The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-10-19
THE KISS IN POLITICS.
Rare Discretion Required in Manage
 ment of an Osculatery Campaign.

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 ment of am Oscuiatery Campaign.
 Philadelphia Ledger.
 Tacitus observes that it would not be without advantage to examine those things, slight indeed in appearance, which are often the springs of the most important events. Another wri- ter remarks that If you trace the ne- cessary, ,concatenationi of human events a very little way back. you may, per- haps. discover that a persons very go- ing in or out of door has been the means of coloring with misery or hap piness the remaining current of his life. A stolen kiss. according to cur rent newspaper item, has become a burning political Issue in Montana. Ie is charged that one of the Republi- can candidates for the senate of that State met young woman in Red Lodge and kissed her without her con- sent. whereat the flaming Red Lodge Picket. the leading Republican organ in the locality, bolted the offending senator and demanded his withdrawa. from the ticket; the county chairman n demanded his resignation; his fellow partisans on the ticket resigned, and appeal is made to United States Sem ator Mantle, chairman of the Repub1i- can State Committee. to ask for the osculatory candidates withdrawal.
 Without peering too closely into the Red Lodge incident, somethin palli- tive or exculpatory may be said for the kiss per SC in politics. baby kissing campaign. for instance, has been worth more to candidates for the leg islature. congress. the governorship, than reams of thunderous and convinc- ing speeches on the tarifr or of the most vitriolic abuse of the other side. Majorities have turned upon the baby kissing endurance of budding states men. Mothers have trudged miles to win a salute for the baby from tho kissing candidate. The fiddle played it's part in the election of a governor of Tennessee; but the triumphs of the baby-kissing politician have been le. zion, and are still sporadically re- ported from regions where the fine ole traditions are preserved.
 The Red Lodge affair, however, Is suggestive as another instance of the possibilities of small things shaping the destinies of men, and perhaps of nations. If the indiscreet Montana senator be deposed for his escapade the State may lose a statesman who might have been summoned later to the Federal Senate-who might, by a scratch of the imagination, have been elected to the Presidency, so often has a pebble turned a Till and a little thing changed the course of history.
 It is said that the natural tendency ,of the mind is to seek .causation. It is related that a Rhode Island pig. which was held fast in a fence, was the remote cause of the declaration of war with Great Britain in 1912. As the story was recently told in the Public Ledger, the. logic of the case Is irrefutable. At the Rhode Island cleo 'tton in 1911 a precinct was lost to the Federalists by one vote because a Fed eralist farmer spent so much time in rescuing the pig that he arrived at the poll too late to cast his vote The con- sequence was that a war representa- tive was elected to the legislature by a majority of one. and a United States Senator elected by one vote, was sent from Rhode Island to Washington. and war was declared by Congress against Great Britain by a majority of one. The nation was plunged into the con- fict by a Rhode Island pig, and who can tell what momentous results may follow the failure of the Montana statesman's kissing campaign?