The Daily News. SATURDAY, MARCH 2, 1912. UNITED STATES ELECTIONS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 209, 2 March 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. SATURDAY, MARCH 2, 1912. UNITED STATES ELECTIONS.

The American elections are many months oft', but so much is wrapped up in party' warfare in the United States'that the mass of citizens of the United States become hysterical almost before the campaign, cdmmonces. The peculiarity of a sudden political change in the United States is that innumerable dependenti on the party in power are brushed off as soon as the rivals gain office. With the big, man fall innumerable others. There has been a sensational demand in the United States for Mr. Roosevelt, whoie occupancy of White House gaTe him the opportunity of showing what a great fighting man an apostle of peace could be. Shorn of his dramatic methods and Ms habit of butting in and telling hoary nation* now to behave themselves, Mr. Roosevelt is perhaps not a greater man than Mr. Taft. There ii no doubt, however, that he sayi more, and many a politician ii gauged on the size of his word output. Mr. Roosevelt is generally supposed to have an antipathy to taking the biggest gift the citizens of the States have to bestow*, but his occasional outbursts on international affairs seem to show that he still has a personal hankering after politics, even though he may be presumed to have quite given up the idea of again inhabiting White House, and would like the world to assume that he is merely rising on behalf of his friend Mr. Taft. Mr. Taft is installed in office and the Republican shoulder is pushing him all it knows. He has made no serious mistakes and he has accomplished some, ticklish international work without great bombast. Mr. Lafollette is out as a Republican, and it is presumed that if he cannot hope to wrest the Presidency from the present President, he may steal votes and so make Mr. Taft's return problematical. There is a strong probability that when Mr. Champ Clark was firing all those bombs about the annexation of Canada and spoke so much and so unpopularly on the tariff question, that he was advertising, although his nomination for the presidency was not then in. Mr. Champ Clark has an infinitesimal chance of reaching White House, and there cannot be any doubt that he will, when the numbers are up, bo amongst the "also started." The Democrats of Missouri, however, have decided to vote for Mr. Champ Clark, the supposition being that when Mr. Clark annexes Canada, Missouri Democrats will stake out claims. All these men are men of the one stamp. They are really the prize-fighters of

United States politics—pushful, loud, adTertising persons, who move with a clatter. Governor Wilson, of New Jersey, who has jußt fired his first shots, is quite unlike the average United States political He is less like a patent medicine "drummer" than Lafollette, less like a

cheap-jaek than Roosevelt, less like a f; mob orator than Mr. Champ Clark, and 1 less like Mr. Taft than all. He belongs mere to the type which is commoner in the British Parliament than elsewhere. He is scholarly, gentlemanly, quiet, insistent and calm. .He would not have blustered to the people in Egypt as Roosevelt did, nor would he advise the Emperor of Germany how to conduct his Empire. He calls himself a Radical, and Radical is generally accepted as being the quality of loud abuse. In his Radical and progressive policy, however, already outlined in the United States press, he shows that he is the enemy of graft and the boodler, the friend of jus-

tice, the apostle of peace. If Governor Wilson gets as far as White House, less noiie will issue from thence than for some decades. It may be believed" that in his own particular point-of-the-bayonet way, effected some useful reforms and hit some abuses very hard. It -is agreed that Mr. Taft has been more •diplomatic and more highly skilled than Mr. Roosevelt, but neither the one nor ithe other can be accused, of having that 'calm genius for state'smanshi'p so necessary in dealing with problems that are incalculably vast. - - The United States with its tremendous interests cannot for ever keep out of the international turmoil, and it will become .increasingly necessary, not only to place the most capable person possible in the presidency, but to reform out of existence the methods.that make it possible for United State legislatures to be stuffed with men who frankly and unhTushingly undertake politics merely for the dollars that are in it. Political dishonesty seems more flagrant in a country with so vast a population as America, where the chances for place ure so often determined by the capable working pf a party machine .and the dollars that grease the cogs.