The Leon reporter. (Leon, Iowa) 1887-1930, 1916-05-18
THE WILL TO WIN.

The state of mind OF the RepuOll-
can leaders is not difficult to under
stand. They desire above all things
else, material or moral, to get back
into power. They want to fill the
Offices and take over the machinery
of the federal government. No sac
rifice is too great to make for this
chief end of existence.
Republican leadership is composed
of two elements. There is the ma
chine politician to whom politics is
business. TO him political power is
capital; to be out of power is to pc
bankrupt. He wants to make repub-
lican machine politics once more &
going concern.
There is also the big business man,
to whom politics is not business, but
an adjunct to business. TO him laws
and government are Instituted to
help certain individuals, favored or
Divine Providence, make money.
Government that is not concerned
first of all, with that particular form
of prosperity, which means the IN
crease of wealth without regard to
moral cost is to him no government
at all. He wants to end this Wilson
anarchy that does not regard govern
ment as mere device to tax one man
for the benefit of another. He wants
to go back to the dollar diplomacy
substituting dollars for bullets in
the expressive phrase of President
Taft. He wants to know that the
men on guard-especially in the sen
ate, which has the final word IN
revenue producing legislation-are
fright as to such things as stee
and Woolens and gloves and rubber
The leaders see no chance to get
back into power without bringing
back the progressive prodigals to the
fold. 1t is idle to talk of such a
Homecoming if the candidates posted
at the gate to welcome the wanderers
is standpatter like Burton or Sher-
man or Weeks. The surest way to
get the progressives back is to permit
them to bring their own candidates
along with them and for the stanu-
patters to furnish nothing except the
auspices and the fatted calf.
This is the whole secret Of the
strength of Roosevelt outside Of the
particular portion of the electorate
which not only went out with him in
1912, but has remained with him
ever since. That which makes his
name one to conjure with is not 1.-The
instructive response Of the great, he
roic heart of America to his robust
Americanism,' and the fact that he
suddenly recollected, in the fall OF
1915. what he ought to have stood
for in the case of Belgium-but did
n't-in the fall of 1914. 1t is the
fact that he commands the support
of a certain part Of what was the re-
publican party up to June, 1872,
without which the other part can
not win in 1916.
The nomination of Roosevelt
seems likely. The beauty of it, in
view of the difficulty of the problem
confronting the republicans, is that
it would make any attempt to unite
the two wings in matters of opinion
needless. Taking Roosevelt. the
standpatters would. in the opinion OF
the progressives, have become pro-
gressives themselves. The progress
sives would not be particular about
details. Why should they, with a
paragraph about ''social justce'-
which only state legislation can Sc
cure-in the national platform, and
Boies Penrose singing "OnWard
Christian Soldiers out of the same
hymnal with Bill Flinn.-St Louis
Republic.