UR next President will be either Woodrow Wilson or Charles E. Hughes, if the one of them elected in November shall live until March 4, 1917. I believe that our next President may have to deal with an extremely grave crisis in our National life, perhaps with the gravest crisis. of our National history. I recognize, therefore, a peculiarly imperative duty, resting upon every good citizen, to lay aside now all partisan or other prejudice, all feeling of disappointment or resentment by reason of what might have, but has not, happened, and to decide for which one of these two men he shall vote after a calm, careful, dispassionate consideration of the public interest. I have done this, and have decided that I must vote for Mr. Hughes.

I am in no wise influenced by the facts that Mr. Hughes is the Republican candidate, and was declared, by a large majority of the Progressive National Committee, the Progressive candidate as well. These facts may very properly have weight with others; with me they have none. I recognize no responsibility for Mr. Hughes's nomination. Nor do I think it material, as affecting me, that he has the support of Colonel Roosevelt and of a very decided majority among those prominent as Progressives during the past. four years.

In the discharge of my political duties nobody except myself can be my conscience-keeper, and I hold that this question is a question of conscience: With my opinions of President Wilson's character and record, opinions formed deliberately and reluctantly, in consequence only of his public words and acts, can I rightfully aid, directly or indirectly, by action or inaction, in making him our President for another four years? I think I

cannot.

Mr. Wilson was nominated in 1912 on a platform which said:

We favor a single Presidential term, and to that end urge the adoption of an amendment to

the Constitution making the President of the United States ineligible for re-election, and we pledge the candidate of this Convention to this principle.

It may be that this pledge was unfair or unwise or both; it may be that the Convention had no right to exact it; it may seem to many that Mr. Wilson might have rightfully accepted the nomination and yet openly repu diated the pledge, if he had done so before the election; but, to my mind, a man of honor was clearly bound by the pledge when he had acquiesced in it by silence, and had been elected to a great office on the platform containing it without publicly saying a word

The same platform declared:

We favor the exemption from toll of American ships engaged in coastwise trade passing through the Panama Canal.

Mr. Wilson made a speech during the campaign in which he alluded to this plank with approval, and I have reason to believe it undoubtedly gained him votes. After he had obtained the office he sought, he induced the Congress his party controlled to repeal the exemption it and he had expressed and publicly favored before the election.

The same platform set forth:

The law pertaining to the civil service should be honestly and rightly enforced, to the end that merit and ability shall be the standard of appointment and promotion rather than service rendered to a political party.

"The law pertaining to civil service" nas for more than thirty years expressly prohibited consideration of recommendations from Congressmen in appointments to the classified service. There is good reason to believe that thousands of these offices have been filled in accordance with these unlawful recommendations, and because of what the plank calls "service rendered to a political party." The

Civil Service Commission, with the President's approval, has refused access to its records, which records would show in precisely how many such cases postmasters have been virtually nominated by Democratic Congressmen. Mr. Wilson has always professed to be a very strong civil service reformer, and when he was elected was a vice-president of the National Civil Service Reform League.

Yet another plank of the Democratic platform of 1912 proclaimed:

The Constitutional rights of American citizens should protect them on our borders and go with them throughout the world, and every American citizen residing or having property in any foreign country is entitled to and must be given the full protection of the United States Government, both for himself and his property.

During Mr. Wilson's term thousands of American citizens have been despoiled of their property, and scores, if not hundreds, of them put to death or shamefully and barbarously maltreated in Mexico. More than a hundred have met violent deaths on the high seas as the result of methods of warfare which he has himself described as unjustifiable under the universally recognized rules of international law. If he has extended "the full protection of the United States Govern

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Nevertheless the foregoing are by no means all the instances wherein the President and his party appear to have treated it as a scrap of paper;" they are enough, however, to justify me in saying that I care nothing for the Democratic platform of 1916, and as little for what the President may say before the election he will do after it if elected.

