Baltimore Evening Sun (8 October 1912): 6.

Welcome to the Baltimore Democrat, successor to the Baltimore Daily Bulletin (selig!). The first issue appeared this morning. It begins its noble but precarious life by stealing, without credit, an interesting article from The Evening Sun. The Evening Sun will no doubt reciprocate by sending a wreath of limes and citrons to the funeral.

The Hon. Charles F. Hogue, wiskinski for the Wilson Clergy Contribution Fund, to the clergymen of Baltimore:

The Christian Church * * * the Master’s injunction. * * * Christian laws and Christian principles * * * men of Christian character * * * a clear call to the Church * * * our God’s supreme purpose * * * the kingdom of God * * * opportunities for the Church * * * do battle in God’s and His people’s name * * * the Church’s mission * * * our chosen Master * * *

And a lot more of that sort of soft and soothing stuff. The candidacy of the Hon. Woodrow Wilson, it appears, has the direct approval of the Most High. The man who votes for him will perform an act of exalted piety. The man who contributes to his campaign fund will help establish the Kingdom of God on earth. Woodrow is the modern Moses. He is an archangel battling with devils. All persons opposed to him are limbs and emissaries of Satan.

Could anything be more ridiculous? Could anything make the Wilson cause more ridiculous? As a matter of fact, there is no issue of piety in this campaign, nor even any issue of common morality. All of the candidates, including the Socialist, agree enthusiastically that virtue must prevail. All promise, faithfully and apparently sincerely, to protect the good against the bad. All give their solemn ratification, not only to the Ten Commandments, but also to a vast and miscellaneous host of deputy and sub-commandments. If there be any rule of morality that they do not indorse, unanimously and with sobs, it is only because they have never heard of it.

No, beloved, Woodrow has no monopoly of the piety now on tap, of the piety now drenching the country like a cataract of buttermilk. Every time he takes a hack at Sin, Theodore matches it with a complete laparotomy. Every time he re-enacts the Beatitudes, Theodore sets his calliope to playing “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” And meanwhile, the Hon. William Howard Taft sings every hymn that is lined out and recites every Golden Text, and pledges his sacred honor to murder every little devil that bobs up between March 4, 1913, and March 4, 1917. Such unanimity, perhaps, was never before witnessed in the world. Such a wholesale ratification of the true, the good and the beautiful is unprecedented in profane history.

But what, then, is the issue in this campaign? If the three principal candidates are all agreed that virtue must triumph, that it is wicked to steal, that the tyrant deserves the knout, that graft must be put down, in what way do they stand apart? The answer is simple enough. Woodrow is against Theodore and William because he himself wants to be President. Theodore is against William and Woodrow for exactly the same reason. And William is ditto for the ditto ditto. Compared to this issue, no other issue worth stating. It is the master issue of the campaign, as it is of all campaigns. And in order to prevail the three candidates are prepared to whoop vociferously for any morality, however diaphanous and dubious, which seems to have votes behind it.

Here, perhaps, I may be doing injustice to one of the three--the Hon. William Howard Tift, to wit. So far as I know, he is the only one who has had courage enough to speak out against theories apparently held by large numbers of people. He alone gives his platform metes and bounds. But even so, it is not recorded that he scorns piety or questions morality. Like Theodore and Woodrow, he is magnificently in favor of the Ten Commandments, and not only the Ten Commandments, but also the Code of Hammurabi, the Rule of St. Benedict, the Memorabilia of Socrates, the Declaration of Independence, the Longer and Shorter Catechisms, and the bound volumes of the International Sunday-school Lessons. Angels could do no more.

Wherefore, and by reason of which, it seems to me that the Hon. Mr. Hogue has a hard task before him if he would establish a Messianic character for Woodrow. Woodrow, I dare say, is a decent fellow, an honest man of the second dimension, the sort of genial busybody who spreads intelligently the ideas of his betters, a person of indubitable integrity. But that he has anything whatever to do with “Our God’s supreme purpose,” or that it is any part of “the Master’s injunction” to vote for him, or that he makes “a clear call to the Church”--all this I doubt with a great, grave doubt. And, what is more, I believe that any effort to defend so preposterous and impertinent a proposition is bound to make many persons lawf ha-ha and to put the cross-marks of many other persons in trans-Wilsonic columns.

If laymen may commend and applaud a high judicial officer without impertinence, let the people of Baltimore show their respect and admiration for the Hon. Henry A. Middleton Smith, of North Carolina. Brought here for temporary service in a Federal court, he has begun work by showing unmistakably that he is a judge in his courtroom and not a mere valet and bottle-holder for lawyers. Impatient of quibbles and wind music, undismayed by parochial magnificoes, callous to prima donna virtuosity, disdainful of all buncombe, however lofty, he devotes himself to combating obfuscation and delay and to seeking out the facts.

Naturally enough, such a judge reduces the whole bar to painful amazement. In our Baltimore courts, efficiency of that sort is unheard of and almost unimaginable. There a lawyer is cock of the walk, hero of the play, to be courted, deferred to, admired. A technicality is everything and a fact is nothing. More and more our judges tend to become bored and helpless referees of recondite, incomprehensible and endless combats. A case at law begins as a chess game, proceeds as a fight of tom cats and ends as a joke. If there be enough money at stake, if the lawyers have interest enough to bring up every writ, it way drag out to the length of a geological epoch.

But Judge Smith breaks the spell. His aim, it appears, is not to plumb the depths of the law, not to wander enchanted through a maze of balderdash, but to find out whether the defendants did or did not commit the crime alleged. An astounding man! Something new under our Maryland sun!