Life — November 2, 1928 — page 20: what you’re looking at

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

IS LIFE THERE’S HOPE” VoLUME 92 November 2, 1928 NuMBER 2400 Published by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY 598 Madison Avenue, New York. Cuarces Dana Gisson, President Crain Maxwetr, Vice-President Rosert Emmet Suerwoop, Editor LancHorne Gieson, Secretary-Treasurer Next Wednesday morn- ing the worst will be known, and if you be- lieve what you hear it is going to be very bad indeed, whoever wins. A Democratic Senator says that civilization will stand still if Hoover is elected; and a Republican educator says that if Hoover is not elected it will be not only a national calamity but a world tragedy. Confronting this option between disasters, it might well to remember the remark of the poct Longfellow, that things are not what they seem. Every four years for a century past this republic has been in imminent and deadly peril on the first Monday in November, but somehow the end of the week always finds it carrying on about as usual. But this year is different, if we believe the great and good men who have been telling us how we ought to vote. Mr. Mellon, for instance, says that the Repub- licans ought to be continued in power because our highways are crowded with automobiles. The Democrats, presumably, want to go back to the horse and buggy. Indeed, from Mr. Mellon’s able summary of recent economic history, one gathers that it is due solely to the Republican party that ten years have elapsed since the war. If the Democrats had remained in office the sun and moon would have stood still, as they did that afternoon when Joshua had to finish off the Canaan- ites; the war would still be just behind us and the war debt would be just as large as it was before Democratic Secretaries of the Treasury began the process of debt reduction which Mr. Mellon has so ably carried on. But thanks to Harding and Coolidge the earth again spins around on its axis and revolves around the sun, the VOTE FOR ROGERS VOTE FOR SMITH VOTE FOR HOOVER sur — VOTE! procession of the equinoxes goes on once more; winter and summer, day and night, seedtime and harvest, shall not fail so long as the Grand Old Party has the jobs. If all this is the achievement of the Republican party, the promise of its can- didate is no less. Whatever you think the nation needs, Hoover is going to give it. Hoover will maintain Prohibition, he will abolish Prohibition; he is the firmest foe of intolerance and our one sole bulwark against the temporal power of the Pope. Anything can be said for Hoover, and ractically everything has been said for fim, because he says nothing for himself. All that comes out with certainty from his various campaign. addresses is that he be- lieves in a high tariff and the American home. = Now quite possibly the Republican man- agement, and the Republican candidate, are right in their assumption that the pub- lic neither knows nor cares to know any- thing about the problems of the time, or how the Republican candidate for Presi- dent would deal with them. Al Smith has told the people what he thinks about every problem of immediate urgency; what he thinks ought to be done about it, and what he will try to do about it. Hoover squats behind his collar and emits an occasional eulogy of the American home. As Mr. Ellery Sedgwick lately wrote, “Everybody explains the candidate but the candidate himself. The hands are the hands of Esau but the voice is the voice of Jacob.” Mr. Sedgwick would appear to think, as do many other people, that Hoover has been scared out; that like other can- didates of noble motive he has been taken in hand by the practical men of his One recalls the instance of Mr. Taft, who like Hoover had an excellent record of public service in appointive offices, byt who in the White Frowse found himself surrounded and hoodwinked by men who knew exactly what they wanted. But there may be less of cowardice in it than of arrogance; it may be the calculated pol of a man who honestly despises the public and believes that we have no right to know what he means to do until he is ready to do it. Possibly that sort of Pres- dent would be safer than a President who lets himself be muffled by the professional politicians around him; but there are times — when some bold departure in policy is needed—when a President can- not get things done unless he can make the people see what he wants to do and why he wants to do it. Al Smith has been notably successful, as Governor of New York, in doing that very thing. Unies President Hoover forsook the ways of Candidate Hoover, he would cither be afraid to tell us or would decide that it was none of our business. YY Ne Hence the peculiar character of what Mr. Sedgwick calls “this one-legged cam paign.” It is like a referendum in which you vote either Yes or No rather than a choice between two candidates; “there is but a single figure in it; you may love him or you may hate him, but it is because of Smith that you vote at all.” Mr Hoover seems to have an extraordinary capacity for winning the devotion of mea who have been personally associated with him; but the American people will never be personally associated with him unles he Baw a leg while running away fre us. An argument might be made for elet ing a despot, who would do what seemed good to him without consulting ane except the Chairman of the Republi National Committee and a few of Hany Daugherty’s Assistant Attorneys-Genen. But that system would work only if Co gress were given a four-year vacation, aa! the public were forbidden to expres opinions about public affairs till the pest Presidential election rolls around. One may guess that Hoover's silesx springs from self-sufficiency rather cowardice, because after all it takes soot courage to say nothing for fear of offend ing somebody. A man of weaker fiber might have lost his nerve by comicbooks.com