Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1912-06-11
WI. SON Is DEMOCRACY'S
HOPE OF SUCCESS.


next presidential campaign. His cause is stronger
today than at any preceding stage Of the contest,
while that of his opponents is weaker The situa-
ton in the Republican camp and the wider issues of
national politics shaping themselves that
Democrats and freeminded voters the country over
are turning to him for the partys and the nations
good.
1t is a remarkable and a prophetic fact that
Woodrow Wilson energies from the preconvention
campaign unsmirched and unchecked by the conspir-
ing foes he has encountered. Few, if any, candi-
dates for the Democratic nomination ever met with
such cunningly planned and carefully organized re-
sstance at the hands of political bosses and Special
interests From the very outset he has been the
center of their fire. Whatever money and misrep'
resentation could accomplish has been directed
against him. There are agencies in American pol
itics whose chief concern is to to it that both
parties nominate man who either will not can
not do anything TO reform existing evils. Those are
the agencies behind the opposition to Woodrow
Wilson, for they realize that if nominated, he will
be elected and that he has the courage and the
ability to carry out his party's pledges
They began by attempting to laugh hlm out Of
court on the assumption that he "a schOolmaster
in politics" mere doctrinaire, unskilled and, in
deed, helpless in the affairs of workyday world.
But Immediately they we're answered by his record
as governor of New Jersey, record that proves him
to be of the practical statesmen the country
has known.
Then they resorted to mushroom SANDER. They
charged him with ingratitude toward his friends,
and with inconsistency of opinion; they ransacked
the pages Of his History of the American People,"
tearing out here and there detached sentence with
which they strove class sectional preju-
dice They sought to make his very independence
seem at fault, his openmindedness a vice and his
scholarship a crime And each Of these petty
Misrepresentation flung forth, the bosses and
the Interests would cry Woodrow Wilson's boom is
dead" But Interestingly enough. the more they
gabbled and slandered the more popular did his
cause become with the rank and file Of the people.
These devices having failed, the opposition hit
upon the scheme Of parcelng out the country among
three local anti-wilson candidates They saw the
futility trying to beat Wilson in open fight In
the national field and in the hope of splitting his
strength they launched a series of Campaigns Linn
ited-Clark against Wilson in the West, Harmon
against Wilson in the East and Underwood against
Wilson in the south Not Of these three special
candidates opposed the other but all of them were
lighting Wilson.
Not even this alliance, however, awaited to block
the true leaders PATH for as one primary or con-
vention followed another it developed that he was
winning in states of every section and that the
people as whole, instead of falling into the poid-
clans trap kicking It to flinders This alliance
accomplished something no doubt for it was backed
by seemingly inexhaustble funds; and had Governor
Wilson been an ordinary candidate he would probably
have been crushed by its in the very beginning
The remarkable fact is that his candidacy not only
survived but that 1t has been steadily growing and
towers todays above that Of any Of his opponents.
His victories within the past few weeks have
been especially significant In New Jersey, where
his enemies predicted his certain defeat his ndorse
ment at the polls overwhelming. In Texas,
where the Interests did their utmost to check his
advance he won the states entire forty delegates.
Likewise In Minnesota where the Clark forces sum-
moned every at their command his majority
was sweeping. In Ohio, Governor Harmon's own
state Wilson won twenty of the fortytwo district
delegates although he made campaign whatso-
ever And more recently still in North Carolina,
where the Underwood forces had staked their final
hope and made their loudest boast his candidacy
was Endorsed by the state convention and he
assured of majority, if not all, of its Baltimore
votes.
It is, we repeat, remarkable and a prophetic
fact that at the close of the bitter and, in many
respects INSCRIPTIONS campaign that has been
waged against him, Woodrow Wilson should stand
forth in undiminished strength ana prestige Never
was a candidate subjected to more fiery test or
weighed in more exacting balance. He has gone
his course unhnching and undsturbed. Not once
has he appealed for himself but only for the
he represents. He has set the country new ideal
in politics and has exempliied a higher and moro
forceful type of leadership
Governor Harmon has been virtually eliminated
from the contest by the fragnenrary and all but
negligible support he has developed Congressman
Underwood has never been seriously considered for
the nomination, not by the interests closest to
his candidacy. Speaker Clark has rallied cOnsid-
cradle array of convention votes but he is admittedly
so weak in the great debatable states of the East
and of the Middle West that his nomination would
foredoom the party to defeat.
Woodrow Wilson is the one man who has in
spired the confidence of Democrats and of indie
pendent voters in every part of tne nation. lie is
the one man who combines that measure of progress
siveness and moderation that vi be required to
defeat either the reaconarv forces which NAV rally