The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-07-04
BRYAN PLAYS FOR BIG PRIZE Means to Unite Party
 Factions. HAS POWER AND USES IT Walter WeIInan Describes Master
 of the Democrats. sits.t Hi. Home in Fairview and Directs Big Political Came
 His Ability and Pria-
 sfpies.

Walter Wellman, writing to The Chi- cago Record-Herald from Lincoln, Neb., says:
 It is big game that is being played here by a big man for big prize.
 To reunite a disrupted party. To bring all factions together upon q plat form all can stand upon. To inject into the party, till now so often beaten that 1t has become we'll nigh hopeless, not only harmony but hope. confidence. en- thusiasm--this is the task William Jen- nings Bryan is engaged upon
 The objective, of course. Is the White House.
 Mr. Bryan is playing his part well, with great skill, with well-defined ideas as to methods and principles. with q personal magnetism and self-control rarely equaied among our public men, with almost infinite knowledge of men and conditions everywhere in the coun- try.
 ~ A strong, stocky, big-faced. heavy jawed, qulck-eyed, pIeasant-spesking sweet -smiling man stands on the porch of a beautiful country house. Ills hand is outstretched. He welcomes all corners. No sort of Democrat Is re- pulsed. No matter what he has done or for whom or what voted, or talked, or written in the days that are gone--- If he is now Democrat and for the old party the glad hand grasps his as he walks up the stairs. If he is a man of any importance whatever, and he takes the trouble to wire ahead. MT. Bryan will meet him at the railway station and drive him out to Fairview and make him happy.
 This man who is now hard at work reshaping. remaking. re-creating the Democratic party. under his own lead ership and incidentally for his own benefit. is one of the marvels of the age. In his personality he is one of the most remarkable men of our day. He is now strong, ripe. full man. He is indeed the new Bryan. He has grown in boise and wisdom and judgment and insight and grasp till he has become almost ideal as a leader. as a doer of the sort of work that now Hes to his hand. We who judge him simply as a performer from the artistic side from the viewpoint of compe- tence and cleverness and adaptability-- simply as player of great game which interests us because it is great and wali played--cannot withhold from him the meed of our praise and adnli- ration We remember the Bryan of old. eloquent, but Inexperienced, pas sionate but poor of Judgment, born preacher and crusader. little fanaticai. somewhat marrow in CllReQ 10 HAEpuH PShoVAnt Benements bigoted as many strong and earnest men are to the point where they do not much like those who dis agree with them, inclined to thing that whatever they stand for must be right and that it Is their duty to convince all mankind to their way of thinking. The new Bryan is better balanced, more tol- erant, not less sincere but more adapt able, still the preacher by instipct, but the harmonizer and builder by trade. He has, grown and he has learned. A fine type of the race of men we Ameri-' cans are proud of is he, as he walks along the railway platform or upon the broad veranda of his home with his marvellous memory for faces and names his winning smile, his cherry Hello, Jim,v or Flow are you. John7" Back of the smile and the nice manner and the winsomeness is every inch the man --masterful. intellectual, tenacious. dominant. You like the smile and the handshake. But you never forget the forcefulness behind them.
 Sit down and talk with Mfr. Bryan for half an hour and you will And that he takes modest and proper pride in the fact that he is now the undisputed leader of hts party, that he Is coming again into his own. that he has re- gained his estate without the aid of wealth, or influence, or corporations, or organization. As he well says. he has had nothing but himself. nothing but his principles. nothing Abut his steady appeal to the people. As he al- sr x.raH and aarhana pvtfh AazfDnaI