The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1920-06-18

and then and earn the money with
which to pursue his college course.
At one time he cut corn, at another
painted barns and at still another
drove the roadbed of a new railway.
At II he taught district school and
played a horn in the village brass
band.
All Round Newspaper Man
At odd times he worked in the vii
lage printing office, in time becoming
an expert typesetter and later lineo-
type operator. He is practical press
man and job printer, and as a
make up man. is said to have few
equals. The lucky piece he has car
ried as a senator is the old printers
rule he used when he was sticking
type.
In 1884 DR.. Harding moved his fam
lily to Marion. A short time afterwards
the father purchased for Warren
Harding the Star, then small paper.
On the paper Warren Harding per-
formed every function from devil to
managing editor.
We are glad the nomination fell to
that republican shall be elected to
this high office we want him to be a
man of broad, catholic views and en-
larged vision.
We can not believe that one who
has been nearly all his life in news
paper office, coming in daily touch
with the opinions of all classes of his
fellow-citiZens, can be a singer of
hate like Lodge, Knox, Penrose and
their kind who seem the very apOthe-
sis of sectional hate; nor do we be-
lieve that he belongs to the steam-rol-
Ter class of politicians such as Hiram
Johnson, Norris, Borah and Poindext-
er.
Had General Wood been nominated
he would have been presented as a
martyr and all sorts of heated and
impassiOned accusations would have
been made against the Wilson admin
istration and the sectional strife with
all of its old-time bitterness would
have been revived
However, from a purely partisan
standpoint it would have been better
for the democrats if the republicans
had been successful in nominating the
the more easily defeated.
For example shafts would have been
hurled at him something like the let
ter We print below, written to the
New York World signed "a West
Point Admirer."
General Wood and his friends would
have been paralized and helpless and
would have stood before the nation in
the fix with Senator Newberry, gag
ged and bound and could have made
no satisfactory defense
The letter is as follows:
Four Army Officers
Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman of
the United States Army said in 1876
that he would not accept the repub.
ncan presidential nomination if it
were offered to him, with the election.
on silver platter"
Gen. Ulysses Simpson Grant of the
United States Army, after financial
failure In New York, put aside the
)roffered assistance of friends, retired
to Mount McGregor with cancer of
the throat, and met death like \
Roman in the painful effort tn ex-
tinguish his obligations by writing
his memoirs.
Gen. Robert E. Lee, former officer
Oh the United States Army. refused
an oHer to become president of life
insurance company at a salary of
SoU,O00 year at the close of the Civil
War, for the reason that his name was
not Tor sale," and retired to Licking
ton on a paltry salary, to dedicate
there the last years of his life to the
training of American youth.
Major Gen. Leonard Wood. an ofYic.
er of the United States Army, accents
from chewing-gum makers, soapmak
ers,r powder manufacturers, oil pro-
ducers. steel magnates, and other per-
sons eminent in the industrial and
financial world contributions exceed.
ing S1,200,000 in his effort to capture
the republican nomination for presi-
dent.
Sherman, Grant and Lee were all
West Pointers. Wood is not a West
Pointer. Perhaps if he had had the
advantage of education at West Point
Woods sense of the fitness of things
would have averted the scandal which
now furnishes his own fame as well
as the reputation of the American
Army and the American Nation.
We repeat that IL fate should a.
eide that Senator Harding is to be