The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-08-24
REIGN OF THE BUCCANEERS

GloH Tn CHe language uSeQ Dy Jonn w. Davis to express his opinion of the Re- publican administration. His attack on the party betrayal of high public trust is not based on prejudice nor partisan di- vision, but on facts so incontrovertible that even the reluctant Republican presi- dent was finally forced to turn them over to special prosecution. A party In power either stands or falls by it's record. There is no other test. If that record will bear the most scathing attack and the most searching scrutiny without dismay- ing it's adherents, then the people are justified in endorsing that record by re- electing that party to office. If that rec ord will not bear exposure, and if ex- posture dismays and confounds the party leaders, then does the party deserve to go down in just defeat.
 That the Republicans cannot stand ex- posture is revealed already by their pro- tests against "using the partisan in- quiries as political ammunition" What is that but proof of the Republican fear of public analysis of the Republican rec ord? The very Republican writhing shows that the Democratic spokesmen are on the right track and that the pres ent administration is fatally vulnerable in the single respect in which there has been unprecedented opportunity to be full-armored. The party of privilege has bestowed it's favors too openly, too lib- orally and too shamelessly. The false administrators of high public trust were caught with the goods, and there can be no credible denial of guilt.
 Nor can the Republican leaders excuse themselves from blame by saying that they were not implicated in the wrong doing that caused the few high officials to be cast ignominiously from the admin istrative family. The very moment that the Republican administration and Re- publican leaders hesitated and eventually failed to investigate evidences of corrup- tion and to bring the guilty to justice re- gardless of party, that moment all those responsible for this hesitation and this failure became implicated in the guilt. Although the Republican spokesmen blus- tered and exclaimed that the Democrats were equally guilty, they fell back be- fore the Democratic challenge to prove it, and by that act they confessed their fear and their foreknowledge that the guilt was Republican and Republican alone.
 The Republicans knew that scores of their congressional committees specific ally commissioned to discover evidences of corruption in the war administration of the Democratic party had been fruit less and futile, except to establish hap oily that such guilt did not exist. The Republican department of justice, with all its preliminary boasts of convictions that were to follow, in every case failed or else mysteriously dropped the in- quiries, having discovered that the prin- cipaIs in wrongdoing were leading Re- publican recipients of privilege and not Democratic administrators of public af fairs.
 MT. Davis, in his speech of Friday at historic Seagirt, we'll paints veracious word picture of the contrast when Pres ident Wilson became president: Con gress met without delay and the first act in the drama was the scourging from the capitol of the horde of lobbyists, hangers-on, seekers for privileges and representatives of special interests who had infested it's corridors" And again: "When we paint against the vivid back ground of the eight years under Wilson the history that has been unrolled since March 4, 1921, there are, to say the least, some startling contrasts. In 1913 the lobby was scourged from Washing ton; in 1921, like flock of unclean birds hastening to the feast, it gathered from the four winds and descended upon the city. First of all came oil. At the head of the buccaneers, as they marched along, came the secretary of the interior" :" Then came Forbes with his betrayal of the disabled veterans, and Daugherty with his betrayal of justice. There was privilege entrenched behind tariff that reached in and took toll of the very food on the tables of the people, and of all their productive output.
 What Democracy offers in place of this forbidding and gloomy situation, MT. Davis thus outlines:
 We stand for a government of com
 mon honesty. What is honesty in gov
 ernment? Honesty in the handling of
 the public funds and the public prop
 erty? But it is something else; it is
 candor and fair dealing and impartiality
 and the transaction of the public busi-
 ness in the open broad daylight without
 disguise or pretense >r evasion. It is
 the playing of no favorites, whether in
 making public contracts or in writing
 public laws. It is the treating of all
 classes and all sections of the country on
 an equal basis It is the avoidance of
 secrecy and whispering and sharp prac-
 tiee in the management of public affairs.
 Men love darkness rather than light only
 when their deeds are evil. Whether in