The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-11-16

Washington, November 15.-(Special.)- My excellent classic and eloquent friend, Champ Clark, is conspicuous exception to the rule the burnt child dreads the fire. Here he is monkeying with that an- nexation stick of dynamite again, and out in Nebraska the other day he made this declaration: "Nine-tenths of the people of this country favor the annexation of Canada, and I don't care who hears me say it." Then he offered to bet about it, for it amounted to a wager, when he de- clared that he could beat Taft in every state of the Union on the solitary issue of annexation.
 MT. Clar1's "jocular'' remark in Con- gress on the annexation nonsense was the source of very material harm to both countries. He tried to apologize for it when he said he was "Jocular.' Lord Palmerston was about the only great statesman I ever heard of who could successfully be jocular in the discussion of a great matter of state. Our speaker made botch of it. The democratic party was kept busy apologizing for him, and even the republican President tried to help him out.
 Now MT Clark is serious and his stand on the matter will make the annexation of Canada a "cardinal' if not the para mount issue if he shall be his party's 'nom- inee for President
 The next time we do any annexing it will be at the south, and Cuba and Mex leo will be sealed to us before Canada is subjoined There are over a million Canadian voters, and search warrants could not produce 10000 among them who would vote for annexation. It is a dem ocratic doctrine that the governors derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Are we to bring national tur- moil by asserting sovereignty over mil lions of people of ou rown race, blood, laws, customs, instincts, who utterly ab- hor the Union? @SB
 There is but one way Canada can be an- nexed and that by force. We would have to lick Canada, Great Britain, and all the other colonies of England. Then we would have an era, of reconstruction and carpet baggery- and all their eoncomtant infa- mics and terrors The pear is not ripe, and when. it is fully matured it will be mutual anneXation-Canada will do as l much annexing as we. It will be union rather than an annexation. It will be a federation of all who speak one tongue. Then Canada, the United States. the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and the rest of lem will be members in commercial and political al liance as close as that which now binds Canada to England. That annexation Will come, but it's day is in the far future, and yet perhaps within this century
 Champ Clark is a good man, able and brilliant, but more brilliant than capable. He is a patriot after the order of the jingo. Stephen A. Douglas was one of them, and how he did enthus Young America" when he talked of "GineraP' Jackson at New Orleans, defended the annexation of Texas, lauded the Mexican war, justified the "Ostend Manifesto,' and declared for "an ocean-bound re- public." Everybody knew what he was driving at.
 Then came James G. Blaine. He, too, had a superlative patriotism, and he was going to do this, that and t'other thing, 1t mattered not what, but his set was sure it was all .right-that, the eagle would scream, and joy would fill our hearts, mel ody our throats, and money our purses especially that money part of it, which was even then the important thing that is now become the indispensable thing, without which all the others are as the vaporngs of those who fall in fortunes strife.
 They were not pioneers. There was Captain Curzy of the Pennsylvania line, of the Continental army, who would have been a coffee cooler had there been any coffee to cool among Washington's ragged