The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-09-02
nm. roIrrrcAL SOFT PEDAL.

elinging, or Is it to be a contest where every argument could be repeated in a lady's parlor, or being duly simplified can be repeated to without sho. king any childf Is 1t to be a soft-pedai competition? Some of our august metropolitan contemporaries are stern ly Insisting that the American people will not stsnd for a campaign of per sonal villifcation and abuse.
 Fortunately with all the feeling and vindictiveness that is usually. engen- dered by a presidential campaign there will be no chance this year to run a political harrow through the private lives of either of the two principal can didates. The Colonel and the Judge have led exemplary lives, so far as the very craftiest are aware. and while the Colonel has imparted a sort of high horse. jumping-jack quality to his do- mesticity, that Is but further proof he is sincere and natural at home.
 The brave beginnings in raising up high standards of debate have their comic side. MT. Hill. whom we must assume is ranked by the high standard people as a low-standard man, ventured at Binghampton to declare Roosevelt "a fraud" Instantly a chorus of the high standard folk pronounced MT. Hill to be a low, dirty, disreputable peanut politician. Major Byrne. one high-standard fellow and a Republi- can. is much concerned at the foolish malicious talk he hears about impe- rialism. He sweetly proclaims the fact that anybody who dreads imperial ism has "maggots in his brain."
 The ever dear old New York Sun has nailed the Democratic Committee for circulating in print what purports to be an extract from a speech made by Roosevelt in New York City, in Octo- Der. 1896. the extract running thus: MT. Bryan and his adherents have ap- pealed to the basest set in the land the farmers" The Sun. that for three years past, consorted with the low standard crowd in roundly abusing Roosevelt, shows in its comment on the alleged quotation that 1t has joined for good the company of Sweetness and light" Hear The Sun:
 Alienists and other students of cere- bral degeneration have not studied suf- ficiently the convolutions of the cam paign literature perverts. Could any body above the rank, rank of ,a. cretinous in public life would make such a state ment about a great class of voters. as is here attributed to Mir. Rooseveltr
 No, no, says The Sun. a thousand times no. He did say this. however. the next day:
 Undoubtedly Bryan has a great hold upon the unintelligent and the vicious. He attracts the type of farmer whose supplies the place of a missing window pane. and who is more likely 10 be found at the crossroads grocery than behind the plough.
 The New York paper confirms this and boldly asserts of MT. Bryan "his canvass was an appeal to the basest element in the community"
 The New York World. too, Is fierce editorially against those who would profane the clean minds of the Amer ican voters by personal abuse of can- didates and on the same page, in special article, specially contracted for, permits Henry Loomis Nelson to say the President Is an enemy of Democ- racy and Republican institutions and that he will be scorned and rejected by the American people as they would any foII Ia lya of war. The President himself has set a pace in vituperation, covering nearly all of his predecessors in office with, what?-roseate- tinged cologne scented abuse, we must say with the warnings before us. He put In a contribution to a magazine and reprinted this in a book, some scathing words about Pop ulists, that their opinions are as dirty and unwashed as their bodies, but 10 reproduce 1t as a whole, would be giv- ing a personal turn to political discus sion and this must be avoided under penalty of having discharged at you the total contents of an ancient Chi. nese arsenal.
 We have been greatly edifed to op- serve the recurring quadrennial effort to keep politics on a high plane. Ev- cry presidential election will be fought out on as high plane as possible and that is to say on as low plane as is considered reasonably safe. For the interesting class of young ladies study ing how men take the tricks in poli- tics, the soft pedal always. but for Squedunk-"Boys, let em fly"
 
 The irrepressible Debs takes four teen columns of ordinary newspaper space to reply" to MT. Cleveland's ar ticle in a July magazine about the Chi cago strike troubles. It is not sur prising that he required about two months to hatch out all this stuff, nor is 1t surprising that the result of his incubations and lucubrations will have little effect. Different men will nat urally have different opinions of the ex- President but few will have the hardihood to take issue with him on questions of fact, or deny the histori- cal accuracy of his articles. Hardly any man who has occupied public po- sition in these United States Is or has been more fully entitled to credence than Grover Cleveland and few obtain 1t more unreservedly when he writes history. The verdict of the best minds