Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1904-05-20
EDITORIAL FORUM
mEool Erlends.n
tSt. Adams Messenger. ]

Perhaps the Messenger can ask this
question with the greater proprety be-
cause IL has not attempted to interpret
Joseph A. DeBoers much discussed let
ter-Is not the st. Johnsbury Republican
a bit reckless when II says of those who
have done SO that DcBoer s"should pray
to be delivered from his fool friends?"
Fool friends is pretty strong language,
is it not, to apply to some very sensible
men who have INDUCED themselves in
the harmless fancy that under the bene-
ficent provisions of the Constitution of
the United States and the act legalizing
the grand list of AVerys Gore, the aver
age man has a right to pick his own can
didate for governor and understand what
he writes according to his own best judg
ment?
The sacred silence of the sanity city
of the Lily Whites has been profanely
broken several times by this kind of"ar
gumcut." 1t is 50 near Sunday that per-
haps the Messenger ought not to gossip
about its neighbors i'm this criticising
mood, but it does strike this paper that
for a community that opens baseball
games with hymns and prayers and that
has never broken one Of the Ten Com
mandments (because they are carefully
packed away along with Sir Thaddeus' $
decorations i'm the First Athcnaeum
church, a good deal of this kind of po-
litcal talk comes out of St Johnshury.
Somehow some of our brethren over there
still cling to the ancient idea that the way
to advance the interests of ones own
candidate is to try to talk people into the
notion that all who favor somebody else
/ are either improperly influenced to do it
/ or else are mere fools" The Caledonian.
/ for instance, came down off Mount Sinai
/ long enough the other day to pass the
word around that all of us blind Samsons
/ grinding at the mill of publicity that rec
/ ognzed and avowed the manifest pre-
eminent popularity Of Mr. DeBoer as the
! Republican candidate for governor this
year were merely the bankers of n De-
BOer Midway, merely the automatons
that jigged around like fleas on a hot
griddle when somebody pressed the but
| ton" as the contemporary sagely put
| it. The idea that perhaps a glimmer OF
| intelligent Independent individual judy
ment had flckered through the gray mat
ter of one Of us in some unguarded mo-
! ment was not to be credited under any
circumstances IF any man or newspaper
| differs from us in the advocacy Of polit-
| ical opinion or candidates. murmur the
Lightbearers of that awful Silence-in-
Cosmos where rolls the Passumpsic anC
hears no sound save its own rolling, "hC
is a puppet or a fool"
Perhaps it will be IL decided benefit tC
the moral tone of this canvass. thus fal
proceeding with Circumspect regard fol-
the amenities of fair and reasonable de-
bate of ideas and principles and avoidnl
indecent personalities, to have a few NOR,
hunks of this kind Of argument heaveC
at the hopeless imbeciles that have wan
tonly and maliciousy presumed to thu
opinion that they might with prophet!
favor a candidate of their own choice
Perhaps this will all inure to the Erea
advantage of the candidate favored b!
the St Johnsbury newspapers.
And perhaps not
The Messenger is standing by the same
principle today that it stood by in 1902
the right of an honest man to come int
a political canvass at the eleventh hou
and be honestly supported by other hon
est men who prefer him to some candi
date already in the field. 1t finds line
up alongside of it today some Old tim
friends and neighbors who sought T.
question that attitude in 1902, hut VIII
have changed their minds now that tn
principle comes straight home to thei
own doorstep. Perhaps our friends 4
st. Johnsbpry will see the light cleare
when the scales fall from their eyes.