AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2780, 26 May 1916, Page 5

AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

THE REPUBLICAN STATES FAVOUR ROOSEVELT. By Telegraph—Pre;* Association—Copyright (Rec. May 25, G p.m.) New York, May 24. The Republicans in thirty States have offered Colonel Roosevelt the Presidential, nomination at the Chicago Contention on June 7. The regular, Republicans controlling the party machine objcct to Colonel Roosevelt's aggressiveness. Reviewing the outlook in regard to the Presidential election, the .'"Literary Digest" of April 14 remarks, apropos of Colonel Roosevelt's probable nomination: "T\ie Republican 'spring drive' ox 1916 appears to date from the luncheon at Mr. Robert Bacon's house in New York, where the guests were Mr./Elihu Root, Senator Lodge, Major-General Leonard AVoorl, and, 'last but by no means least/ Mr. Theodore Roosevelt. Thus is an apparently conventional social occasion interpreted by some political observers as they recall that this is the first meeting of Col6nel Roosevelt and Mr. Root since the/Republican-Progressive split of 1912. A New York correspondent of the Chicago' 'Tribune' (Ind. Rep.) reports that the reconciliation strengthens the growing belief that the Republicans and Progressives will unite to nominate Colonel Roosevelt for President. /When a member of Congress, who is a delegate to tho •Republican convention, "called with a potty of three to offer Colonel Roosevelt tentative allegiance,' the ex-President named the terms on which he _would accept the nomination. Colonel' Roosevelt is reported as saying in part: "'Get it perfectly clear in your head that if you nominate me it mustn't bo because you think it is in my interest, but because you think it is in your in-1 twest, and the interest of the Republican Party, and because you think it to the interest of the United States to do so, And more than that, don't you do it if you expect me to pussy-foot on any singlo issue I liavo raised. Don't be for mo Unless you are prepared to say that every citizen of this country has got to be proUnited Stales first, last, and all the time, ' and no pro-anything else at all, and that we stand for every good American everywhere, whatever his birthplace or creed, nnd wherever he now lives, and that in return we demand that he be ail American and nothing else, with bo hyphen about him.'

'"Every American citizen must be for America first, and for no other country even second, and lie hasn't any right to .be in the United States''at all if he has any divided loyalty between this country nnd any other. I don't care a rap for tho man's creed or birthplace or national origin so long as ho is straight United States. I am for him if he is straight United States, and if he isn't I am fif-'oLiist him. And don't you nominate me unless yon are prepared to take the position that Uncle Sam is to bo strong enough to defend his rights and to defend everyone of his -people wherever those people are, and he can't be strong enough , unless 110 prepares in advance. I nin not for war. On the contrary, I abhor an unjnst or a wanton war, and I would use every honourable expedient to avoid even a jnst war. But I feel with SSI my heart that you don't, in the long avoid war by making other people iwliove that you are afraid to fight for Sffar own rights."'-