The Richfield recorder. (Richfield, Idaho) 1909-1931, 1916-06-23

medicine with a smile-and there
will be several million good Amerl-
cans who will do that this fall when
they cast their ballots for Hughes
enough millions of them-to make him
president of better America than
we have had for four years past.
Yet even the good sport may retain
his memory-and get some good out
of it. These several millions who will
turn the tide, will not be able or will
ing to forget lot of things political
that bear acutely on the present stu
alton.
The republican party has wanted
Hughes with at least friendly long
ing, for eight years past. He is a
good man for the presidency, for any
position in America. He will not have
more courage than Wilson-no one
can claim a lead over the square
jawed New Jersey collegian in that
important respect. But he has the
practical learning, the human ac-
quaintanceship, the human feeling,
that Wilson can never have after his
lifetime of dictatorial scholasticism.
There are a million hod-carriers and
farm hands who are better human
lists and so better rulers of nation
of men and women and children, than
most of the best of the college presi-
dents and professors; not better men
tally, or morally, or in social man
ners or in diction or knowledge-bu
they know the working heart and its
relation to bread and butter and
sleep and rest and insurance against
fire or accident or DEATH Hughes
isn't the farm hand=but he has been
through the mill of human expert
ence like the lowest navy; and he
will be a strong, human president
whom the country can trust because
he knows.
Yet the people wanted Roosevelt.
He was the spokesman for prepared
ness. He it was who made the whole
issue on which Wilson is to be de-
feated if at all There are still a
few of the Old Guard who believe
that Roosevelt was eliminated by
their strength, their ability to win
without him. They are wrong; they
couldn't have an honorable burial
without him. They have proclaimed
his selfishness, his desire for a dictat-
orship. Some of them were honest
in believing this; most of them lied
meanly, knowingly. Yet Roosevelt
was enough of an American to yield
when it came to a choice between per-
sonal sacrifice and the sacrifice of
under as vacillating a
government as that of the past four
years: these critics of his would have
thrown the nation for four more
years into the same unprepared tur-
moil, rather than yield to the popu-
lar desire for Roosevelt. They ruin
ed the republican party four years, by
the same selishly idiotic tactics; the
country has paid bitter. bitter price
for their swinish selfishness, their
insane political blunderings. They
were ready to ruin the country again,
in the face of infinitely greater dan
gers than were foreseen four years
ago. Roosevelt, the selfish egotist,
the military autocrat of whom they
drolled, was a good enough American
in this present crisis to step aside
and try to help the nation out of the
slough of despond into which it has
fallen. There are not many fighting
men who would have yielded as he
did 1t was patriotic act one that
his real friends always knew he
could and would do, but that his enc
mics who do not know either states
or Americanism or anything
but selfish control of their hulking
old party, could never have done for
themselves or believed of others.
The republican party cannot go
into this campaign with whoop
there is not whoop left in it. AS
relief from the sickening indecision
of the past four years, from the note
and the blunderings and the
national shame, a vast majority will
turn to Hughes. There will be no
indecision with Hughes! there will be
none with the vast majority that
sends congressman and senator's to
to back up his determi-
nation to make America respected
and respectable in this worlds crisis.
AS patriotic duty, as an economic
necessity, the people will vote for
they will thereby reap a
rich reward.
But they do not vote for the hard