New-York tribune., 1906-06-10
M4HOMET AND THE MOUNTAIN.

| The efforts of some of the ex-apostles OF
safety and sanity" hereabouts TO demonstrate
that in accepting Colonel William j. Bryan as a
| party Cincinnatus they are abating no Jot or
| title of their devotion to Conservatism" are
amusingly ingenious. THE Times" for in
| stance, tells its readers with almost pathetic
| solemnity that an article recently written by
| Colonel Bryan for '.The Century Magazine" was
| so impeccable both in form and matter that
The Times" actually found nothing in it from
which it could dissent and said so. This article,
! in which Mr.. Bryan repeated some of his well
known views Oh the desirability of modifying
the scheme of indvidualism in economics and
politics which we have inherited, rather than
suppanting il outright with n scheme of collec-
tivsm or socialism, was, as THE Times" thinks,
zone of the most potent of all the influences that
have so marvellouSly changed the countrys
opinion of him" One fugitive, chastened essay
in 1.-The Century" has blotted out the memory
of thousands of public speeches and of thousands
of columns of output in THE Commoner and
other publications devoted to the propagation
of radical doctrines. Benighted Democrats in
Missouri and elsewhere may be demanding Mr..
Bryan's election as President on the ground
that as Governor Folk put it the other day,
the BRYAN doctrines denounced as anarchy
in 1896 1900 and 1904 are now accepted rs
'the acme of patriotism" But THE Times
knows better. 1t is ready to support Mr.. Bryan,
not because the Democratic voters generally
have been educated up TO his ideas. but because
he has weared of those ideas and relapsed into
safe and sane inertia.
THE Times suggests also that anybody who
could be alarmed at possible recrudescence of
the issues of 1896 and 1900 would be capable of
working himself into fever over the WilmOt
Provso The inference is that the imitation issue
is as dead the free soil issue. Yet we re-
member that contemporary was, to say the
least violently agitated only two years ago when
Colonel Bryan made a successful fight at the st.
Louis convention TO prevent the passage of dec
laratOn indorsing the single gold standard. With
The Evening Post" and THE World ii suffered
a fierce attack of nerves until the Democratic
Presidential nominee wrote and published his
famous unofficial footnote to the national plat
form The Democratic party to-day is still Off
cially committed to the free coinage of silver,
and Colonel Bryan will undoubtedly insist on
as free a hand TO deal with this question in
1908 as he did in 1904, when, as THE Times"
would now have us think, the silver issue
as void of contemporary interest as the Wilmot
Proviso.
To Colonel Bryan's credit it should be said
that he has never been much of an OppOrtunist
in politics. His ideas have been positive and
radical and he has always expressed them with
vigOr and emphasis. He did not mince words
in 1904 when the politicians behind the Parker
canvass tried to undo his work and to diScredit
the principles he had advocated. Mr.. Bryan has
breadth of vision enough to see that the Amer
lean public demands frankness and courage in
statesman, and will not pardon evasions and
compromises. If the sO-caled conservatives
think that he has yielded his convictions or will
yield his convictions to purchase their support,
they are cherishing a delusion They, not he.
will play MahOmet when the tug OF war comes
between MahOmet and the mountain.