Alarums and Excursions

The progress of a week's campaigning found the combatants seven days nearer to the election.

P:Calvin Coolidge's only political remarks made publicly were near the end of an address at Philadelphia on the 150th anniversary of the convention of the First Continental Congress.

P:Charles G. Dawes took train for Minnesota. He spoke at Rochester, Zumbrota, Red Wing, St. Paul, Minneapolis, Anoka, St. Cloud,* Lake City, Wabasha, Winona (all in Minnesota), La Crosse, Sparta, New Lisbon, Portage, Madison, Stoughton, Janesville, Bardwell (in Wisconsin). Nearly all these speeches, made in three arduous days, were delivered from the rear platform. Typical remarks:

"You haven't been going to the polls and why haven't you? It is because the cowardly politicians, at least on one side, and that is on my side of it, haven't been giving you an issue. There have been a lot of fellows on the other side giving you an issue. I don't agree with them, but I respect their courage."

"I've read the newspapers' reports of Wheeler's attack on me. The newspapers said it was vitriolic. It was not vitriolic. Vitriol leaves a mark. Wheeler's attack is more like surphurated hygrogen, which leaves a temporary and disagreeable odor."

"I am not a great man, at all. The reparations plan to which my name is attached was a group effort evolved by the representatives of five nations.

"It was successful and it is going to be successful, because the people there are just about as sick of politicians as the American public is getting to be."

P:John W. Davis invited William G. McAdoo, newly returned from Europe, to lunch with him. They conferred in private, were photographed in public, and before Mr. McAdoo went off to give $500 to the party treasury as a contribution, he had promised to make some speeches for Mr. Davis en route to his home in California.

Mr. Davis then set out on another speaking tour in West Virginia. He spoke at Charleston, Huntington, White Sulphur Springs, Hinton, Thurmond, Ronceverte, Anderson, Meadowcreek, Quinnimont, Fayettesville, Bluefield/-, Fort Gay, Crumm, Williamstown, Welch, North Fork. Some remarks:

"Now, with great respect to my Republican friends, whom I love and revere, and whose candor, sincerity and honesty I concede without reserve, those who manage their campaigns are the most ingenious creators of political scarecrows the world has ever known."

"The latest 'bogey man' is that around every corner is stationed a 'Red' or a 'Bolshevik' with a bomb in his hand to blow up the Constitution of the United States unless General Dawes and his associates are called forth to defend it."

"There will be no Falls, no Daughertys, no Forbeses, no Gaston B. Meanses or Jess Smiths or Manningtons when the Democratic party gets into office."

"We are Americans first of all and party men second. The motto for each and all of us should be not 'My party, right or wrong,' but 'My party when she is right and some other party when she is wrong.' "

Leaving West Virginia, Mr. Davis spent a day in Washington, bringing the three Presidential candidates all into the same metropolis at the same time. Then he concluded his little excursion by a speech at Wilmington, in which he spoke of the Republican campaign:

"It is a vast, pervading and mysterious silence. It is broken here and there by the vocal nominee of the Republican party, warning the American people in anxious tones that around every corner and under every bedstead there lurks a Bolshevik ready to destroy them. Now and then some person, almost forgotten, writes to a candidate and complains of the terms in which he has been described.

"And then, occasionally, some Cabinet officer, standing on the Western shore, will rattle his sabre like a new toy recently given him. Extinguishment is placed upon him; and silence reigns supreme once more. It all reminds me of nothing so much as the words of Tennyson:

"The dead oared by the dumb went upward with the flood."

P:Robert M. LaFollette, resting in Washington in preparation for a dervishlike close to his campaign, was prompted to excoriate the California courts, when the Supreme Court of that state in a 4-3 decision refused for legal reasons to accept the names of the 13 LaFollette electors to be placed on the ballot in the Independent column. Said he:

"There is no need to point to the moral or to adorn the tale. Again, one man, one individual has nullified the deliberately expressed will of 50,000 voters who had written a virtually new chapter in American political initiative in meeting the extraordinary requirements of the California electoral law. In one day, each of these 50,000 persons affixed his signature thirteen times to the petition to place Independent Progressive electors on the ballot. This action of the electorate one judge out of seven how declares null and void. Fortunately, while the will of the people has been thwarted, there is a way out for them. They can still register their support of the Independent Progressive candidacy by voting for the Progressive electors named on the Socialist ticket.

P:Burton K. Wheeler, touring the West, spoke at Rock Island, Ill., Davenport, Iowa, St. Paul, Des Moines, Lincoln, Omaha. One of his most telling effects was to push an empty chair to the front of the platform and call for "strong and cautious" Coolidge. Then he turned dramatically toward the empty seat:

"Why, Mr. Coolidge, did you wait until forced by public opinion to remove Attorney General Daugherty and Secretary Denby from your Cabinet? You know the record of Mr. Daugherty. You heard the evidence which has been brought out at the hearing. And why, Mr. Coolidge, did you permit William J. Burns, the great international detective, to use his agents of the Bureau of Investigations to break into the office of Senator LaFollette and to spy upon the members of the Senator Brookhart committee while that committee was conducting its inquiry?

"The usual silence emanates from the strong, calm, cautious man in the White House!"

*Forty-five miles from Sauk Centre ("Gopher Prairie"). /-Bluefield is just across the river from C. Bascora Slemp's Virginia home.