The Dominion. MONDAY, MARCH 18, 1912. PRESIDENTIAL YEAR.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1391, 18 March 1912, Page 4

The Dominion. MONDAY, MARCH 18, 1912. PRESIDENTIAL YEAR.

Last month the Duke and Duciiess of CoXNAUGitT and their daughter, the Princess Patricia, visited New York, and were feted and honoured by the people and their leaders as generously and whole-heartedly as they would have been in any pari of Kixg George's Dominions' It was a gratifying evidence of tho goodwill that exists between two great kindred peoples. By a. curious coincithis l?oval visit took phicc in ''Presidential Yea)'." From cheering the brother of our lata King and uncle of our present one, .American citizens turned, some, to operate, some to walch, and more to grumble at that lui;!'.' and bewildering complex political machinery bv "means of which they do without a king. The lirst Republican ".primary" was held a few davs ago, and its decision in favour of Mr. Roosevixt was hniHl by his supporters with seroi-uiper-stitioiJß- glee as a favourable omen. Each of the two great parties will

now be holding in every rural (ownship and city ward its separate primaries, where those who are regarded by the party managers as reliablo voters will meet to elect delegates, and in many cases to instruct (be delegates how to vote in the district and State conventions. Delegations from the district and St-.i.te conventions will go up to the Republican (or Democratic) National Convention, which will be. held in one of the great central cities, Chicago, perhaps, or St. Louis. There, on a day in July, will open one of the biggest political meetings ever hold in any part of the world. About 900 delegates will take! part, and probably twelve thousand other people wiil watch, listen, and applaud. The first business will be to adopt a political platform. The second and more important business will be to choose the party's candidate for the Presidency. Amidst such excitement as political contests rarely, if ever, evoke in any other country, vote after vole may be taken, until eventually, it may be at the fifth or fiftieth ballot, and several, days after the beginning of the meeting, one aspirant for the Presidency has the requisite majority and is declared the party's candidate. Applause lasting fifteen minutes will be a commonplace of the long proceedings. The prospects of this or that aspirant will brighten and darken from ballot to ballot. Most of the smaller factions, after once or twice voting for their man, will go over in a body to one of the "favourites." The contest will then have all the appearance of a struggle between two strong factions, but—so strange are the ways of politics—one of these may suddenly abandon the attempt to carry its own favourite to victory, and place all its forces under the standard of one of the weaker factions. This move may ensure the candidature of some politician who may be scarcely known outside his own State, and whose stoutest supporters had not expected to carry him beyond the first few ballots. The vanquished factions will be the first with their congratulations, tho nomination will be immediately made unanimous, and the enthusiasm will reach a point at which life and limb, to say nothing of sanity or property, will appear to be in imminent danger. But probably no one will be hurt, for the Americans arc really an orderly people. The Republicans and the Democrats and one or two smaller parties will have their National Conventions after this pattern. And whether (he voice of the presageful primary that has named "tho Colonel" will escape extinction at the hands of (he other delegations of its State, will survive the amazingly subtle and not overscrupulous intrigues that surround and interpenetrate the National Convention, and will go forward into tho final ballot, is one of the most uncertain questions in that most uncertain of human affairs, the election of a President of the United States. All that can be said- with confidence is that rfach of the parties, at its National Convention, will select a candidate, and the party machinery will be worked at high pressure for tho next four months to secure the election of that candidate. • It will be—it always is—a wonderful four months. From the Atlantic to the Pacific,, the country will be swept, as it wore, by a tremendous emotional and intellectual storm. Demonstration will succeed demonstration. Processions, each bigger than the last, will tramn the "cities by daylight and torchlight. Orators, paid and unpaid, will stump the country. _ Prudent men will pour out money like, water, and grave men will act like cheapjacks and buffoons. Ordinary business will languish and several sorts of extraordinary business will flourish and wither like Jonah's gourd. In tho end—that is to say, next November—the voters will elect in each separate State a number of persons called Presidential Electors, whose function it will be to choose a President. These persons will be elected on a party "ticket," and for the sole reason that they will give their votes for one or the other Presidential candidate. As soon as these intermediaries are declared elected, the result of the whole struggle will be known. Their sulxiequent proceedings will interest nobody—so far has the intense party spirit that created the primaries and conventions, the rings and bosses, bent the Constitution from the intentions of those "fathers and framers" who thoutrht the final act in tho selection of a President wo.uld bo the most solemn aud fateful event in tho Commonwealth. Still, the outcome of it all will be that a President, who may or may not truly represent the majority of the people, will be elected. He will be something like a king, but not so splendid, something like a Prime Minister, but not (if the times are quiet) so powerful. And, perhaps, a good many Americans, looking back to the visit of the Duke of Connaught, or looking forward to the suggested visit of King George and Queen Mary (if that be possible), may bo disposed to admit in secret that what they used to call "the effete civilisations of Europe" have something valuable which their own system lacks, something which, however repugnant it may be to their Democratic or Republican theories, is yet deeply conformable with some of tho strongest of human instincts.