mechanisms of Fusion politics he is very ignorant in- deed. He is used to having these con- cerns seen to for him. At this writing, three weeks before election, it looks very possible that his instruction may come by the election of a mayor whom he does not want, and the dis- missal of the present city administra- tion. Nevertheless, even in war-time, with public attention intensely ap- pealed to by a campaign to sell war- bonds, something can be done to elect a mayor, and the unpolitical ubserver hopes mightily it will be done to elect Mayor Mitchel. IAT Mr. Mitchel’s administration has been worth to the city in pro- tection from war-plotters is only half known, and less than half appreciated He has been mayor since January Ist, 1914, and Arthur Woods has been po- lice commissioner since April in that year. Accordingly the control of the city and of its police has been in vigi- lant, active and aggressively loyal hands ever since the war broke out in Europe. What was done to protect and defend it was done at first neces- sarily without advertisement, and though the need of secrecy about most of it has long passed, the story of it all is not yet well known, and proba- bly, in detail, never will be. But in times when new rumors of the organi- zation of Germans to do mischiefs came out every morning and were discussed every night, there was almost complete confidence that all that the mayor and the police commissioner could do to discover and forestall plotters, and pro- vide against outbreaks and disasters, was being done and done with vigor and sound judgment. Tt has been worth everything to New York these last four years to have a government that could be trusted. It has been worth a vast deal this last year since we have joined the Allies to have a mayor fit to represent the city in receiving deputations from be- yond the seas, and to express by his words and actions the patriotism of this metropolis. From the ‘start Mr. Mitchel has done his utmost to make this town do its part in the great cause to which the country is now committed. He has been not less ardent in national than in civic defense. He has been in all ways a credit to us and to the coun- try, and how much that means can be computed by comparing the record of New York with that of Chicago, whose mayor so grossly and impudently mis- represented the city. As much as Chi- cago has reason to get rid of Thomp- son, and Philadelphia of Smith, New York has reason to keep Mitchel. If he is beaten it will amount to a failure of democratic government in an im- portant crisis. He cannot be beaten on his record, for his record is admirable, but the city may be filched away from good government because in all the din of war its watchmen have been inat- tentive to its safety, CORRESPONDENT writes to enquire what Lire is going to do about Columbia, where the question of control of the faculty by the president and trustees scems to invite popular at- tention. The fight up there seems to be going on prosperously, and considerably in- comicbooks Egrig