| OCR Text |
Show H THE LIMIT OF BRYAN'S VISION. I aJFSJSlF B honesUy tfytoE t0 be broadly patriotic . S? the frS -ie SG?mS t0 b Reeling toward success, ' 0at the eff01 fc w a strenuous one and now and again he meets with a discouraging check when his natural limitations limita-tions stand out in a curious way. For instance, in the last issue of "The Commoner," and the first of its two constituent paragraphs reads after this fashion: "The discussion of democracy throughout the world will bring a partisan advantage to the Democratic party. On the continent of Europe the word 'Republican' has been used more than the word "Democrat' and for this reason the Republican party has gained more than the Democratic party from immigration. But now democracy is the popular word democracy is to be made safe." The country is trying to forget partisanship and partisan parti-san advantage in order to fight the more effectively against the general enemy; or .at least those who do not forget have judgment enough to keep their thoughts and desires to themselves all except Mr. Bryan. The great problems of the world war with its tens of millions of victims, the agony of six bleeding continents, the struggle to down barbarism, the fight for national honor and safety and the right to life free from the blight of Teutonism are to Mr. Bryan opportunities for insuring the continued dominance of the political party to which he happens to belong. In his idea, it is not primarily world democracy that is to be made safe, but the Democratic party in the United States. Utterly unabje to discern the necessity for the entrance of the American republic into the war at the time it made the plunge, blind to the plain duty of the nation, he shows all the alertness of the calculating, practical political campaigner cam-paigner in seeing the advantage which, he conceives, may accrue to his party as a byproduct of the struggle of humanity hu-manity to save itself from submersion. The point he makes is shrewd in its way, a typical heeler's point, but petty to the verge of pitiulness and suggestive of a circumscribing cir-cumscribing obsession. o |
