The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-11-03
THE AMERICANISM OF
 WOODROW WILSON
By FRANKLIN K. JAN
 Secretary of The Interior.

As I have watched the progress of this campaign from the side lines l have gradually come to the conclusion that the Republican party has gone bankrupt in ideas and ideals. When the Republicans nominated MT. Jus- tice Hughes I felt a bit nervous as to the outcome of this campaign. That nervousness has long since passed. The ablest of the Republicans has failed to find the flaw in Woodrow Wilson's armor.
 The Republicans talk much of Americanism, but this campaign has shown that Republican leaders do not understand America. Has any great Republican leader risen to recognize the tremendous responsibilities that have rested upon the President, the grave questions that he had to settle without the guide of any precedent the hundreds of questions touching most intimately our relations with foreign countries? We are out of war. These gentlemen themselves have no sons on the battlefields, no daughters in hospitals, no weeping wives; their fortunes are intact. Have they, in their generous Americanism, no word of appreciation to bestow upon the man who through these past two years has striven to find the safe path between American honor and na- tional safety? .
 When before was such burden laid on a President or on a party? Pick me the four years. Not since Lin- coln's time President Wilson's poll icy was not dramatic. It did not make votes It did not rally mas ses of marching men chanting songs of race hatred or intense nationalism. True, it was just doing the days work. It wasn't advertising, not egotizing- just plain, steady work. insisting to a whole world mad with war that neu- tral had rights which had been estab- lished before the world went mad.
 We are at peace when if we had been incorporate we would have been at war. We have made no friends among the belligerents, because peo- ple at war don't want judges, they want partisans. We have obeyed George Washington's advice and made no entangling alliances, great as was the pressure to do otherwise. We have made the seas safe to travel for Americans-not by threat of force, but by persistent insistance upon our rights We have been a medium for the care of the prisoners and the af- flicted of all nations. And we have sacrificed no jot or title of the rights of Americans at home or abroad.
 When the historian writes the his- tory of the last year he will say the American President met with difficult ties greater than any that any of his predecessors met with, and handled himself with sanity, farsightedness, patriotism and courage. Perhaps you think it did not take courage to speak the direct word when spies filled the country and every mail brought threats of death and every coward of a politician prophesied political death. If Woodrow Wilson lives to write his autobiography or commits to other hands the documentary his- tory of his Administration, the world will know that he had nerve, as well as patrio otism and good sense. He
 marked a course of neutrality for the salvation of his people and was true to it.
 When men say that if they had been in the President's place they would have maintained the national honor more firmly, more proudly, and with more certainty of success, we as Am erican citizens have the right to know how this can be done. The Republi- cans have called the President of the United States a coward before the na- tions of the world, yet they have not advanced one policy that could have been pursued other than that which he did pursue. One says: eff l had been President I would have stopped the European war It is to laugh Another says, 'T would have stopped tho invasion of Belgium. would have