Waterbury evening Democrat., 1908-09-03
THAT MESSAGE FROM THE DEAD.


 land, which was recently published. If MT Cleveland was alive. while any article coming as this does from an ex-president of the United States would undoubtedly occasion consid- erable comment, 1t would in nowise have been given the attention 1t has received because 1t happened to be his last work.
 We are not sure about the proprie- ty of this letter having been made public at this time. It was written before the recent party conventions and was not intended for publication until after these conventions had acted. It is possible that the action Of the two great parties might have changed Mir Cleveland's attitude up- on the advisability of publishing what he had written before the con ventions met. He might have ma terially amended his article or have cast 1t aside altogether and written another of entirely different tenor.
 Of course this is purely specula- tion. What Mir Cleveland wrote (we assume the article is authentic) has been published and 1t cannot be de- nied that any effect his words may have are favorable to the candidacy of MT Taft. However, the fact should not be forgotten that MT Cleveland wrote prior to the big party conventions and that even he might have become supporter of MT Bryan's candidacy after the conventions had met, where he could not have conceived himself playing such a role at the time he wrote the article in question. The attitudes of the big party conven- tions upon public questions were such as to drive every believer in fundamental democratic principles to the support of MT Bryan, and Mir Cleveland always held fast to what he considered to be fundamental democratic doctrine. The fact that Judge Parker, Governor John John- son, Henry Watterson, Judge Gray, Judson Harmon and hundreds of other democrats of the old Cleve> land school, men who bitterly op, posed MT Bryan's nomination, are supporting him in this campaign. is at least some indication of what MT Cleveland might have done. To deny that comparison of the actions of the republican and the democratic national conventions would not have had their influence upon MI Cleveland's final judgment with re- gard to the present conventions were devoid of any real political signif1- cance-a position to which we ca4- not subscribe.
 MT Cleveland's letter must be con- sidered on its merits, something that is hard to do in the case of any message from the dead. We are bound to attach an unwarranted sig nificance to an article of this kind. The most fulsome praise can go un- challenged, while the critic Is com pletely disarmed.
 Intending no offense, nevertheless running the danger of being accused of attacking the sacred memory of the dead" the Union believes MT Cleveland's article will have little or no effect in the present campaign. We furthermore do not believe that it shows that marvellous grip of the situation for which it is given credit by republican papers, who have al- ways berated MT Cleveland's mental capabilities, but now find something among his posthumous papers that lends itself to the axes they wish to grind.
 All MT Cleveland says in praise of the personal ability of MT Taft, MT Bryan, himself, or any fair-minded democrat, will admit. The Union be- lieves that both MT Taft and MT Bryan are able, honest, courageous men. We deprecate the evident re- publican effort to becloud the great issues at stake in the present con- test by waging campaign on the personalities of the candidates. We resent their pretense that Mir Byran would make a less capable, honest | and courageous president than Mir Taft. We admit that such conclu- sion was intimated by Mir Cleveland | in his article, but MT Cleveland never bubbled over with brotherly love and ] affection as far as MT Bryan was con- cerned and any intimations he may | have made on that score are, there 1 fore, opinions from a prejudiced l source. MT Cleveland could never | appreciate what he called Bryanism. That was to be expected. As we said | at the time of Mir Cleveland's death, {, he started life a radical, and ended | it conservative. It was not because | MT Cleveland had changed. but be-