The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-03-14
realization in the executive order l.pcanflu S1lna mn Q ri1xr dicoio rcrinrr

recently summari1y discharging more than score of civil service employees in the bureau of printing and engraving to make room Tor deserving persons" of the domi- nant political machine. Here we have the spectacle of a president constantly adjuring the public to a faithful observance of the laws while he grossly and flagrantly vio- lates the law he has sworn to up- hold. Since the enormity of the act is realized and the reaction of decency has been felt, some of the persons so removed have been re- instated; and others quite properly are considering civil action against thes president for defamation. It would be but fitting that such a high exponent of partisan govern ment should suffer the conse- quences of his vicious and falia- cious ideas.
 The tides of politics are running cross-currently, and present politi- cal conditions mark the transitional period no less distinct than did the years immediately preceding 1860, when Lincoln merged the radicals of America into the republican par ty. And the portent or the times and questions confronting solution are even of greater import; then one nation and a local institution was involved, now it is civilization.
 A struggle impends for the adop- tion of policies which entail Ameri- can leadership in enlightened inter- national cooperation; for the maintenance of rights and liberties which are the heritage of Anglo Saxon civilization, and the curtail- ment of autocratic assumption of legal authority which makes subjects of citizens and thwarts the will of an hundred million Americans; for the construction of financial sys- tenn based on fact instead of fic- tion, serving the requirements of commodity exchange unhampered by private manipulation, and the extension of such a system into in- ternationai service; for the recog- milton and application of the prin- ciple that utilities and resources, the service and structure of which indicate their public nature, shall be utilized for the public good rather than for private profit; and to determine whether government shall survive as an agency of the people or continue indefinitely a mere tool of special privilege. These are problems political entities must engage.
 Parties standing on fixed princi- pies or prejudices, rather than ex- banding to meet varying social con- ditions arising from the progress of science and invention are a menace to the general welfare rather than it's safeguard; and to protect them selves. the people at long intervals break up the nest of perverted poli- tics and through leadership recognize humanity as superior to all forms of monopoly, force realignments evolv- ing from an old and merging into new cycle in the affairs of man. kind. Conservatives as well as radicals are beginning to suspect that neither of the old parties as now constituted are capable of the service requisite to the general well fare of the nation, because of their historical background involving prejudice and misapprehensions woven into the intellectual fabric of the nation through educational animadversion following internal war and which cannot be eradicated while the initiating agencies quad- rennially force these qualities to the surface. Mir. Frank Munsey is the first conservative of note to pro- claim this manifest condition. through his speech before, the Amer ican Bankers association, October 4, 1922, but there are indications supporting the belief that the ap- prehension is becoming general.
 As between the old parties, de- mocracy has been a steady political growth throughout the nation, springing up in the early days of the republic Intellectually to com bat the pernicious Hamiltonian theory of centralization of political and financiaii power; while the re- publican party sprang from the ne cessities of political chaos and an enflamed condition of the public mind, with but one principle as a foundation stone and it's subsequent policies are but the accretion of ex-