Arizona republican., 1920-08-01

that he has powers which the average man lacks, then the average man tends to follow him Loyalty and even ohndIy. This tendency could be traced from primitive times. if there were space here. Thus the medicine men or sha- mans of all primitive tribes are su- perior men who have demonstrated their pabilities and have obtained great power. But the witches and sorcerers who are killed, are individuals of the same type who are overcome by envy and antagonism before they attain power.
 It takes only a glance at history te see that many really great and su- perior men have attained leadership and that people have followed them blind1y. Christ, Mahomet, Caeser and Napoleon were great men, each or whom was a law unto himself. Each of them encountered envy and anta- gonism at first, but later rose to power.
 People Will Follow Leaders
 You can see in any democracy the same tendency toward a blind follow ing of the man who seems to have demonstrated that he has inspiration and personality. And if you will study l the careers of scuh men you will gen. | erally find that it is their peers-their | fellow leaders-who have kept them from power, and not the people. The l power in the matter.
 The two recent conventions might be taken as text Before the Repubh- can convention the men who had in- terested the people were Hoover, John- son, Wood and Lowden. The first two. especially, had made undoubted inn pressions, as shown by the primaries without the aid of large campaign funds. Both of them were shelved by the leaders at the convention and a man chosen who had attracted no pop ular attention at all. Harding, of course. may be a second Lincoln. He IS, indeed, a fine type of American. that he had not demonstrated the fact to the people. The convention, thwart- ed the popular will instead of fulfilling It. In other words, it was their fellow leaders who distrusted the men of proven inspiration and personality, and not the people themselves. Somewhat the same thing was seen at the Demo- cratic convention, where McAdoo was | undoubtedly the man most in the pop ular eye. Here again, the candidate chosen may be a great man, and there is much in his record to prove that he is, but the fact remains that he was not nationally known as a man of proven high ability.
 This all seems to indicate that the i least sounder instinct, than they have been given credit for. They try to follow the born leaders, but those who hold power will not let them. The tendency then on the part of these men in power to play up little homely facts about their candidate. and their com Ip1ementary attempt to find irrelevant lscandalous facts about the opposition candidate, look like nothing so much as an attempt to divert the average man from his search for a real leader by working on his ernotions-his sym pathies and prejudices. These efforts are so much sand thrown in our eyes
 This idea might be strongly sup ported by study of the history of the presidency in this country, and by ex- amples from other walks of life thar politics, but space prevents. It may
 be said, by way of conclusion, that the average man stands Tn about the same relation to the political powers-t that be as small boy to a severe but kindly mother who offers him his choice be-
 tween a pretzel and a cracker, but keeps the chocolate creams on higt
 shelf.