iary. Chance has put into his hands five appointments on the Supreme Court Bench, including the Chief Justiceship, and he has treated his responsibility in the spirit of a statesman. He has not advertised himself and he has acted on the whole with dignity and firmness, and it would seem that the more conservative elements of the party will rally to him. He will also have this advantage, which the holder of office always has in America, the nearly solid support of the delegates from the Southern States. This is so for the same reason that people who have jobs, large or small, under the Government in France to-day support Radical candidates-viz.: they want to keep in with the people who distribute the pots de vin. Unless Mr. Taft is thrown over by the leading Republicans of the East, which is improbable, he will secure the interested adhesion of the South, where practically all the Republicans are office-holders.

a

Against this heavy handicap Mr. Roosevelt will go in to win at all costs. We have seen during the last few days the kind of game he is prepared to play. He seems to be taking as dangerous and unscrupulous course as any Presidential candidate has ever pursued. This may be saying a good deal, but it is hard to deny it. The speech at Columbus delivered on 21 February is both disingenuous and disquieting. Critics of the United States polity have inserted a saving clause in favor of the Judiciary. It has always been considered that the election of some of the Judges was a bad blot in the Constitution.

Now

we have Mr. Roosevelt declaring himself in favor of the "recall" of Judges. This, we believe, is a practice actually prevailing in some of the Western States, and perhaps little harm may be done there. In large States or the national courts it would be a menace to the stability of social order itself,

and certainly of the political, if the majority, under the momentary influence of resentment or prejudice, should be encouraged or permitted to vote out of office any Judge whose decisions on constitutional matters they may dislike. It is true that Mr. Roosevelt hedges round his acceptance of this monstrous doctrine with so many qualifications that it is not very easy to understand how far he really would go. But this does not make his surrender any the less disastrous. Executive power with the populace behind it would have no check upon its excesses, if it defied the Judiciary. This perhaps may be one result Mr. Roosevelt looks forward to. His immediate object is, however, less considerable; he wants to gain votes and is ready to acquire them by lacqueying the people at the expense of the chief safeguard against the abuse of his power. Mr. Roosevelt is playing the extreme Radical game, evidently because he believes that this at the time takes the popular fancy. But are the mass of Americans Radical or Socialist? We greatly doubt it, though there is grave unrest, labor unrest especially. On the tariff Mr. Roosevelt is characteristically silent, though the tariff has much to do with the discontent, as the recent elections to the Legislature demonstrated. The field then is open for a straight fight between the President and his predecessor for the Republican nomination. Mr. La Follette's candidature as a Radical Republican will subside in favor of Mr. Roosevelt's. Whoever wins, the chances of the Republicans must be gravely impaired. How unreal party divisions are in the States at the present time is shown by the waiting attitude of the Democrats. They will be Conservative or Radical according to the candidate chosen by the Republicans, and even the best-informed observer has no idea yet upon whom the Democratic choice will fall. It must

not be forgotten, however, that Mr. Byran's influence counts and may yet queer the Democratic pitch. The already complicated issue is further entangled by the ostentatious patronage of the Roosevelt candidature by Mr. Hearst's journals. The humor of this is apparent when we remember the kind of language at one time indulged The Saturday Review.

in between these new allies. Mr. Roosevelt did not hesitate to charge Mr. Hearst with being the author of President McKinley's assassination. But this strange association is nothing to Mr. Roosevelt's unhandsome treatment of his old friend Mr. Taft or his unscrupulous plunge into the crudest and most revolutionary Radicalism.

Mr. Roosevelt's unequivocal declaration that he will accept the Republican nomination for President if it is tendered to him, and will adhere to this decision until the Convention has expressed its preference, is a political event of the highest importance in the existing position of American affairs. It was, of course, expected, and therefore has taken no one by surprise; but there is a great difference between expectation, however confident, and the accomplished fact. A very important and probably a very bitter contest is now certain within the Republican Party itself. The Radical section of that party is naturally jubilant over the fact that it is now provided with a representative such as it has never hitherto possessed, and has suddenly been lifted into a prominence hitherto denied to it. Instead of being merely a dissentient section unable to do more than thwart and hamper legislation, it has now before it the prospect of securing a President after its own heart, together with control of the party machine. With that prospect before it there are hardly any bounds to its expectations, and though these are probably much exaggerated, there can be no doubt that its success would commit the Republican Party to a course of legislation markedly different from

The Times.

