Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1924-06-30
CONVENTION OBSERVATIONS
BY FREDERIC WILLIAM VILE

MADISON SQUARE GARDEN, New
York, June 3O-Newton d. Bakers
fervent but futile plea for a league
| plank will be immortalized as the
cross of gold Grafton of the conven-
ton. No other speech has approached
it in eloquence, intensity and pas
sion. It>was at once the argument of
a lawyer versed in constitutional law,
the creed of an evangelist and the
counsel of a partisan urging idealism
as the only party expediency worthy
of consideration. There were thou
sands of moist eyes in Madison Square
Garden as Woodrow Wilson's Secre-
| tary of War made his heart-stirring
appeal for the league. If the Baker
| minority report had won, the Cleve-
| land Little Napoleon" might easily
have electrified the convention into
nominating him for President. That
thought caused some one to dub Baker
the John Alden" of the situation,
asang for the nomination of Cox
when he might we'll have been speak
ing for himself.
X x = +
Not many public assemblages in
America. political or otherwise, have
seen in action such battery of ora
tors as held Madison Square Garden
spellbound for five hours Saturday
night. cambridge Colby, William
Jennings Bryan, Key Pittman, Robert
L. owen. stephen s. Wise. Newton D.
Baker, Homer Cummings, Andrieus A.
Jones, David /. Walsh and the young
Demosthenes from Georgia who pro-
voked the hair-raising anti Khan
demonstration of the night comprised
tho silver-tongued company. The
speeches were not uniformly good.
but each rose above the average of
convention forensics. Though the
night was hot. the atmosphere in
the Garden insufferably thick, and
the debate endless, the huge audi
amazing patience. Thousands held
their ground from . O'Clock Sat
urday afternoon until o'clock
Sunday morning. 1t was the
ever-im minent prospect of a fight
complainingly. Nothing thrills
convention crowd like a fracas on
the floor or the prospect OF one.
= X
When the anti-klan mob booed and
jeered Bryan. shortly past midnight,
it must have recalled to him the days,
a quarter of a century ago, when he
invaded the enemy's country on
Manhattan Island. Then, as now,
the Nebraskan turned F1oridian
was preaching a doctrine which New
York thought was the gospel of the
three words" the phrase on which
Bryan dwe1t so persuasively in his
argument against stigmatizing the
kleagleS, was not a whit more hated
slogan in 1896 than Ku Klux Khan
is in the New York country today.
Bryan met familiar foe in Balm
bridge Colby. 1t was they who went
to the mat at San Francisco in 1920
on prohibition.
X X = *
How many people in Tex Richard 8
world affairs were under discussion
remembered that exactly ten years
ago that daytime %, 1914-the bull
let that laid low the Archduke and
Archduchess Francis Ferdinand at
Serajevo signaled the advent of the
world war? The coincidence was re-
called by James W. Gerard, American
ambassador to Germany at the time.
VINO remembered that ILLS OuSSINcI
steamed out into kiel harbor that
fateful afternoon to notify Germany
of the dread news from Bosnia.
X X X y
The Japanese government has an
official observer at the convention
in Frederick Moore, the American
counselor of Nippon's embassy in
Washington, who recently returned
: from Toxic. Japan cherished lin
gering hope that the Democrats would
declare for a modified exclusion pol
| icy instead of the maintenance of
| our established position in favor of
| the exclusion of Asiatic immigration
X X
There's woman behind the "AI"
tSmith throne. Her name-is MrA Henry