The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-10-03
(NeW Republic

(NeW RcpuDi1c
 '"The Puzzle of Hughes has been solved. Walter Lippman, New York, ! has done 1t, for that is the title he g1ves to an article on the Republican candidate for President. Behind the
 writing of the article itself there is an interesting little tale.
 Knowing MT. Lippman as an honest
 writer, as well as thorough and clever. the editor of Golfers weekly asked | him to write an article on Hughes.
 MT. Lippman did so, but 1t was such a frank arraignment of the former justice that Golfers, which is support | ing Hughes, turned it oown. rnat
 same article now appears in the cur
 rent issue of The New Republic an Independent journal.
 Many of us," says MT. Lippman at
 the start, ''are very busy inventing | theories about why we are not cashing in now on the legend off Hughes the i fearless, the just, the wise, and the heroic. That Is the human interest | of this campaign-to find out why a man of rare courage and frankness
 of balanced mind, man of experience l in politics, should be wandering
 around the country tailing nothing but cold and damp platitudes. The puzzle is to explain the evolution of a distinguished man into an undistin- guished candidate.
 eff we had to judge him merely by what he has been saying since he was | nominated we should have to grant | that he is a Republican of the nine ties, superstitious about the tariff, philistine about business, frock-eoated about labor, and with a regular Union League attitude toward the Demo- | crats, national honor, and prosperity. As a candidate Mr. Hughes has been
 the perfect representative, of 8 con- lvention that spent a whole morning
 enjoying speeches by Joe Cannon and Chauncey Depew. He is the nominee | of party that has at present only one principle to its name-a desire to beat MT Wilson.
 "Mr. Hughes was not nominated as candidate of party or leader of a cause, but as drag-net for, all pos sible/ anti-Wilson votes. The politi- clans calculated that if all the pebble who do not like the President were collected the party could win. MT
 Hughes task as a candidate has been to keep enough people from liking Mr.
 Wilson.
 "Mr. Hughes seems to me to act like a man who has been stunned so that his brain for the time being has lost its fighting edge. He. appears to be frightened and anxious and unable to make dangerous decisions He acts as if he was too worried to think, too confused to face issues, too depressed to lead.
 "The fact is that this Is the first great crisis of MT. Hughes public life, when he has staked everything on suc- cess. For years MT. Hughes has been telling himself and others that Jus tfce of the Supreme Court must give up ambition. No one has ever given better reasons why a judge should not run for office. Those scruples are not altogether dead. MT. Hughes has the kind of conscience that could not al- low them to disappear altogether. Tn his effort to be an efficient candidate he has had to stamp on them violent 1y, but it is the nature of conscience to keep on hurting a man even when he does not realize it.
 'Mr. Hughes is not a sociable man in the popular sense, nor a lover of publicity and crowds. His feeling reaches tho common life at few points,
 
 are intensAly concentrated in their work. To touch the world at many points and like it is foreign to him. The best work of Hughes has to be done in solitude. at his desk. with a marvellous power of close attention But campaigning and being popular Is a disorderly life, a haphazard, su-. perficial way of living. I have heard him say that the reserve which hedges the Supreme Court, coming after the blatant publicity of the governorship had meant the world to him.
 "He has given up that quiet so con- genial to his mind for the hubbub of a campaign which may after all bring him defeat. Only a superhuman could fail to recoil, wonder about the choice he has made and want too much to win The dignity and peace of his life are at stake in this election. He is making one of the great gambles of American politics. Defeated as the Republican candidate this year, the sacrifice would be appalling and com plete.
 "Now, a man who has just gone through such a personal crisis is more likely to hesitate, to play safe, to trust the good old formulas, to cling to the party, than to strike out for himself with the assurance that even if he loses he wins Today he represents a experimentation of. antis standing for no cause for which he can work with out reservation.
 'He inherited the case against MT. Wilson; he did not make it. It was CoL Roosevelt, and he alone, who laid out the lines of the attack on the President The mood which Roose- welt embodied, the campaign which Roosevelt sketched, MT. Hughes had to take over, and it fits him as little as the uniform of a Rough Rider. If MT. Hughes dared to let his intellect work he could not help being much more moderate in his assualts on the President. A just judge could not es- cape realizing that there is a very