Arizona republican., 1912-06-29
The Grain and the Chaff


 the views of a well known Phoenix business man on the national repub- lican situation. The citizen is a life long republican and was a gallant soldier of the Civil war. He is one of the foremost in the financial life of the city and a most level headed business man. He left here a month ago a strong adherent of MT Taft and returned opposed to him, his at titude having been changed by the practices of the national committee in disposing of the contest cases.
 This brings us to the matter whereof we shall speak. There are thousands of republicans in this land who believe that grave injustice was done Mr Roosevelt at Chicago. This belief, however, is based upon the evidence adduced at the wholly ex parte hearing of Roosevelt vs. the national committee. The side of MT. Roosevelt has been told through news paper interviews. in many different ways The national committee has permitted the charges made against it to go thus far without reply. We believe, though, that in the course of the coming campaign a plain state ment of the truth will appeal to re- publican voters and that all the froth and foam will disappear.
 At this time, however, We will pre- sent few general and indisputable facts which have been overlooked in the murky air thick yet with the smoke and smell of battle In the first place what was done at Chicago last week along the general lines of achevment was little different from what was done on the same spot four years ago with the acquiescence of Mir Roosevelt if not at his explicit direction. It was done not only at the
 
 piece of machinery. Still we could not contend that wrong commit ted in 1908 would be a proper prece- dent for d wrong in 1912.
 But we will come to the undisputed facts of the present year. There were presented to the national com mittee a majority of whose members favored MT. Taft, contests involving 254 delegates to the national con- vention. This committee contained twenty members inclined to MT. Roosevelt and fourteen of them may be described as violently partisan. Of these contests 227 had been filed for MT. Roosevelt and twenty seven for Mir Taft.
 Long before the hearing was con cluded the country resounded with the complaint of MT. Roosevelt that he had been already robbed" of ninety-two delegates. He hurried to Chicago where in a subsequent state ment he said that he had been robbed" of seventy delegates and since then he has raised the extent of reason which we will hereinafter set forth.
 When he was making this latter claim of robbery, he knew that his contests had been supported by his most friendly partisans in only sixty cases and the full support of the so- mittee was given in a much smaller number. Thus the disinterested citi- zen may be led to doubt whether there was any robbery" at all and whether what happened in the com mittee was not the same thing tha has happened immediately preceding every convention
 Now we will see why MT. Roose- velt's claims varied from time to time and why he finally settled upon sev. enty-eight as the number of dele gates of which he had been robbed
 Mir Roosevelt had been deceived b, his grossly incompetent manager who were themselves deceived as t, the Roosevelt strength among tn uncontested delegats.
 When the colonel arrived in Chi cago order was being brought out o