The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1908-09-21


ideal with the doubtful States, this tc
be published shortly before the election
The first article was finished. Whether
he made beginning on either of the
other articles is doubtful, as no trace
Of either has been found among his
papers. The first article, as copied be-
low, was published by The New York
Times on August 80 by an arrangement
made between literary agent and Mr..
Frederick S. Hastings, the executor of
Mr.. Cleveland estate.
Each quadrennial campaign is a re.
crudescent crisis in the affairs of the
American people, formative of new en-
Ideavors in our national life from the
mass of the old mingled with new and
untrled. We are overload of change
and amendment, and at times reckless
of underlying principles, which are not
susceptible of change, and TO antag-
onize which may mean disaster and at
least is certain TO entail qualification
and impairment of the best of our past
and present.
The campaign on which we are enter.
ing signalizes the capitalization of
more that is new than any other with
in forty years, and is not so important
for the policies that it will fix for the
next four years as for the greater
to foreshadow. Over our horizon lift
the blunt heads of clouds of storm, and
the low mutter of distant thunder is
heard beneath the basic roar of our
eighty millions moving on. 1t is the
earnest wish of one whose heart has
long been engrossed with his country's
greatest and best in the ultimate that
the men who shall take over her ward
and keep shall fail not nor falter in
that day more than those statesmen
of the past whose giant figures loom
in the vista of our history mutely mont
tive to emulation.
For a time there were those who
feared that there was an obliquity in
the standard of our civic morality
which marked a degeneracy not to be
averted, and greed, disintegrity, and
malfeasance strobe unabashed through
the courses of our official functions.
But we have lived to realize that it
was merely an excrescence of the times,
that it was something transitory, like
unto the slough of wound, and that
its prevalence and persistency were
needed to rouse the opposition neces-
sary to it's final obliteration. So, it
seems to me, as L review the last half
century, that from the mental vision 1
may draw this certain conclusions: We
as individuals and citizens are better,
wiser, cleaner handed than we were,
and are rising steadily to planes high
er than we have yet known. 1t is true
in one way that the "evil that men
do lives after them and the good is
too oft inferred with their bones," but
that survival is more in effect than in
popular consciousness.
We are prone to think of the past
as better than the present and to for.
get that which was publicly discredit-
able in the last decade or the last gen.
Grafton. Considering these matters and
conditions of which / have had some
opportunities of being informed, no
hesitaney comes in saying that the agi-
tation in behalf of common honesty in
the past few years has had a notable
effect, not only in the immediate con-
ditions that underlay the agitation, but
in the broader things of our intimate
life as a people. Never has more
intelligent body of voters prepared to
go to the polls, and never one more
thoroughly awakened to its moral re-
sponsibilities.
1t is unfortunate at all times of
course that a rigid partisan spirit
ShOuld n0Id certain seCuODS OF the
country to whatever course of action
is provided for them by the leaders of
the party to which they are committed,
no matter whether that principle de-
fining the course be some innocent
sophistry or some dangerous obsession
of a set of blatant demagogues. To
be specific, the population of some of
the New England States is so inherent
ly Republican that the fallacy would
be palpable indeed that would not earn
their support Just so it had the approx
al of the leaders of the Republican
Party On the other hand. the South
has long taken stubborn, foolish
pride in its enlistment under the Demo
eracy and has stood like a rock in its
partisanism at times when there are
now few who would not admit that
had its stand been one in the grounds
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