The league is the paramount issue, or it is not; you can take it, or leave it alone. The situation may be wholly changed when Mr. Root, to whom the Republican league plank is attributed, reports the result of his labors in organizing the international court of arbitration. Some new proposal for an association of nations to promote or enforce peace would be of undoubted benefit to the Republicans in case they find their negative position difficult to maintain. The platforms and speeches of acceptance present, as to other matters, nothing over which neighbors need quarrel. As to retrenchment, labor, taxation, and other questions of immediate and grave concern, the promises of both candidates are fair enough. They both clearly realize that we have entered upon a period that is likely to witness a strong pressure for modifications of our social and political structure. Radical sentiment has been encouraged, or at least tolerated, in a disturbing degree by the present administration. However, there is nothing in Mr. Cox’s record as governor or in his expressed views to sustain any suspicion that he would temporize with the forces of destruction. The business of democracy is to build, not to destroy; to help, not to hinder. We have from both candidates much the same assurances of sympathy with the position held nowadays by all straight-thinking men--that industrial peace, concord, and contentment can be maintained only by fair dealing and good-will among all of us for the good of all. From their public utterances and other testimony we are not convinced that either candidate foreshadows a stalwart Saul striding across the hills on his way to the leadership of Israel. Mr. Harding shows more poise--more caution and timidity, if you will; Mr. Cox is a more alert and forthright figure, far likelier to strike “straight at the grinning Teeth of Things.” He is also distinctly less careful of his speech. He reminds the Republicans that “McKinley broke the fetters of our boundary lines, spoke of the freedom of Cuba, and carried the torch of American idealism to the benighted Philippines”--a proud boast that must have pained Mr. Bryan. In the same paragraph of his speech of acceptance we are told that “Lincoln fought a war on the purely moral question of slavery”--a statement that must ring oddly in the ears of Southerners brought up in the belief that the South fought in defense of State sovereignty. These may not be inadvertences, but a courageous brushing away of old litter; he is entitled to the benefit of the doubt. VII