When he came into power, he declared the Mexican President, Huerta, must resign or be deposed, because we could have no diplomatic dealings with one "whose hands were stained with blood." In saying this, he alluded to the death of Huerta's predecessor,

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Madero, who had met the fate awaiting virtually all deposed rulers in Spanish-American countries unless they can save themselves by flight. It is strenuously denied and has never been proved that Huerta was responsible for Madero's death; but, whatever may be the facts as to that, it is admitted, as well as proved, that Huerta's successor, Carranza, with whom our President has willingly entered into friendly relations, has his hands fairly soaked in human blood, for he has caused or permitted the shooting, in large batches, of hundreds of prisoners taken in the civil war, and the execution, either with no trial at all or with only a sham trial, of a multitude of his political opponents. Mr. Wilson demanded that Huerta, the President he would not recognize because he was so bad, should fire a salute to the American flag, and, upon Huerta's refusal, caused Vera Cruz to be seized by our naval forces, thus becoming responsible for the death of perhaps a score of our sailors and marines and about a hundred Mexicans; after holding that city for a number of months at a heavy expense to the United States, he abandoned it without obtaining the salute. On the other hand, he allowed his protégé Carranza to send some of the latter's followers, in arms, across American territory to attack the forces of another revolutionary leader named Villa, who had been Carranza's generalissimo in the war against Huerta, and had afterwards become his rival. This led Villa to make a murderous raid on one of our border towns, and when the President sent what he called "a punitive expedition" in pursuit, his friend. Carranza not only impeded its progress in every way he could, but caused a detachment of our soldiers to be treacherously ambushed and a number of the troopers killed; no one has been punished for this outrage.

The fruits of President Wilson's Mexican policy are that Mexico lies prostrate and hopeless, in a welter of anarchy, bloodshed, and brutal oppression; that our border has had to be guarded by virtually our entire regular army and a large part of our organized militia; that our citizens have been murdered, plundered, and subjected to abominable maltreatment with entire impunity; that the lives of our soldiers, sailors, and marines have been uselessly sacrificed; that we are regarded throughout Mexico and by all classes and parties there with mingled hatred and contempt; finally, that our uncalled-for intermeddling in what didn't con

cern us has afforded various foreign Powers plausible pretexts to hold us responsible for frequent outrages on their subjects by Carranza and his like. I cannot have on my conscience even a ten-millionth part of responsibility for four years more of this policy.

Early in the year 1915 our Government was notified of the intention of Germany to use the latter's submarines in sinking merchant vessels without previous notice; Mr. Wilson replied by a warning that for any resulting injury to American citizens those responsible would be held to a strict accountability. The Ambassador of Austria, Dr. Dumba, after a conference with Mr. William J. Bryan, then Secretary of State, reported to his Government, in substance, that this warning was not intended seriously; Mr. Bryan says he immediately reported to the President just what had passed between the Ambassador and himself. The immense steamship Lusitania was torpedoed without notice by a German submarine, and about a hundred American passengers, many of them women and children, perished in the waves. Nobody has been held strictly accountable, or accountable at all, for their deaths; on the contrary, the officer commanding the submarine is said, without contradiction, to have been decorated, and I saw this summer a medal apparently struck in commemoration of the exploit.

To secure due regard for our rights as a neutral nation and for the rights of our citizens in the present world-wide conflict it was, and is, of the utmost importance that the language and bearing of our President should induce a reasonable belief that he says what he means and means what he says, so as deservedly to gain for our country the respect and confidence of the nations at war; the language and bearing of Mr. Wilson have had precisely the opposite effect. In the words of a well-known American writer : More harmful and more unfortunate than any other word or act was the statement of President Wilson that we might be "too proud to fight." . . . Every nation in Europe laughed. . . . In London the recruiting stations showed pictures of fat men, effeminates, degenerates, and cripples labeled: "These are Too Proud to Fight! Are you?"

I cannot share, even to the extent o. a single vote, responsibility for making our Nation an object of contempt and derision during four more years.

In the Democratic platform of 1912 it was said:

The party that proclaimed and has always enforced the Monroe Doctrine and was sponsor for the new navy will continue faithfully to observe the Constitutional requirement to provide and maintain an adequate and well-proportioned navy sufficient to defend American policies, protect our citizens, and uphold the honor and dignity of the Nation."