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anything that it has been accustomed to in the past. Mr. Roosevelt's candidature will in any event throw some light upon questions at present very obscure. It will enable us to judge with some degree of accuracy what is the real strength of the Radical section, and hence what is the probable trend of American politics in the future. It is true that Mr. Roosevelt is much moderate in action than in speech. But if some people console themselves with this thought, others will ask themselves whether Mr. Taft may not make better progress with real reform, in his own quiet way, than can be made by needlessly scaring opponents and then disappointing extreme supporters. The Democrats at any rate must be watching the contest in the Republican Party with the keenest interest. Their obvious course is to see how it is going to end, and to choose their Presidential candidate accordingly. If Mr. Roosevelt were to secure nomination, the Democratic cue would be to offer an asylum to the moderate and sober portion of the nation, for they could not hope to outdo Mr. Roosevelt on his own ground. present, however, for them and for every one, whether in America or outside, the situation is exceedingly dubious and obscure.

At

Imagine Mr. Balfour three or four years from now starting a campaign to oust Mr. Bonar Law and reinstate himself in the leadership of the Unionist Party; conceive the fury and confusion, the personal and factional dissensions, that would ensue; multiply the resultant anarchy by the extra intensity that Americans import into all their political proceedings-and some idea may be gained of the frenzied chaos which is the inevitable consequence of Mr. Roosevelt's action in declaring himself a candidate for the Presidential nomination. But the idea even so would fall short of the reality. The parallel would not be complete unless we further imagined that it was Mr. Balfour who nominated Mr. Bonar Law for his successor and ensured his election, and unless it were also a rule of British politics that a party leader should be chosen for four years and automatically reelected at the close of his first term of office, and unless Mr. Balfour had specifically proclaimed that in no circumstances would he again be a candidate for the post he was vacating. If under these conditions the Unionist ex-leader, after quarrelling with his successor and opposing his policies, were to lend himself to an agitation for his expulsion from the leadership, what would be the result? The result, or one of many results, would be that the Unionist Party would be split in twain and reel helplessly to disaster. that, precisely, is what is going to happen to the Republican Party in the United States.

And

For the circumstances which we have postulated-inconceivable of course

when applied to Mr. Balfour and to British politics-are the exact circumstances that obtain in America and the Republican Party at this moment; and it is in the light of them that Mr.

Roosevelt's action must be judged. It was he who in 1908 selected Mr. Taft as his successor, procured his nomination, worked hard and effectively to win for him the greatest majority ever accorded to a Presidential candidate, and welcomed him to the White House with a salvo of unrestrained eulogy. But in the past two years-indeed from the moment he returned to America after his African and European tours— Mr. Roosevelt both in private and in public has done little but criticize the President and thwart his policies. That Mr. Taft was often tactless and ineffective in his political dealings, that he bungled the business of tariff revision, that he alienated the Radical Republicans who had been the most stalwart of his predecessor's supporters, and that he had steered the party into a whirlpool of faction and cross-purposes, may be freely admitted. Mr. Roosevelt came home in 1910 to find the Republican Party which he had committed to Mr. Taft's hands in the full flush of strength and victory now broken and discredited, his own policies disregarded, and his friends out of favor with the Administration and wandering leaderless. A coolness between the two men was thus inevitable. It was not lessened by the part Mr. Roosevelt played in the elections of November 1910 or by the overwhelming disaster dealt out to the Republican Party; and it developed into an open breach when Mr. Roosevelt publicly opposed the Arbitration treaties, criticized his successor's policy in regard to the trusts, and began framing alternative programmes of his own. Opposition to Mr. Taft's measures however, or some of them, was one thing: opposition to his re-nomination is another. It is one of the principles of American politics that a President who, at the end of his first term, de

the other hand, there are few politicians in the United States who believe that Mr. Taft, if nominated, will win. So strong is the tide of popular dissatisfaction with his Administration that not even the genius of the Democrats for missing their opportunities can avert, it is thought, a Democratic victory next November. The one chance that the Republicans stand is to put forward their most attractive and popular candidate at any cost, no matter whether it involves a break with tradition or a temporary split in the Republican ranks. And their most attractive and popular candidate is unquestionably Mr. Roosevelt. The source of Mr. Taft's weakness in the country is that he is suspected of being a Conservative. The source of Mr. Roosevelt's strength, apart from his personality, is that he is known to be a Radical. Therefore, say his supporters, let Mr. Roosevelt be nominated.

