SCHRANK'S UNWRITTEN LAWS.
The following are John Flammang Schrank's four unwritten laws, "The
Pillars of the Republic," he calls them. They are presented exactly as
written by Schrank, and as incorporated in the report of the alienists.
BY JOHN FLAMMANG SCHRANK.
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people
to dissolve the political bonds which have hitherto connected them with
another, due respect to mankind requires that we should declare the
cause of such action. In these modest lines our forefathers have at
once laid out the roads on which we should travel, it demonstrates
their willingness to consult the opinions of others, as well as it duly
respects the rights and feelings of others. In these critical days it
is more than necessary to call the attention of the nation to the three
wonderful documents which have established our people as an independent
nation and under their guidance laid down in these documents we have
become the most powerful nation on earth. The Declaration of
Independence; The Constitution, and the farewell-address of George
Washington. The most sacred custom of all nations has ever been their
reverence for their ancestors, the honor they pay to their dead, and
the utmost respect to the good deeds who live after them, these customs
observed hundreds of years handed down from one generation to another,
we have come to call the traditions of a people. Tradition is an
unwritten law when it concerns a whole nation, it is above the written
statute, I would doubt the right of a court to have jurisdiction over a
man who has defended tradition of his country, against violation. As we
are not an original nation or race, the founders of the republic were
the sons of the nation whose language we speak, it is tradition with us
especially that identified us as a nation. This nation has four
unwritten laws, the oldest and most sacred, because established by Geo.
Washington, is the third term tradition, it has never been violated and
is an affective safe-guard against unscrupulous ambition, but never
before has been established a test case of its inviolability as a
warning to coming adventurers. In the present campaign for the first
time in American history we are confronted by a man to whom practically
nothing is sacred and pretends to stand above tradition. This man
abused our constitution, he wants it amended until it is abolished. If
our constitution is too old and in the way of progress after we have
grown to be a rich nation with it, then the ten commandments so many
thousand years old, must be a useless piece of junk. He has abused our
highest Courts, he has spoken in the profanest language of our
legislators, he has abused our best and most venerable citizens,
calling them liars and scoundrels, he has shamefully abused our
president, thereby undermining the dignity of the office, how can we
expect our foreign born citizens to respect our institutions when an
ex-President circumtravels the Union telling everybody that those
honorable men at Chicago were thieves and crooks. Shall the people
rule, is one of his demagogic phrases, yet he knows that in the very
sense he wants this catchword to be understood is an impossibility, the
people and herewith I mean the rich as well as the poor never rule in a
republic, they cannot rule, they have no time to rule, therefore they
elect a body of honorable men to do the ruling to the benefit of all,
in other words they entrust a body of men with their government, that
is why Grover Cleveland said that a public office is a public trust.
And a political party is the medium between the people and the elected
government, and any party that should nominate a man in violation of
the third term tradition does no longer deserve to be a party entrusted
by the people. This third termer could have been of more value to the
country had he lent his advice and honest opinion to his party and our
president who eagerly sought his advice, for a man's honest advice is
his ideas and convictions but with man's ideas it is like digging a pan
of sand from a river from the gold regions, the sand must be sifted and
filtered, there might be one or more grains of gold found in it. A
man's ideas must pass through the brains of other men, to be sifted and
filtered and every grain of gold found will be appreciated, but a man
who claims that he knows it all better, is equal to saying that his pan
of sand is all gold. The third termer claims that it is not a third
term, if not followed by two consecutive terms, then a second term
would not be a second, if given to man 8 years after his first, I
wonder what to call such term, after a while he will tell us that a
monarchy in this country is not a monarchy if the monarch is a native
born; let it be established now and forever that it is a man's third
term if he has twice been in office and if each time only twenty-four
hours after taking oath and if third term is given to him or he seeks
it twenty years after the second. If the third termer thought that the
republican party whom he hailed from needed chastisement because she
refused to violate tradition in his favor, he had the right to create a
third party, nominate all officials for same and be the very soul and
power behind the throne, but when it became evident that the whole
party movement was only enacted to give him a third term, he had
forfeited his citizenship and his life. Anybody who finances a third
term movement should be expatriated and his wealth confiscated. It is
ridiculous to say that if he is defeated in November it is also a
verdict of the people to uphold the third term tradition, as we may as
well say it is the verdict of the people to abolish the third term if
he wins in November, the third term tradition has never been before the
people as an issue to vote and for this reason it should never be put
before them. It is almost a certainty, that if voted upon last year,
the people would have declared in favor of upholding the tradition,
while it is dead sure that if we were living this year in a panic, a
business depression, with hundreds of thousands out of work instead of
a general prosperity, the third termer would walk in over the decision
of the previous year. The dangers in this campaign are these, the third
termer is sure that the nomination has been stolen and that the country
and the job belong to him, therefore if he gets honestly defeated in
November he will again yell that the crooks of both parties have stolen
the election, and should he carry a solid West, he and the hungry
office seekers would not hesitate to take up arms to take by force what
is denied him by the people, then we face a civil war, and it was Ab.
