The Leon reporter. (Leon, Iowa) 1887-1930, 1912-09-26
THAT HANGS To-
GETHER.

On9 prime COuulllOu VI pdlIS cL~
fectiveness is a proper appreciation
of the leaders of the hour. Gov.
Marshall, democratic candidate for
Vice President is being freely eulog-
lied as great campaigner,'
vote getter," a popular speaker OF
no ordinary powers of appeal. These
things are happily true. But some
thing much more important is true
of him. Gov. Marshall is politi-
cal philosopher.
A man is not a philosopher be-
cause he thinks, or even because he
thinks right. He is such because his
thoughts hang together IN definite
way. A philosopher not only knows
certain truths but he understands
how these truths are related to each
other. He can stand at any one OF
a series of positions in the course
of an argument and point to the one
he has just left and forward to the
one he is just going to. 1t is the
philosopher who influences the think
ing of other men. After they hear
him they can shut their eyes and
see the road he took them over.
Gov. Marshall is several other
He is a teller of good stories. He is
a maker of epigrams. He is a hum
orist. He is master OF homely
Hoosier English. He has about him
an infectious human sympathy.
But beneath speech that is always
easy and sometimes careless run the
structural members Of a definite
system Of thought.
Like all great democrats, he be-
gins with the individual. Brought
up in a country village, where there
were no masses but simply indi-
vidual Sans, Jacks, Bills, Marys,
Susans, and what not, residence in
cities and professional contact with
abstract principles have never blind
ed his eyes to the fact that happiness
and misery, opportunity and it's lack
are Individual things. His social
gospel is simply gospel for indi-
viduals. His message is a message
for individuals.
He starts with the proposition
that democracy is not system, but
IAN attitude of mind" The phrase
is not carelessly chosen. He does
not mean a state of mind. An "atti-
assumed with relation to something
else. Democracy, according to the
governor of Indiana, is a certain at
titude toward ones felloWman. On
the foundation of this conception he
builds up his theory of individual
responsibility to the state. And in
the light of this conception he
makes his diagnosis of the social
and political diseases of the present
day.
These last go back to individual
cowardice and laziness. when
man with an ak to grind goes to the
legislature,' he says, with terse-
ness worthy of Lincoln, you know
before he goes that he will grind
his ak on the legislative grindstone.
When he does I don't blame him.
I blame you. For you sent him
there
Gov. Marshall is, therefore, dis
posed to seek the remedies of pres
ent evils, not so much in new laws
and governmental schemes-though
he gives legislation it's full weight
as an Instruments in new sense
of individual responsibility. He de-
present government is not that it is
unrepresentative, but that it, is
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS OF
popular Incidence, popular frivolous
ness, popular carelessness, popular
sloth.
Believing that democracy is an at
titude of mind, he finds the hope of
new state, like that of the King
dom of Heaven, within YOU"
From this it results that his message
is a message of hope in men, He is
not hawking Institutional panaceas
or pointing out trails leading to law
made Utopias. He is appealing to
the possibility of great new awak-
portance of certain homely and sea-
soned political virtues, and assert
ing that if we, as citizens, get to
work on ourselves we shall find the
heavy end of our political difficulties
inside us and the lesser part of them
in the field of legislation and formal
institutions.
A democratic philosophy such as
this, not held as mere matter OF
theory but espoused with passion
and applied with the fearlessness of
the born crusader, is bound to give
an account of itself in the national
campaign. Those persons who dis
agree with Gov. Marshall would do
we'll to begin to think their own
positions out carefully and prepare
to stand on the defensive.- st.
Louis Republic.