New-York tribune., 1906-10-26
Iates the West Orange inventor upon the real
ization OF his latest ambition.
DARKNESS IN MASSACHUSETTS,.

These are sad days in Massachusetts,. That
staid and settled commonwealth is being treated
to series of rude and disagreeable surprises
The Hon. j. 3. Moran has 'butted into politics
without adequate letters of introduction He Is
referring to statesmen on whose shoulders tho
destines of the Bay State rest as Bill" Jim
and Charlie" and is assuring misguided audi
ences that he himself is bigger man than Dan
lei Webster, thus taking leaf from the book OF
our own Bowery publicist the Hon. Tim" Sulli-
van The Hon. Josiah Quincy shivers though
he has never before been known to shiver in
temperature of less than minus 1000 degrees
Fahrenheit. The Hon. Gamael Bradford has
ceased to dream of Filipino independence. Ho
is busy predicting civil war, and already sees
the federal army stamping out in blood labor
and socialistic revolution
These are disturbing portents. Yet Massa-
chusetts has outlived Shays and outlived Butler.
She conquered her panic in 1898 over the imag-
mary descent of an imaginary Spanish war
fleet, and she will recover from her present at
tack Of Mysteries over Moranism. But from one
disclosure of the present campaign she will
never recover. Massachusetts has pr1ded her
self on carrying culture into politics. She has
bred statesmen who were orators and scholars
She has sent poets, essayists and historians into
public life. She had, as all the world thought,
educated herself to appreciate the crown put on
public service by literary distinction One tour
dc force of rhetoric made the whole state kin
Yet alas. this beautiful illusion now crumbles-
The spell of rhetoric in politics has been broken.
For how otherwise can anybody explain tho
travail to which Massachusetts has been put
by one Of Senator Lodges simplest rhetorical
figures?
Mr. Lodge at the Republican State Conven-
tIon happened to say that the election Of 1905
would determine whether the government Of the
two great states of New York and Massachu-
sets should be American or Cossack" This
was a legitimate adaptation of q familiar
phrase. and should have caused no mystifcation.
Massachusetts chewed the sentence over how
ever, and has been inquiring ever since where
the Senator got It and what he meant by it.
One learned editor dug up the fact that Roscoe
Conklng had used much the same expression
in speech nominating General Grant for the
Presidency in the Republican National Conven-
ton of 1880 The cry Of plagiarism was raised.
and Mr.. Moran and other Democratic orators
complained that If the senior Senator wanted
to call them opprobrious names he ought to in
vent some Of his own with some appreciabls
pertinence to the local situation
After two weeks Of distress and uncertainty
Mr.. Lodge has supplied Massachusetts with the
key to his rhetorical alusion. He explained In
an address on Wednesday night that both he
and Mr.. Conkling owed their figure Of speech
to Napoleon I, who once said that Europe would
in certain contingencies be all republican or all
CossaCk. The Senator then actually devoted
some fifteen minutes to proving to his hearers
that the phrase was not without relation to
the subject we are talking about" We believe
he made case after copious quotations from
the encyclopedias. But his painstaking efforts
to illuminate an historical allusion must have
narrowed up his soul and made the shades of
Daniel Webster, Edward Everett, Charles Sum-
ner and George F. Hoar rejoice that they were
no longer addressing Massachusetts, audiences