The morning journal-courier., 1908-02-18
THE NATIONS NEEDS.


 As the cartoon printed in to-day's is- ! sue of The Morning Journal-Courier | suggests, the more public speeches Secretary Taft makes before the inter ested public the clearer becomes the understanding of the mans personal character and the more the public's confidence in his independence in creases. It is one thing to attribute to a man of his known worth depend- enee upon the will of another and an entirely different thing to prove 1t. Certainly MT. Taft is doing all that any man circumstanced as he is can do to reveal himself in his own colors to the country, utterly regardless of the like iihood of his receiving the Republican nomination for president,
 Perhaps the most satisfactory speech MT. Taft has yet made is that which was prompted by his presence at the Yale Alumni Association dinner at Hartford last Saturday. Peculiarly sus- ceptible 10 the influence of personal friends, it would have been remark able had he failed upon that occasion to surrender to 1t and become bit more frank than perhaps it would oth- erwise have been possible for him to be. The political hustngs is danger ous place from which .o conduct campaign, as the career of James q Blaine shows A dining table filled with men of various political parties, but of one idea so far as college brother hood is concerned, will start a man along the road of direct speech if any thing will. The Yale dining table had that effect upon Secretary Taft Satur- 6ay evening and it led him to make clear his attitude towards property. we do not want socialism, he said; i've do not want those theories yirich do away with the guarantees of life, liberty and property our fathers hahd- ed down to us from the Revolu tion. But we do want the men who handle property and who handle capi tai to observe the laws of their country and to be restricted in the use of the means that the law offers them so that they shall not attempt to make them selves an immune privileged class. There Is a terrifying way of saying this and there are adjectives which might be used to add to the confusion of the impression made, but one will look in vain for either form of speech in this simple declaration that the laws are upon the statute books to he obeyed Where protest is made against the en- forcement of the law because it limits the power of individuals to enjoy the immunity of privileged class 1t is nat ural that men should regard 1t with suspicion.
 Nor is MT. Taft unmindful of the other side of the proposition. And then again" said he. I've do not want to follow the demagogue in his ignor- ing of the rights of property and his denunciation of the spirit of gain and enlightened selfshness, which after all is the motive at the basis of all mod ern progress and civilization" The trouble, if we may be permitted to say so, is that there has been lacking from the serious work of retrenchment and reform a malicious treatment of the conditions as they existed. Property and the spirit of gain, which holds us all in varying degrees, have been as- saulted in such violent ways, with par ticular instances of malefaction before us, that all property and all spirit of gain have been subjected to the infer ence that the complete absence of the yearning for property. combined with a total lack of aequisitiveness, is alone proof of the integrity of either the in- vestment or the individual MT. Harri- man, to employ an illustration, should be forced to obey the law and he should be denied the privilege of ex- elusive progress but because he has seen fit to move along orig inal and supposedly immune lines all the railroad men in the country and all the railroads should not he hammer ed as corrupt and dishonest This il- lustration could be extended obviously in many directions. and be even car ried to the extreme that because one man differs in his final judgment from his fellow he is unfit for social recog- hilton. In undertaking to make mod eration in speech part of his political equipment Secretary Taft senses accur- ateiy the needs, or at least one of the pressing needs of the country. As The Journal-Courier has said more than once a great work has been performed in arousing the moral conscience of the country. For the present the neces- sary readjustment should be permitted