New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1916-11-24
WHY THE CAMPAIGN FAILED
The Distant Rumble World War Made Our Paroh Election oee
Nightmare and a Sham

leading on the questions that were hiing
the minds and the hearts Of millions Of men
and women. They we're looking TO where
beyond our own petty domestic problems
the future course Of human history was
being shaped and the principles by which
men will live for generations TO come were
being established.
And for this immense longing, for this
eager hunger, there has been nothing OF
response in our national campaign. Neither
candidate has in the least heIped nor much
sought to illuminate that darkness IN when
his fellow countrymen wandered consciously,
but not consentingly. For both the cam
paign has been campaign, one more cam
paign Of the old sort, to be fought in the
old way 10 be won on the old issues
Wherefore the campaign has failed. It
has not laid hold upon the interest the
enthusssms, the imagination Of the mass
Of American people. II has had something
of the effect that always follows the inter
lection Of the trivial detail in the CONVEX
sation which is devoted 10 real questions. II
has been a good deal Of a nightmare and 1t
has had the semblance Of sham; for mill
ions of American people IL has been
fruitless effort 20 abolish the sound Of the
guns in the ears of the men and women
who having ears hear-to abolish the sound
nv sbrill and passionate reiteration OF words
and ideas that have become meaningless.
In all this we are but experiencing the
thing that Europe experienced two years
ago. Suddenly il was revealed TO millions
Of men and women by the most terrible
catastrophe Of human history that the little
men who had held the control OF their
destines and posed and preached as states
men and leaders had been neither states
baH
blind leaders Of a blind people, for whose
blindness they we're in part responsible. OF
a sudden there passed over the people Of
many nations a burst Of anger that endures,
anger at the men who had deceived them,
anger at the politicians who had concen-
trated popular attention on petty personal
quarres and trivial disputes, while the world
storm gathered, approached, broke.
The storm that came disclosed the great
nations Of the world in the hands Of the
smallest men that history knows anything
about Il disclosed these men as so small
that even when the storm had broken they
were still thinking Of the quarrels and dis
mites of the time before the war and were
incapable of any adjustment TO changed
conditions. In this time millions OF men
and women did by sheer force and in obedl-
ence to sure instinct that which was to be
done. But they did it without leaders, and,
long as has been the span of the war, no
leaders have appeared in France or In Brit
ain. The little men subsist, but no man
now mistakes their smallness; the men who
once might have been the saviors and lead
ers of nations have now become the mere
cooks and housekeepers, the domestic SER
wants. watched over by a collective association
Of employers who neither trust them nor
find reason TO trust them.
For US that awakening has not. yet come.
Whatever there is of reason FOR optimism
in this world to-day is found in the splendor
of the achievement Of the mass of men and
women: they have proved adequate and
more than adequate; they have done the
task and are doing the job that has slipped
through the nerveless fingers or escaped the
purblind vision Of the little men who called
themselves leaders.
We have a right TO believe that this, too,
will happen to us in our hour of crisis.
But meantime, with the sound Of the guns in
our ears, with an ever growing eagerness
and hunger to get at the truth and the
message of the world that is to come, who
can be surprised that the mass of American
people found neither the time nor the heart
to listen to the voices Of those who, seek
ing to lead their fellow countrymen through
the darkness of the present night, refused
20 recognize even the existence Of those re-
alities which alone weigh in the world of
to-day? F. H. S.
Snowville. y. H., Nov 20, 1916.