Lincoln who said that war is hell and that he who wilfully invited war
deserves death. We would then be compelled to wash out the sin of
violating the third term with the blood of our sons. Yet, this is not
the greatest danger we are facing. We have allowed an adventurer to
circumtravel the Union with military escort, with the torch of
revolution in his hands to burn down the very house we live in while we
should be aware that we are surrounded by a pack of wolves ever ready
to jump on us. Does anybody think that the European powers would sit
idly while we are disunited, would a certain power hesitate to help the
third termer and make good the gravest mistake that power has made in
1861 by not keeping this country disunited and separated while we are
just getting ready to become their greatest competitor on the seas
after the completion of the Panama Canal. Our strength is not in our
Army or Navy nor in our Money power, our strength is in our Union. In
Union alone can we uphold the Monroe Doctrine our second unwritten law
so much hated and dreaded by all the world. The sister republic's
Transvaal and Orange Free State were not destroyed because it was the
connecting link between Egypt and the Cape, not because gold was found,
no, but because Great Brit. could not allow a second United States to
establish a Monroe Doctrine on African soil. Reciprocity would have
profited both the Union and Canada but England fears a too close a
relation between the two nations and Premier Leurier's sin was that he
was first a Canadian, second an American and third a Britisher, he had
to be replaced by a man who is in the first, second, and third place a
Britisher. The outcome of the present campaign interests the powers
more than us, all actions of Congress or Cabinet are sooner known in
the Cabinets of Europe than we hear about them. There is today a "Cato"
in the Senate of every country and in the folds of his cloak he has
concealed several figs of unusual size, everyone of these figs
represent one of our great American Trusts, and he concluded every
speech with Carthage must be destroyed. With our Union destroyed we
would cry with the Israelites in the desert: Lead us back to the meat
pots of Egypt, give us a thousand trusts sooner than one third termer.
If we think that we need a one man's rule, whose place cannot be filled
by another among millions intelligent citizens, then it were about time
that we got a licking from somewhere. What are we about to do, do we
want the great building we have helped to build tear down and give
everybody a brick, the people which is only the present generation
cannot do what they want, for what they have and what they are they are
greatly in obligation to the past and earlier generations who also
helped to build up, therefore this generation called the people cannot
do as they please which is so ardently advocated by the third termer.
Have we learned no lesson about a one man's rule experienced in France
with such disastrous results as the end of the reign of Napoleon I and
Napoleon III.
We are trying to establish here a system like our ancestors have done
in Europe which all revolutions of a 1,000 years could not abolish, it
would be useless to forcibly remove a third president because the
system would then be established. Are we under no obligation to the
heroes of all wars for freedom and independence, are we overthrowing
our republic while the heroes of the French revolutions and the martyrs
of 1848 gladly gave their lives to establish republican institutions.
May God enlighten the nation, may the spirit of 1776 still be alive,
and when they tell us that there is a Rome on the other side let them
understand that U. S. A. is not Carthage. In this campaign we may
observe that prosperity is as dangerous to our institutions as hard
times are, people are too busy making money, they gradually lose all
interest in politics, unless a third termer tells them that government
is only medium to enrich them still more, how else can we explain his
remark that Mr. Perkins wants his children to live better in this
country after his departure, a millionaire's children can only live
better when the third term party doubles the millions of their father.
In this critical time I find that men have more interest in the
baseball results than to register, think and vote. But of course some
people have no more sense than three guinea pigs. His movement is not
progressive, they are insurgents, insurgents and revolutionary. Hardly
any revolution has started without pretending that their movement was
progressive.
The abolition of the third term tradition is the abolition of the
Monroe Doctrine also. In this Doctrine we are overtaking the
guardianship over all republics on the American continent against
Foreign encroachments. Naturally the third termer would prove too in
1916 that the fourth term is only his second, to do this he would have
to become the conquering hero, we would commit the same faults France
did 100 years ago National aggrandisement, yet France no larger today
than before Napoleon I. The fourth termer could hardly gather laurels
in a European or Asiatic war the natural consequences would that South
America would become the field of his actions. We have upheld the
Monroe Doctrine without the consent of these countries so she could
prevent those nations from inviting a European power to protect them by
declaring that inasmuch as the third term tradition is abolished, the
Monroe Doctrine is no longer binding, because they are more afraid of
the third termer than they would be of any foreign prince. The prudence
of our forefathers has delivered to us an equally sacred unwritten law
which reads that no president should embrace another Creed than
Protestant if possible a sect of the English church. I am a Roman
Catholic. I love my religion but I hate my church, as long as the Roman
parish is not independent from Rome, as long as Catholic priests are
prevented from getting married, as long as Rome is still more engaged
in politics and accumulation of money contrary to the teachings of the
Lord, the Roman Catholic church is not the religion for a president of
the United States. The separation of state from church in France has
sufficiently proved that Rome and republic are enemies.
The fourth unwritten law which is practically supplementary to the
second we find in George Washington's farewell address where he advises
us to live in peace with your neighbor. We have no right to start a war
of conquest with any nation and our relations to the South American
republic can be improved if we remove their fear of a steady conquest
by us by observing this law. Does it not look ridiculous that
established governments in this enlightened age sends thousands of
unfortunates to prison as punishment for murdering, for to steal and
rob, while these same nations are armed with all descriptable weapons
like so many bandits ever ready to jump at each other's throat. What
else is war but murder for to rob that which belongs to others. Since
men have learned to work they have no more right to war. The salvation
of the human family must be worked out by international Commercialism
the sooner all industrial establishments of the world unite like in the
days of the Hansa can the social questions be solved. International
Commercialism must have individual legislation and jurisdiction,
independent from national legislation, but must be acknowledged by all
states and the United States is the only power ruled by commercialism
without a mailed fiat and will be the first to recognize International
Commercialism for this alone will abolish and distribute wealth more
fair and just, and work to a higher state of civilization.
JOHN SCHRANK.