Life — March 3, 1927 — page 16: what you’re looking at

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

MARCH 3, 19: VOL. 89. 2313 “While there is Life there’s Hope” Published by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY 598 Madison Avenue, New York Ciantes Dana Ginson, President R. E. Surrwooo, Editor F. D. Casey, Art Editor ECAUSE Dr. Mur- ray Butler has said that fRof course Mr. Coolidge won't run for another term, people say in the news- papers that Dr. Butler is himself a candidate for President. But he says No; that he does not aspire to the White House now and does not expect to; that he simply talks politics for the sake of talking politics and as a matter of public duty, as Phillips, Beecher, Eliot and others did before him, and as Hamilton, Jay, Living- ston, Morris and Clinton did before them, thereby establishing an honor- able tradition for Columbia College. Nobody talks politics more read- ably than Dr. Butler. Whether he can guess right or not, it is a pleas- ure to read what he says and he does promote discussion when he talks. He says that Mr. Coolidge, if he ain, will come under the ban of the no-third-term tradition. Some- body wrote in the paper the other day that that tradition in so far as it applied to Vice-Presidents was all wrong, because under the Constitu- tion no Vice-President became Presi- dent, but simply, when a President died, suceceded to his duties and dis- charged them as _ Vice-President. There has been no need, says this disputant, for a Vice-President to take the oath as President, for by rights he continues to be Vice-Presi- dent to the end of his term. That may be arguable, but prac- tically it does not wash, and there is no prospect of our getting back anything on the presidential salaries paid in the past to Vice-Presidents who moved into the White House. Cram Maxwett, Vice-President Lanonorne Gipson, Secretary and Treasurer It is possible, however, that Mr. Coolidge may run again in spite of Dr. Butler's opinion. Col. George Harvey will know; but he is now absent in Europe. Meanwhile it seems to be truc, as Dr. Butler says, that the great issue is going to be Prohibition and that that will de- termine who will be elected next If Mr. Coolidge vetoes the farm bill it ought to strengthen him. True enough the farmers need help, but however much we may want them to get it, the McNary-Haugen bill seems not to be sound constitutionally or economically. It is essentially a bill to make the Government fix the price of farm products, and that is plain economic heresy. Mr. Cool- idge’s veto of the bill therefore might seem to help the prospects of Gov- ernor Lowden for the nomination. If so, he would be helping a pretty good man, but a year too soon to do him any good. The clection is not going to turn on subsidies for the farmers; they will be helped some other way. It is going to turn, as Dr. Butler says, on Prohibition. 6 UICIDES abound uncommonly. All kinds of people take their own liv bank presidents, club- men, discouraged lovers, college students, disillusioncd play girls, even children sometimes. According to the best information suicide is un- profitable. Perhaps if it was better understood there might be less of it. A college boy took his own life the other day because he and some of his companions had been investigating the life to come, and he got in a hurry to know what it would be like, He said he would talk back to one of the other boys. He has not done it. He could not do it without a medium, and if he had known his subject better he would have known that. We are deposited in this world to live and learn and develop. All the testimony that is worth anything is to effect that we do better to stay in our school until we graduate in a normal manner. We don't gain time by suicide; we lose it. It puts us back. A bank president killed him- self the other day, nobody knows why, A clubman in his club still more recently. Ill health had to do, no doubt, with both cases but also they were doubtless due to lack of knowl- edge of what life is and what it is about. Old people in particular will do well to give some consideration to the question, where do we go from here? It is worth their attention and they can increase their knowledge about it if they will take the trouble. ISHOP MANNING, in declining to debate the marriage code with Judge Ben Lindsey, said in a tele- gram: “For Christians the moral standards given to the world by Christ are not open to debate.” Agreed. But might there not be discussion of what couples are joined by God as the Scripture reads, and what are not? The Church service seems to be read over a good many pairs whose union seems to lack the stamp of authentic divinity, Divorces increase steadi The Ladies’ Home Journal says that at the present ratio of increase 1938 will see a divorce for every marriage. That means that for every marriage that holds, there will be one that breaks. Discussion might not be harmful to such a condition as that. Now that Dr. Perey Grant is dead, inevitably people will discuss whether he could have been so han- dled as to save him and what was good in the work that he was doing. As it is, he may seem to a good many observers to have been destroyed without due compensating advantages to righteousness and truth. E. Martin. comicbooks.com