The Dominion. TUESDAY, JULY 23, 1912. PARTIES AND PRINCIPLES.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1499, 23 July 1912, Page 6

The Dominion. TUESDAY, JULY 23, 1912. PARTIES AND PRINCIPLES.

There is an aspect of the present political situation in America to which our friends lately in control of this country's affairs might with advantage turn their attention. It is reported to-day that the Roo i 3velt candidature is going' ahead, and that as a result the breach in the Republican party is widening so continuously that the Democrats are jubilant. The break-up of the Republican . party after its long occupancy oi power is not due merely to the fact that a powerful and unscrupulous demagogue has suddenly revealed himself in his true colours as an amazing- egoist and :i faithless man. The 1912 Roosevelt must be regarded as the product of something evil iu his party; in other words, if the Republican party possessed a soul, the 1912 Roosevelt would not have been possible. He would at any rate have had to remain obscure and keep his real character concealed. If the Republicans lose the Presidency—and it looks at present like p, certainty that they will—they will bo wiser to ascribe their defeat, not to the infidelity aud unscrupulousness of the ex-rresi-dent, but to the spiritual decease of official Republicanism. The friends of America will hope that they will draw this conclusion, and begin a new career on a basis of those sound principles which millions.of Americans cherish, and will fight for, as the bulwark against the social explosives and social poisons that can develop in the Democratic party as it is at present constituted. The present plight of the Republican party is a warning to all parties that principles arc essential to salvation.

This truth is the real lesson of the situation. The New York Post, linyever, feels so keenly the necessity t'or destroying Roosevelt and Roosevsltism,. that _ it misses the point, even while indicating'it. It enumerates -til the separate causes for discontent operative in the Republican party, and adds some other general causes of discontent. The cx-I'rcsi-dent, it points out, adroitly bancud together all these "uneasy and restless and vaguely complaining spirits" in "a desperate attempt to attain unhampered power in the name of doing the will of the p;o----ple." The Post is not a Republican journal, and so, in the article under notice, it did not proceed to the obvious deduction that if the liepublican party had a soul and a steady general policy no demagogue roulcf have risen up in it like «. t Roosevelt. It did. however, deal

indirectly with the point, in a passage which may recall to the party lately in power in this country the facte which led up to the establishment in ofiicj of a Reform Government. While "great principles'' would be involved in the final conflict, personalities would overshadow them; and this, the Post thought ."would not be an unhappy thing,'' for "Americans have no great talent for abstractions, but they arc able, unless their ancient humour and their traditional shrewdness have deserted them, to size up a public limn. They havo a keen eye for sham and glaring insincerity cannot escape their detection." It is not a sign of similarity between Americans 'and New Zealanders so much as a sign that peoples in the mass ai'3 much alike at bottom, that the New Zealand people last December show ed their ability to size up certain types of public men. The' Nov/ York Post is hopeful that the Americans will size up Ma. Roosevelt, and re cognise that he is simply laughing up hia sleeve while professing "dc votion to causes «for which he never cared a straw while President." Mk. KooSEvTLT did, indeed, evince no concern for the causes he now professes to be fighting for, and he will probably find it as impossible, in the end, to convince tho nation of his bona fides as it was for the Waho and Mackenzie Governments to appear lifelike in their professions of a desire for reform. What the Post expects to damn the Roosevelt irruption is the fact that tho cx-Prcsidcnt "has not held his latter-day doctrines as a part of his very life." That is why tho Hipublican party is doomed: because it is not the guardian of pure doc trines which it would die for. A very long spell of power is almost certain to corrupt any Governments spirit and gradually kill tho soul which, while it may not preserve a party from adversity, yet preserves it from annihilation. A long spjll in opposition, on tho other hau:l, strengthens the spirit of any party w-hich has fundamental beliefs to begin with. Long ago, long before tho general election of last year, we noted that the outstanding difference between the so-called "Liberal" party I and tho Reform party in New Zea land was the fact that the Reform party had a soul and the then Gos'ernment only a stomach. The Reform party was composed, as w& pointed out, of a multitude of sincere men and women, rich and poor, of all classes and creeds, whom years of luisgovernment had hardened into parfionatc haters of administratis wrongs, and whoso tortured patriotism inspired them with a disregard for the very real risks of oppressni; at the hands of tho all-powerful junta of so,-callcd "Liberals." These are tho people—a gradually increasing body and now a dominant majority—behind the Reform Government. So soon as tho new Government begins to lose its sense of tho sacredness and reality of its policies and of the causes it represents, it will begin to go downhill. And if over it is led by prosperity and power to forgot its soul, we hope that the Reform party will promptly b°, sent into Opposition. Through its long dominance the Republican party in America has bred up a Roosevelt and is rushing towards ruin, as has happened to other parties in other countries. There is no risk in predicting that when the Democrats obtain complete control of the government of the United States they will long be kept on the straight path by tho sharpening of their spiritual apprehension by a generation of submission to their opponents.