This meant the Democratic party, but, even before the election, it became evident that a "Little Navy" faction controlled the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, and that Mr. Wilson was, at best, very lukewarm in opposition to this faction. When, in August, 1914, the outbreak of the great war caused well-nigh every government in the civilized world to give serious thought to the grave question of national defense, our Government moved not a finger to remedy our complete and notorious helplessness; and in the following December the President, in his address to Congress, urged, in substance, that nothing of moment should be done for the National defense, saying in conclusion :

I turn away from the subject. . . . There is no new need to discuss it. We shall not alter our attitude toward it because some amongst us are nervous and excited.

A few months later, however, he began to assert that there was a new need" for preparedness, and finally went on a speaking tour in the avowed interest of the National defense. Immediately upon his return from this tour, the Secretary of War, who had become a strong advocate of preparedness and had apparently believed that the President was in earnest, very suddenly resigned; and, after a long delay, was replaced by a gentleman well known to be a pacifist. The Chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs of the House of Representatives, who had always shown himself bitterly and obstinately hostile to preparedness in any rational form, has been since then rewarded for his services to the National defense by a judicial appointment. It is fair to add that a liberal increase to the navy and a considerable, although inadequate, increase to the army have been authorized by the present Congress; but, however others may feel on the subject, I have no confidence in the good faith of preparedness with Mr. Wilson in the White House and his appointees in the Cabinet.

Under President Roosevelt, our Govern

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1916

ment was intrusted by treaty with the collection of customs in San Domingo, and he and President Taft and their respective Secretaries of State selected the officers employed for this purpose, with no regard whatever for their politics or party.

Mr. Wilson and Mr. Bryan promptly proceeded, in the words of the latter, to seek, in the Dominican CustomHouses, "places for deserving Democrats." The behavior of some among their appointees caused so much scandal that, I believe, the practice had to be abandoned; but the National disgrace remains. Only the Republican Senators have saved us from another disgrace; for Mr. Wilson actually agreed to pay the Colombian Government twenty-five million dollars, as the price or pardon for having made the Panama Canal, at our own immense expense, but to the enormous advantage of Colombia itself; and even would have had our country apologize, in the treaty he sent to the Senate, because President Roosevelt had treated a previous attempt to levy this blackmail precisely as it deserved to be treated. I cannot so cast my vote in November as to feel myself a party to future sacrifices of my country's The dignity and honor to the greed of spoilsmongers or to gain a petty and doubtful partisan advantage for the President or his party.

I am aware that some Democratic partisans and party newspapers are, or pretend to be, terribly shocked when anything uncomplimentary is said of the President; like the Court divines in the days of Charles II, they hold it a form of blasphemy to suggest that the Chief Magistrate has done, or can do, wrong. It might be enough, so far as they are concerned, to say, as I can with entire truth, that when I formed a part of our Government, these very newspapers and, I have no doubt, these very men and women as well, were ready, nay, eager, to spread any calumny, however silly or shameful, about the President of those days. But I am not interested in showing their inconsistency and insincerity; I wish those now around me to feel assured that, unlike them, I have the same yardstick for all public servants; and I ven

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ture, therefore, to trouble you with an extract from a speech I made on May 26, 1902, as President of the Civil Service Reform Association of Maryland. Referring to Theodore Roosevelt, who was then President, although of course with no idea at the time that I might be one day in his Cabinet, I spoke as follows:

Give him Hail Columbia (not to speak of anything less suitable for public mention) when he does aught that savors of that abuse of public trust for personal or party ends which he has himself so often and so strenuously condemned; if he is the man some of us think him, he will think all the better of us for doing this; but, whatever he or anybody else may think, it is the right thing for us to do, and we have no business here, this Association and its fellows have no warrant for further existence, unless we are ready to do it. Moreover, although we should, so far as may be practicable in reason, learn all material facts bearing on the conduct of a public servant before we blame him, there is no call for encyclopædic research into minute details to justify outspoken censure when this appears, on a fair, sober second thought, well deserved. It is the President's duty, no less than it was Mrs. Cæsar's, to escape reasonable suspicion of wrong-doing. Should he or any other official tell us, "If you knew the facts, you wouldn't blame me," we have a ready answer: "Give us the facts, and we'll see."

