Remember that whether you will or not, your votes this year will be viewed by the nations of Europe from one standpoint only. They will draw no fine distinctions. A refusal to sustain the President this year will, in their eyes, be read as a refusal to sustain the war and to sustain the efforts of our peace commission to secure the fruit of war. Such a refusal may not inconceivably bring about a rupture of the peace negotiations. It will give heart to our defeated antagonists; it will make possible the interference of those doubtful neutral nations who in this struggle have wished us ill. Ex-President Benjamin Harrison besought the people to "stand behind the President," saying: If the word goes forth that the people of the United States are standing solidly behind the President, the task of the peace commissioners will be easy, but if there is a break in the ranks—if the Democrats score a telling victory, if Democratic Senators, Congressmen, and governors are elected—Spain will see in it a gleam of hope, she will take fresh hope, and a renewal of hostilities, more war, may be necessary to secure to us what we have already won. When Colonel Roosevelt himself became President, he followed the usual precedent without even the excuse of a war emergency. In a letter dated August 18, 1906, to James E. Watson, he wrote: If there were only partisan issues involved in this contest, I should hesitate to say anything publicly in reference thereto. But I do not feel that such is the case. On the contrary, I feel that all good citizens who have the welfare of America at heart should appreciate the immense amount that has been accomplished by the present Congress, organized as it is, and the urgent need of keeping this organization in power. To change the leadership and organization of the House at this time means to bring confusion to those who have been successfully engaged in the steady working out of a great and comprehensive scheme for the betterment of our social, industrial, and civic conditions. Such a change would substitute a purposeless confusion, a violent and hurtful oscillation between the positions of the extreme radical and the extreme reactionary for the present orderly progress along the lines of a carefully thought out policy.