But is the ex-President morally free to appear as an aspirant for another term in the White House? On November 8, 1904, immediately after his triumphant re-election, he issued this emphatic statement: "On the 4th of March next I shall have served three and a half years, and this three and a half years constitutes my first term. The wise custom which limits the President to two terms regards the substance and not the form, and under no circumstances will I be a candidate for or accept another nomination." On the face of it that seems fairly explicit, but Mr. Roosevelt has since explained that his pledge referred to three consecutive terms in the White House, and in no way debarred him from coming

forward as a candidate after an interval had elapsed. Mr. Taft's friends naturally prefer the more literal reading of the words. Their case is that his present course is not only an act of treachery to the ruling President, but that it also breaks his pledged word; and one may be sure that they will do all they can to rouse the popular prejudice against a third term in the White House. Mr. Roosevelt's supporters rely mainly on the argument that he represents the country while Mr. Taft misrepresents it, that he can win while Mr. Taft is foredoomed to defeat at the polls, and that it is essential to the future of the Republican Party that it should be reconstituted on a definitely progressive basis. Not until it is clear once and for all of the suspicion that it thinks more of "the interests" than of the people can it regain the confidence of the country; and only Mr. Roosevelt can effectually combat this suspicion and remove it. One need not therefore have much detailed acquaintance with American politics to foresee that the clash between the Taft and the Roosevelt wings of the Republican party is destined to take on an unexampled virulence. It will be a fight fought out in the spirit of a Corsican vendetta, and with the freest use on both sides of every weapon of political cunning and abuse; the Convention that a few months hence will have to decide between the two protagonists promises already to be the most feverish assembly since the French Revolution; and the passions that will there come to grips are likely to survive the issue, whatever it is, and to distract the party in its appeal to the country. It is much too early to prophesy which of the two factions will carry the day. Mr. Roosevelt touches the imagination of the people as Mr. Taft does not; he is undoubtedly the greatest campaigner and vote-getter in the America of to-day; his talent for poli

tics, for knowing what will tell, is little less than an instinct; and he is free to act in ways from which Mr. Taft is barred both by his own temperament and by the etiquette that surrounds a President and hampers his candidacy. Nor can there be much doubt that the ex-President is in closer touch with the average mind of the country than his successor or that the ideas and policies for which he stands more nearly represent the collective aspirations of the American people. His Radicalism is not likely to lose him many supporters among those who hitherto have remained faithful to him in the East, while it is certain to endear him yet further to the West. His electoral strength lies with the plain men, and if they could be polled direct, a majority of them would probably express a preference for Mr. Roosevelt's nom

The Outlook.

ination over Mr. Taft's. But in most States the party candidate to be supported by the State delegates is agreed upon not by a poll of the rank and file of the party but at a State Convention; and a State Convention is as a rule at the mercy of expert "bosses." It is Mr. Taft's great advantage that he is in possession of the party machinery and is thus able to influence the decisions of the State Conventions in a way that is hardly open to an outsider. Moreover his friends will plead on his behalf the many valuable measures he has succeeded in passing into law, the folly of thinking that the party can gain anything by repudiating the President it elected, and the unfairness and disloyalty of the treatment dealt out to him by Mr. Roosevelt. Altogether it is going to be a war to the knife. Sydney Brooks.

When the Irishman of story, visiting Niagara, was invited to express his wonder at so huge a mass of water plunging over, he remarked, "Shure, and what's to kape it back?" The same remark is applicable to the other of the two great natural forces in America, Theodore Roosevelt. It was simply impossible for him to keep out of so great a fight as that offered by the announcement of his intended candidature for a third term of office at the White House. No doubt a large part of the zest for him consists precisely in those conditions of the fight which would have disconcerted other men. For, in order to secure the nomination which might make him the Republican candidate at the Convention of next June, he must surmount a series of appalling obstacles. He must first confront the deep-rooted feeling against electing any person for a third term of Presidential office. In the next place, he must explain away or devour his

most express disclaimer of any such intention. For the next six months he must devote his energy to sapping the political reputation of Mr. Taft, the man whom he himself selected four years ago as his worthiest and most trusty successor, and who has acquired, according to modern custom, a first claim on the party nomination for a second term of office. In such a struggle, he will have against him the instinctive feelings of all "the better element" of Eastern Republicanism, as well as the more material weapons of federal patronage, which count so heavily, especially in determining the nominees for the Southern States to the Republican Convention.

There seems no doubt that the recent collapse in health of Senator La Follette, the most energetic leader of the Republican insurgents, determined Mr. Roosevelt to this audacious plunge. Once more he feels himself to be the man of destiny. Had Mr. La Follette's