The courier-index. (Marianna, Ark.) 1917-current, 1920-07-30


paigns over the state by individuals
who seek political preferment and
public recognition, the voter, to
whose passions, prejudices and judg-
ment such appeals have been made
both from the stump and in hum
dreds of thousands of printed PAM
phlets, finds himself-and for the
first time we will say "herself''-
swamped with suggestions and con-
fused because of a multitude of
accusations, the truthfulness of
which may at times be justly doubt
ed, and the motive prompting such
accusations and impeachments, to-
day, as ever, matter for careful
analysis. The demagogue has had
his feet firmly planted on the pros
trate form of an outraged public.
The past ten years, truly, have con-
stituted a decade of big noises and
self advertisement. The era of op-
portunity for time-servers and self
seekers has undoubtedly dawned
without so much as an obscuring
cloud on the eastern horizon. This
is, without any sort of doubt, the
elective age for men with ideas that
should be wrapped in swaddling
cloths and voices that make us
ashamed of donkeys. By our ac-
tions at the polls, we encourage our
franchise to be assaulted with the
jawbone of an ass and we lend our
attention to every passing breeze
which may have had its origin in
the larynx of a Bolshevik or an
anarchist. We have grown accus-
toned to hearing statesmen con-
demned as towards by profiteering
butchers and vagrants who bewail
the price of salt which they do not
earn. We have fallen into the hab-
it of assuming that freedom of
speech means license to curse those
who do things and to attribute to
our fellow men traits of littleness
and meanness that can exist only
in the minds of those who are not
capable of the larger conceptions.
We are rapidly dividing ourselves
into classes and we are cultivating
hatreds that will poison and kill
all because of the demagogue, who
has found that a house divided
against itself cannot stand, and that
the instrument of direct division is
suspicion, malice and vicious pre-
judice.
Elections are scientific govern
ment applied. Those whom we
choose either become our servants or
our masters. They speak as officials,
the language of the masses, or they
appropriate this language for what
it is worth to them and fatten fl
nancially, grow arrogant and indif-
ferent to the voices from the lower
levels, or by the power of their
vision and the righteousness of their
position, impart knowledge and
learning to those whose franchise they
sought. They serve upon a stage
erected by our forefathers, who be-
lieved that out of democracy would
come an age of justice, fairness and
impartial administration of the laws
of their creation. If this structure
is to be maintained, it behooves US
to study public problems as con-
scientiously and as carefully as we
study our business connections, and
to make our decisions with the same
painstaking judgment, thowing aside
purely personal grievances, suspend
ing sentence where proof has not
been supplied, and looking keenly
through the fog of meaningless
words which go to make up an array
of perfidious sophistry, such as that
which forms the breech-blocks of
the demagogue's main battery. We
must look for something more than
rhetoric; something different from
overwhelming ego-something forg-
ed from more enduring metal than
human brass.
Vanity, unblushing conceit, self
satisfaction, coupled with spirit
of indifference to public opinion
and a feverish inclination to punish
the nations chief executive for an
imaginary personal wrong, and to
administer this punishment at the
expense of one hundred million
American citizens, created opposi-
tion to Senator Kirby's candidacy
for reelection and arrayed against
him a representative of the people
who had arrogated unto himself the
right of deciding dogmatically that
his own opinions formed an imperial
creed, opposition to which should
be looked upon as a crime against
kingdoms blessed by the gods. SEN
ator Kirby fought the American
governments war policies because,
as an individual and as a lawmak-
err, he was not big enough, intel
lectually, to look beyond his own
front gate. Surrounded by all the
luxuries and ease of official life
as it applies to men of his type,
Senator Kirby could not see the
patriotic tide as it swept by his
feet and left him standing as a
living monument to all that is re-
creant, inglorious and dishonorable
in public life. His eyes were glued
unswervingly on the White House
door, and with a spirit of obstancy
known only to a malicious heart,
he trained his venom on President
Wilson. Like a cobra he struck,
lacking even the decency of the rat
tier which warns its victims of inn
pending danger. 1t is more than
likely Senator Kirby speaks the
truth when he says that his votes