There is no way of knowing how many of our hundred millions ever read a national platform, but I will hazard the guess that not more than twenty-five per cent have perused the platforms of 1920 or will do so before election day. The average voter is content to accept the interpretations and laudatory comment of his party paper, with its assurance that the declaration of principles and purposes is in keeping with the great traditions of the grand old party. It is straining Smith’s patriotism pretty far to ask him to read a solid page of small type, particularly when he knows that much of it is untrue and most of it sheer bunk. Editorial writers and campaign orators read platforms perforce; but to Smith they are fatiguing to the eye and a weariness to the spirit. The primary qualification for membership on a platform committee is an utter lack--there must be no question about it--of a sense of humor. The League of Nations plank of the Republican platform is a refutation of the fallacy that we are a people singularly blessed with humor. We could ask no more striking proof of the hypnotic power of a party name than the acceptance of this plank, solemnly sawed, trimmed, and painted red, white, and blue, in the committee-room, and received by the delegates with joyous acclamation. III The embarrassments of the partisan who is challenged to explain the faith that is in him are greatly multiplied in this year of grace. Considerable literature is available as to the rise and development of the two major parties, but a student might exhaust the whole of it and yet read the Chicago and San Francisco platforms as through a glass darkly. There is a good deal of Jeffersonian democracy that is extremely difficult to reconcile with many acts of Mr. Wilson. The partisan who tries to square his Democracy or his Republicanism with the faith he inherited from his grandfather is doomed to a severe headache. The rope that separates the elephant from the donkey in the menagerie marks only a nominal difference in species: they eat the same fodder and, when the spectator’s back is turned, slyly wink at each other. There is a fine ring to the phrase “a loyal Republican” or “a loyal Democrat,” but we have reached a point of convergence where loyalty is largely a matter of tradition and superstition. What Jefferson said on a given point, or what Hamilton thought about something else, avails little to a Democrat or a Republican in these changed times. We talk blithely of fundamental principles, but are still without the power to visualize the leaders of the past in newly developed situations of which they never dreamed. To attempt to interview Washington as to whether he intended his warning against entangling alliances to apply to a League of Nations to insure the peace of the world is ridiculous; as well invoke Julius Cæsar’s opinion of present-day questions of Italian politics.