Los Angeles herald., 1908-04-23
CHANGED CONDITIONS

TT is difficult to think of Bryan as
grandfather. 1t is equally difficult
a to realize that President Roose-
velt is on the eligible list for that pro-
motion. 1t is difficult to realize the
flight of our old friend Time. To men
| who have cut their wisdom teeth 1t
seems as if it were only yesterday that
a youthful looking orator carried a
Democratic convention by storm and
received nomination which had been
intended for another man. 1t does not
seem to be further back than yester
day that Theodore Roosevelt, the de-
feated candidate for Republican mayor
of New York-and badly beaten, even
Henry George licking him-was in
stalled as civil service commissioner, a
position in which conservative Repub-
licans who dreaded him thought he
would be out of harms way. Then he
stepped into the police commissioner
ship, a position in connection with
which he would not have been consid-
cred for moment if the department
had not been still shaking and shiver-
insy from the effects of Investigations.
His record as commissioner and vari-
Gus other records made in high official
positions were so irresistibly good that
the shelvers were shelved. They were re-
tired from business, as far as "T. r."
was concerned, until a national Repub-
lican convention fell due. The Platt
and Tammany-Republican influences
(was ever such an unholy alliance?) p
were now determined that at all haz-
ards the career of the soldier states
man must be checked, that the rough
rider reformer must be compelled to
pest on his laures and retire from pre-
4cocious activity into premature placid
ity. But when the plotters seemed to
have succeeded, when they seemed to
have destroyed Vice President Roose-
velts chance for presidential nomina-
ton, Fate thwarted the schemers, and
when the great American chief of the
sons of Fionn, true to the dark tradi-
tions of his stormy westland clan, fell
in the prime of his power by the hand
of an assassin, Roosevelt the strong
vice president. held the confidence of
the country and restored its courage
when a weaker man might have added
unto woe confusion. Roosevelt's mas
ter stroke was when he interpreted the
vice presidency in terms Of its relation
to the presidency defining 1T to be a
veritable substitute office. not an in
dependent office, and establishing as a
rrecedent that if presidential policies
have been outlined by a deceased presi-
dent, it is the duty of the vice presi-
dent, who becomes his successor to put
them into effect A governmental
policy, according to President Roose-
welt, is the policy of an administration,
not of one man, and the policies of the
administration must be continued with
out interruption, even though the ma
tion should suffer from tragical mis-
fortune like that which afflicted it in
the death of William Mckinley The
chief of the MacFionnlaidh rests in an
untimely tomb. He came as the apostle
of American prosperity, but his war
like tenure of power and his violent
death emphasized the end of the era
of peace in the republic. 1t was long,
long peace and the land fourished.
Since the war drums have again begun
to throb in the United States the flag
has been half masted on the school
house and millions of working children
have said good by to their childhood
and hopes of an education.