This is the zero point of party loyalty. It has been reached very slowly. It means open war. The citizen is now confronted with a third ticket, which is a deliberate insult to both the others. No matter what the conditions, it is an appeal which disintegrates the emotions of the voter. This is the very elixir of reform. People are forced to think. It hurts them. They cry out against those who create the dilemma, but they cannot escape it. The vote you poll will vary. If the party war-cries are intense and the party candidates promise fairly, very few men will see the point of your movement. But no one escapes its influence. Let us say that five thousand vote your ticket. These are the only men whose response is scheduled. But the political vision of five hundred thousand has been quickened. No atom of this influence is lost. The work was done when the vote was cast. Even if it be not counted at all, it will show in every political camp in the near future. But do you ever have outward success? Does the time ever come when the standards of every one are so high that the parties themselves present candidates as good as your own, and there is no excuse for your existence? That depends upon the trend of the age. One thing only is certain, that by pursuing this course you are doing all that you can do. You are wasting no power. No part of your force is helping the enemy. After all, the great discovery is a very simple thing. We have found, after many experiments, that what we really want is, not the turning out of officials, not the enactment of laws, but the raising of the general standards. The way to do this is to set up a standard. Of course nobody likes to find a foot rule laid against his shortage. Even the vocabulary of the average man is attacked by such a system. Words like “courage,” “honesty,” “independence,” “pledge,” “loyalty” pass current like clipped coin in the language of politics; and the keying up of words to their biblical value brings out one man a thief and the next a hypocrite. All these civic commotions, great and small, that surge up and are scattered, that form and reform, the People’s Leagues and Citizens’ Unions, are the altruism of the community fighting its way to the surface through the obstructions, the snares, and the oppressions of the organized world. No discouragement sets it back. No betrayal destroys it. The people come forward with ever new faith.