The morning journal-courier., 1908-03-06
Friday, March 6. 1908.
THE THIRD TERM GOSSIP.

The stern rebuke given Simeon Ford of New York at Boston dinner by Secretary Taft for having discussed President Roosevelt in an Intentionally amusing but unintentionally vulgar manner was of itself justified by the embarrassing position in which the genial secretary found himself. An in- offensive batting of the President would probably have been overlooked with a hearty laugh, but a batting which carried with it a really sharp criticism of that high official called for the treatment it received. It is a question now whether President Roosevelt will not have to rebuke some of his ardent friends and admirers who are placing him in a position as false as that Mir. Taft would have found himself in had he ignored MT. Ford's ill-timed humor.
 As The Morning Journal-Courier has said time and time again, but one significance can be attached to the twice-asserted unwillingness of the President to permit the mention of his name in connection with renom- ination His words must be taken at their face value, or the common un- , >.erstanding of his personal dignity and reliability must be revised. The revival of the gossip that he Is not in- different to the talk of his possible renomination is not due the unfriendly charges of his enemies but proceeds wholly from his personal friends There are members of Congress and active politicians, who are close to him, and yet who insist that he must be renominated in spite of what he has said to the contrary. Says the In- dianapolis News upon this subject: ,"Of course there is nothing he can say that will give added strength to what he has already said Yet he can and we feel sure that he will--make it plain to Bourne and to others that their course is most distasteful to him. If the President really means what he said he must regard the attitude of his supposed friends as insulting A sneer- ing and cynical enemy might thus as- sail the honor of Theodore Roose- welt, but that friend should do it, and still continue to be treated by the President as friend, is out of the question. So we look for one of those rebukes which Mir. Roosevelt is so we'll able to give. MT. Roosevelt believes that he will, by March of next year, have served for two terms, for he has said so. That he has any desire to break the precedent of more than a hundred years we do not believe. Es- pecially do we not believe that he will violate his solemn pledge, or even per- init his friends to put him in the at- titude of seeming to be willing to do so. MT. Roosevelt was under no obli- gation to make the pledge. But having made it he surely will abide by it''
 It is unquestionably true that the most embarrassing feature of the poli- teal situation as it relates to the pos sible action of the Republican national convention is the personal influence and popularity of Theodore Roosevelt That influence and that popularity would be enough of themselves to keep his name in the mouths of men in the absence of a word of protest powerful in that connection because while he asserts his unwillingness to run again under any conceivable set of conditions, he does treat under terms of intimacy men who never tire, in and out of season, of booming a third term candidacy. We have even found ourselves bothered and perplexed by this seeming inconsistency of his but we should expect to be very sternly rebuked if we gave expression to it in manner to suggest that we questioned his sincerity. Nor is ii strange that men who do not know him personally. and who therefore are in no position to know his reasons for acting as he does, are rerplexed one minute only to become suspicious the next. It is an old saving that a man is known by the company he keeps It is true, and by the same tok. en paraphrased, that the conduct oi a public official is judged by its self revelation. The Indianapolis News is certainly in the right in construing the conduct of the active friends of MT Roosevelt as insulting and it cannot help but construe his failure to re- buke them as fearful lack of fore