The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1934-11-14
wEDNEsDAY 49, IS. ~.
THE OLD MEN"

THIS is our lot Il We live so long and
labour unto The end
That ne outlise The impatient years and
the much too patient friend.
And because We know We have breath in
our mouth and think We have
thoughts in our head
We shall assume that ne are alive, where
as We are really dead.
Although Rudyard Kipling wrote these
lines in 1902 his verse is a perfect description
OF the Republican leadership in Indiana in
1884. The party is headed by old men whose
sinews are weak as orange strings whose
minds started TO freeze with Mckinley and
reached complete petrification with Coolidge.
The years have taught them nothing.
We shall not acknowledge that old stars
fade or brighter planets arise
Chat the sere bush buds or the desert
blooms or the ancient well-head
dresl.
or any new compass WhereWith new men
adventure meath new skies.
Gavin Payne. Jim Watson or even Boss
Coffin might have spoken those sentences.
Their mental approach to new ideas is that Of
the savage who kills all strangers because he
fears the unfamiliar. They would hold So
ciety and government in the permanent sus-
pense OF things as they were ten years ago.
We shall lift up the ropes that con-
strained our youth, to bind on our
childrens hands:
We shall call 70 the water below the
bridges 10 return and replenish our
lands;
We shall harness horses deaths own
pale horses and scholarly plough
the sands.
Well. the Old Guard called upon the wa
ter to return at the last election. They we're
so stupid that they did not realize it had all
: flowed away 10 sea, that the water which
once turned the mill-wheel is gone forever.
They talked Of the Constitution as though it
were a legalistic jig-saw puzzle which only
they could put together. The words they used
most frequently in the campaign were stop"
and back"
We shall peck out and discuss and dissect,
and evert and extrude TO our mind
The faccid tissues of long-dead issues
offensive TO God and mankind
Precisely like vultures over an OK that the
army has left behind0
Think back on the campaign which has
ended recently. Isn't that precisely what the
Republican leadership did? Wasn't their cry
the complaint of special privilege? Did they
offer single constructive suggestion?
We shall make walk preposterous ghosts OF
the glOries we once created
ImmOdeStly Smearing from muddled
palettes amazing pigments mis-
mated
And our friends will weep when We ask
them with boasts If our natural
force be abated.
Yes. these old men went before the voters
dor. They talked about the prosperity of the
twenties. They even got back to Abraham
Lincoln that great humanitarian, whose
spirit must have been troubled as he saw his
party's callous neglect of millions of suffering
unemployed.
The Lamp Of our Youth will be utterly out
but We shall subsist on the smell
Of il:
And whatever We do. We shall fold our
hands and suck our gums and think
we'll Of it.
Yes. We shall be perfectly pleased with our
work. and that is the Perfectest Hell
Of IT.
No, they acknowledge no mistakes on their
part Blinded with he smoke Of prejudice they
sit in their tepeeS congratulating themselves,
while all unknowing TO them the tribes have
marched away. The watsonS, the Paynes and
the Collins viii not voluntarily relinquish their
leadership.
1t is a revolving spectacle to see these old
men still clUtching the few rags of power they
have left. But that is the way with ancients.
AS their arteries harden and their cortexes
become brittle they lose every passion. but
acquisitiveneSs. Give them a few straws of
Ivgealth and influence and they humble hap
PLY over them until the arrival Of a laggard
Death
This might be harmless enough except that
their palsied hands are laid across the whole
principle Of two-party government Their
strip. feeble as 1t is. gradually is Strangling In
diana Republicanism.
Primitive people used to kill those who
we're too old 70 keep up with the march. Mod
ems are not so harsh. They merely retire the
aged. Il IS high time that these old leaders be
retired permanently. There are enough young.
vigorous. progressive Republicans in this state
to rejUvenate the party
But they must act NOW before It is too
late.