HOW NOT TO ADJOURN POLITICS
June 25, 1918
In the current North American Review and its supplemental War Weekly there are two strong anddeeply patriotic articles on the President’s recent announcement that politics is to be adjourned. When contrasted with the injection of politics by the President into the senatorial contests in Wisconsin and Michigan, never before in any great crisis in this country has there been such complete subordination of patriotism to politics as by this Administration during this war. Witness the activities of the organization under Messrs. Burleson and Creel and the working alliance between the Administration and the Hearst newspapers, while Vice-President Marshall and Secretary McAdoo give the signal for frank partisanship of an extreme type in their public speeches. The various activities are, of course, co-related and directed toward the same end.
In Wisconsin the President interfered by a personal appeal for the Democratic senatorial candidate against the Republican. He based his appeal on certain alleged positions taken by the Republican candidate,Mr.Lenroot, during the two years and a half preceding our entry into the war, which positions, he asserted, did not meet the “acid test” of patriotism. The President made the conduct of our public men during the two years and a half prior to the war the test by which they are to be judged, and where he himself applies this test to others he must himself be judged by it.
His supporters make the plea that to call attention to the President’s record during these two and a half years is to cry over spilt milk. But the President’s attack on Lenroot was a square repudiation of thisplea when it applied to anybody except himself. In reality the “acid test” of patriotism during these two and a half years is to be found in the use of phrases like “too proud to fight” and “peace without victory” and the refusal to act instead of merely talking after the sinking of the Lusitania; in the fatuous refusal to prepare and in the insistence on preserving an ignoble neutrality between right and wrong between those who were fighting to make the world safe for democracy and liberty and those who were fighting to overthrow both. Tried by the test of past conduct which the President applied toMr.Lenroot, he is himself found wanting.Mr.Lenroot spilled a teaspoonful of milk, butMr.Wilson spilled a bucketful and he must not call attention to the teaspoon and expect to escape having attention called to the bucket.
The President has now personally requestedMr.Henry Ford to come forward as his personal candidate for the Senate in Michigan. This action cannot be reconciled either with the President’s statement that politics must be adjourned or with the reasons he alleged for opposingMr.Lenroot. No man was a more intense pacifist, no man struggled harder against preparedness, no man was more eagerly hailed as an ally by the pro-Germans thanMr.Ford during the two and a half years before we did our duty and entered the war. He is not a Republican; he is not a Democrat. He supportedMr.Wilson on the “he kept us out of war” issue.Mr.Wilson can only desire his election on grounds of personal politics,asMr.Wilson wishes as associates not strong men, but servants, and from the servants he demands servility even more than service. I have not the slightest political feeling when politics comes into hostile contact with patriotism and Americanism. There is no public servant whom during the past year I have supported more heartily than the Democratic Senator, Chamberlain. I opposeMr.Ford, because in the great crisis I feel that his election would be a calamity from the standpoint of far-sighted and patriotic Americanism. I would oppose him if he had been nominated by the Republican Party. I oppose him in precisely the same spirit now that he has been nominated on personal grounds byMr.Wilson.