Weekly journal-miner., 1911-02-15

| League The League is so imbued with a sense of its own majesty as to shy red-hot defiance in the teeth of Congress and the President and
 dare them, singly or all together, to | disapprove Arizona's Constitution. It is so swelled with the dignity of
 newcomers as to arrogantly tell the
 world that, even if every vote should
 be against the Constitution, it would
 scorn the mandate of the people
 whom it professes to love, and would refuse to change a letter or a word or a line of it. And in the next breath it breathes curses loud and
 deep against Congress and the Pres
 ident for "dictating" to the people
 of Arizona. The Republican Execu- tive Committee humbly admits that
 it has not vet risen to sucn magnifie-
 ent appreciation of its own imperi ousness as that. It will be some : time, if present indications hold
 good, before the Republican Exeeu- tive Committee or any other organi-
 zation save the Statehood League | (and possibly the Constitutional
 eonvention) can hold the whole peo-
 pie of Arizona in servile subjection
 to its lightest breath, and at the
 same time execrate such nonentities as Congress and the President for
 daring to intimate that the Constitu-
 tion might need fixing. It is not to be marveled at that an agency so i high and mighty as this League should be unconscious of the exist
 ence of the Republican Executive Committee, which is composed of old timers, mostly Hassayampers, but in
 the main pretty fair citizens who had
 managed to get along in an old
 fashioned sort of way until the Con i stitutional convention and the State hood League came along, fresh with the atmosphere of Boston Harbor and
 Socialism, and told them what was
 what. And the lordly air with which
 they told it made the diets of I'm
 perial Caesar look like thirty cents.
 Now, not being gifted with om-
 niscence, the Republican Executive
 Committee was not aware that the ] hal ha 1ol
 aratiOns it speaks of. Neither was
 it aware that it had any disposition
 not to bear its proportion of the
 vast expense of holding these meet
 ings, even including the brass band.
 It was expressly stated in the prop
 osition for a joint debate that a
 committee be appointed to "arrange the details,' and the members of
 that committee on behalf of the
 proponents were named. If the League had really desired a joint de-
 bate, as it professes, it might at ] least have named representatives to
 meet this Committee, and the Jour
 nal-Miner is authorized to say that
 any reasonable conditions would glad
 ly have been met, including, of course, the sharing of expense and
 such changes in the time and order
 of speaking a. might nave been de
 sired. The League would have been l accorded practically its own will 1T ! these matters, the formal proposition l made by the Committee only having been tentatively made, for the pur . pose of getting out a joint commit l tee to arrange the details. While il is understood that neither the Re s publican Executive Committee or tn, g people of Yavapai county have an! I rights that the League is bound tt . respect, it was confidently believed ' that it would be eonsiderate anC ' courageous enough to at least ap n point a committee to see what coult e be agreed upon. It was also believed :. that as the subject was nOn-partisan a and one in which all are equally in n terested, the League would welcom y any opportunity of an open debate n And no one doubted that, if tn | League honestly believed its pom e pous eulogies of the Constitution e and had faith in the ability of it t speakers to defend it, it would in Q stantly accept tine proposition.
 ?. By its shuffling and evasive re II fusal, it admits what every carefu l. reader of the Constitution alread f knew-that the instrument will no y for moment withstand impartia V analysis. After all its parade O o showy generalities, it was fearfr E. lest short hour of real publieit is would bring the whole tOtterin y structure crumbling into the dus Ie of popular derision and ridicul,