On this principle I have spoken, written, and thought of every successive President, and on this principle I think and speak of Woodrow Wilson to-day.

Mr. Hughes is not the man I wished to see nominated for the Presidency. Like the election of Mr. Taft in 1908, like the election of Mr. Wilson in 1912, his election, if he shall be elected, will be in some measure an experiment, and in our present critical position I urged the choice of a man who had been already tried in this great trust and who had made good. But Mr. Hughes's record of public service will make his choice, if he be chosen, at least a promising experiment; and I must give him my vote when the only alternative is to promote, directly or indirectly, the election of a man whose Administration has been, to my mind, a signal and ignominious failure.

T

HE hay-field is one of those ends of mountain meadow won from the Maine forest by what toil I am only beginning to realize as day after day I force my way through deserted lumber trail and deer run of the wildness that hems in this bit of clearing. On two sides the white pines, the balsams, and the birches press to its very edge; on the east it slopes to a rocky, mossgrown valley and the shores of Lower Wilson, with ridges of blue mountain beyond. To the south passes the "county road," a rock-ridden, spring-worn cut through the woods leading east to the lake and west some five miles to the Cove, the metropolis for this part of the world.

It was along the county road that the haying outfit came with great clatter and vociferation and put an end to my morning nap. There were two men and two horses and one of the antiquated high-wheeled mowing-machines. They went to work briskly-the day, even when it begins at half-past four in the morning, is none too long for two men to cut and put into the mow the grass from a meadow of nearly ten acres.

As I work in my tent study I can hear the pleasant click of the mower, rising to sharp, staccato clips as it mounts the ridges, subsiding to a drowsy hum as it recedes into the hollows beyond. After it has made the last dip there is a full moment of bird-filled silence before the first faint sound is audible again as the horses pull up over the rise. The tall hay falls behind the arm of the mower, slipping away like waves that have broken on the shore. What a tumult of color! Gray-green stems of the grasses and their purple-flowered tops, white flash of daisies, the incomparable old-gold of browneyed Susans, scattered clumps of lilac field asters and Queen Anne's lace, and, most gorgeous of all, the burnt-orange red of the "paint-brush." No doubt an evidence that the hay is poor, but what a sight for a Giorgione !

I have a strong suspicion, however, that the flash and fall of color that runs SO smoothly is the result of a good deal of skill. That field is full of rocks-rocks that lift See illustration in the picture section.

gray-lichened heads above the grass tassels and the daisies, rocks that are hidden by the stand of hay and hundreds of smaller stones lying ready to snap the blade of the mower. Every few minutes the peculiar, sharp "Whoa! Back! Shuh!" of the driver tells of another danger avoided. How he knows, that smallish man in the violent plaid shirt, where the peril lies is a deep mystery. But even the horses are extraordinarily foot-clever. They step over and around the rocks with the most remarkable sagacity.

The driver is one of the best hay men in this part of the country, so they tell me. However, it is none of our doing that he is mowing the field. Horace Bartlett mowed this field for uncounted years before we appeared upon the scene. He will probably

be mowing it long after we have vanished. By use and wont he has won a title to the hay on this meadow, nor can the mere exchange of dollars and a deed between a land agent and a "ferriner drive Horace from his vested right. It would require a person of more temerity than I to attempt to keep his hay for himself.

Horace, then, drives the cradle. The other man swings the scythe around the edges of the meadow, and in the corners of the stone wall where the coneflowers and the flaunting fireweed grow. Every now and then Horace shouts directions to him across the field. Undoubtedly he is Horace's "help." He is just such a meek-looking man as I should expect any man to be who dwelt under the watchful eye of Horace. It is common property among our countryside gossips that the " help was one of those rovers who wander through the farming districts once or twice in the summer-time or at harvest when extra men are needed until Horace took him in hand and settled him for once and all, much against his own will. I believe Horace even went so far as to change the name of his protégé. I should not be surprised if the story were trueHiram has the futile look of a trapped creature. He is meek even with the horses. I hear him saying in his discouraged drawl, with no lift of his voice from its dead level.