THE NEED FOR A DOER
There come times in the affairs of men which call for "not a
forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work." Such a time is at
hand. A great war, the most devastating in history, has been
concluded. Its moral lesson has been taught by its master minds
and learned in penitence, we may hope, by the erring and wrongly
willful. But the fruits of victory are ungathered and the
beneficence of peace is not yet attained. The call arises for a
"doer of the work."
Two great political parties in the United States, both with
splendid accomplishments behind them and both with grave
mistakes as well, have attempted to respond to this call, and
America, whose proudest boast is that it has always found a man
for every great occasion, chooses between them. It is a solemn
and serious hour. For it has been America's special fortune that
its great teachers and leaders and doers have been found at just
the proper time.
This knowledge of the certain right decision of our country is,
we might almost say, a part of its very fiber abiding with the
persistency of a fixed idea, a part of the heritage of the
nation, scarcely needing to be taught in the schools, obvious
even to the casual student from an alien land. For our
historical records glow with the stories of the appearance of
_the_ man; and the thought of a friendly destiny seems not easy
to banish. Time has given so often either the inspired teacher
of the word or the doer of the work that there is more than a
faith and a hope, nay almost a conviction, that it cannot fail
now when the agonized appeal of the world beckons America to
complete her high mission to humanity upon which she embarked
when she threw her power and might on the scales in war.
Those who insist that the fulfillment of that mission lies in
keeping the solemn promises make in France, accepted by friend
and foe alike, for a League of Nations to end war, to see that
retribution becomes not blind vengeance, to set the tribes of
the earth again on their forward journey, present as their
leader James Monroe Cox, Governor of Ohio.
A party of traditions, a party that has directed in every
critical period save one since the Republic began, has said that
he meets the requirements of the time. That party chose him
because of his record for doing, because there was an inner
conviction that he could enter upon a still larger field with a
growing, an ever-expanding capacity.
This, too, furnishes a fitter chapter in the history of country
and party. For the wise selection of men, even obscure men, has
been the tower of our national strength. America had her Thomas
Jefferson to expound for all the world the real underlying truth
of her Revolution. The equality of rights and duties spread from
a dream of philosophers to be the doctrine of warriors for
freedom. There was her George Washington to hold together the
tenuous bands of freedom. She found her James Monroe to lay the
foundations of the doctrine that stern moral precepts forbid the
violation of sovereign rights of the nations. She brought forth
her Andrew Jackson to make the country in his time safe for
democracy, and to establish for all time that no single money
baron, nor yet any collection of them, is superior to the power
of all the people.
In later time she had her Abraham Lincoln, now in the judgment
of the succeeding generations but little beneath the Savior of
men, preserver of the Union for its larger duties. She had in
this day her Woodrow Wilson, builder of the newer policy of
world union and recognized spokesman of freedom in the death
struggle with military autocracy. It is of history that Lincoln
and Wilson both were stricken down with their work incomplete.
After Lincoln there was no doer of the work to finish his task
and the evil of those who perverted the exalted purpose of the
Civil War continues even unto this day.
Coming into the arena of national affairs when even America
seems to doubt and when the selfish motive of fear threatens to
palsy the nation's hand, Governor Cox became the man to
vindicate the statements and the pledges given before all the
world. His introduction to the conscience and intellect of the
country was a demand that the faith be kept.
Out of the night of war, the League of Nations has long been a
supreme issue with Governor Cox and he was chosen to carry the
standard because he had expressed the sentiment most strongly,
most clearly and with greatest emphasis.
Doers have ever been practical men, and such is Governor Cox.
But practicality need not, and does not, imply a lack of vision.
There is such a thing as ideality in vision and a practical hand
to make good the picture of the mind. The combined qualities are
considered as essentials to the adequate man of the times, for a
vision of a new world order is the rarest gift of the century,
but the man with the dynamic force and the cunning skill to make
this new dream come true has been wanting.
History--political history--was changed profoundly when
President Woodrow Wilson was stricken. Men were slow in rallying
to his cause, there were even clouds of doubt, ominous and
disturbing, when the party he led to two victories prepared in
the late June and the early July days of the year 1920 to state
its position, its hope and its aspirations.
In the state in which Governor Cox held leadership there was no
doubt. His own Ohio knew long ago that at the Democratic
National Convention in San Francisco its chosen spokesmen would
communicate but two mandates on behalf of the vast majority of
the people. One was that Ohio could do no less than be faithful
to its greatest executive and the other was that the nation's
faith and honor must be kept stainless.
Through Governor Cox that message has been sent to the length
and breadth of the land. As seen by him, the appeal to the
American people is one which began with the first plea to the
world powers for such a concert as would banish the continual
threat of war. This plea was made to warring powers when the
World War began in 1914 and it was renewed at each favorable
opportunity during the years when America hoped that the war
might be brought to an end before the last great neutral power
was drawn into it. Heeded by the Allies, the voice of reason was
rejected by the Central Empires, and from that hour there came
the conviction among the earnest lovers of peace that only the
imposition of peace would furnish a new basis for world concord.
Few men were more downcast than this same man when long and
vexatious delays in the United States Senate ended at last in
the recalcitrant refusal of the masters of the majority to
ratify the Treaty of Versailles. It is but a fair and truthful
statement to observe that, although his judgment of the mind of
the people told him that the party which went before the country
to vindicate the sacrifices of the men in the trenches would
have a most compelling issue, he had no wish for such partisan
advantage. As a Democrat, history will tell that he sought only
fair compromise on the treaty, even suggesting any honest
settlement that would hasten America's entrance into the League.
In his address of acceptance, then, Governor Cox stepped to the
fore with the tersest of utterances as to his position on the
League, compressing it all into "I favor going in."
If this question is not answered now and affirmatively, Governor
Cox believes that there may be delay until nations once more
have borne their crosses on Calvary and until further blood and
treasure are wasted. And so he says now: "I favor going in."