CHARLES EVANS HUGHES

BY PUBLIUS

AFTER Coolidge, Who? Since it became clear that the President could not be forced to stultify himself by letting others organize to run him when he had said he did not choose to run, several booms held in readiness have been unleashed by their trainers. But behind all this industrious fostering of candidacies for the Republican nomination is clearly manifest a widespread feeling that Charles E. Hughes is the best and strongest candidate that the Republicans can name to succeed Mr. Coolidge.

Mr. Hughes has no machine of propaganda. No friend of his knows that he wants the nomination, or indeed, with certainty, that he would accept it. Here is no opportune bourgeoning of a carefully nurtured political plant, but a spontaneous tribute to character and ability, a turning to him with confidence in his statesmanship and faith in his power of appeal to the voters. This is all the more impressive in that it is not for the most part founded on enthusiasm and personal loyalty. Leaders like Henry Clay, James G. Blaine, and Theodore Roosevelt had the quality of inspiring romantic political attachment. Mr. Hughes has never established or sought such hold on the emotions of his countrymen. Nor has he built up a following by the familiar device of hooking other men's ambitions and interests with his own. Unpossessed of even a nucleus of political organization, unaided by ingratiating arts, nevertheless, more persons in the United States today would designate him as our foremost statesman than would so name any other man.

For more than twenty years since he was first seen in public life they have watched him with increasing respect and admiration. They know beyond question his honesty, his rare disinterestedness, his power of analysis, his clarity of thinking, his steadfastness and poise, and his constructive ability in dealing with difficult domestic and foreign problems. His first public service was

the correction of corporation abuses, the fair adjustment of rates for millions of consumers of gas, and the protection of insurance policy holders scattered through the whole country. As Governor of New York he enforced effective regulation of public service corporations at the very center of corporate influence. He challenged the entrenched habit of treating party leadership as a private perquisite. These policies brought him enmity that still persists. But the great body of people who were not interested in the selfish schemes of franchise holders or political bosses, honored him for the enemies he had made. They reëlected him Governor in spite of the determinations of politicians to set him aside, and his Governorship is one of the inspiring chapters in the history of New York.

On the bench of the United States Supreme Court he gave six years of distinguished service, and unwillingly reëntered politics solely because he could not decline an unsought nomination for the Presidency when he appeared to be the only man who could heal the Progressive-Republican schism. He coöperated loyally with his rival of that campaign in the war, and was called upon by the Administration for several important tasks. His masterly analysis of the virtues and the defects of the League of Nations Covenant first pointed the way to moderate reservations, which would have resulted in a happy adjustment of that controversy but for the extremists of both sides. His record of four years as Secretary of State is one of brilliant achievement. To him the world owes the unexpected success of the Washington Conference and the only practical progress yet made for the limitation of naval armaments. At a time when international relations are more important than ever before in our history, such leadership as his, at once firm, self-respecting, clear-headed, conciliatory and benevolent, would be of the greatest usefulness to our own people and the greatest promise to the rest of the world.

To meet our domestic problems, he is also admirably equipped. He is a national, not a sectional, figure. He understands the problems of great business, but never has been the slave of business. The corporations that have sought his legal advice because they recognized his great ability have most often seen it demonstrated in curbing business abuses. His judicial temperament

and habit of thoroughgoing study of all questions presented to him give assurance of fair dealing to every class and section. His whole career has been one of militant championship of justice and impartial dealing.

But all this perhaps is scarcely worth saying. It is too obvious and undisputed. Even his enemies acknowledge his eminent abilities and pay the tribute of resentment to the unbending rectitude of his character. In a world of practical politics the men who rule national conventions ask about availability. What are Mr. Hughes's powers as a vote getter? How can he be nominated without the possession of a political machine? The answer to both questions is in his past campaigns. He has never sought an office. He has always been drafted because the politicians found their party needed him. His first nomination, that for Mayor of New York, was made by a convention that hoped to use his prestige as an insurance investigator to defeat Tammany, but he refused to let that work, then under way, be dragged into politics. He did not seek the Governorship, but was nominated because party leaders considered him the strongest candidate they could find, and popular confidence in him was such that he was elected when every other candidate with him on the State ticket was defeated. Two years later, the political bosses whom he had antagonized, because he took seriously his pledges of independence, thought all was fixed to put him on the shelf; but, though they controlled the State Convention, they did not dare burden the national campaign in other States as well as New York with the odium of rejecting him. He not only won the election for himself by an increased plurality, despite the disaffection of some politicians and of the sporting element in the Republican cities, but his aid of Mr. Taft was one of the noteworthy features of that campaign. His speech at Youngstown, Ohio, was the most powerful argument made during the whole struggle, and its merciless analysis of Mr. Bryan's anti-trust and banking proposals, which had a specious appeal and were the particular pride of the Nebraskan, was so completely demolishing that nothing more was heard of them from the Democrats.

Again, in 1916, party leaders, including some in New York, despite their grievances over encounters with an independent

Governor, turned to him as the man best fitted to heal the division created in 1912. True, he was defeated, but he polled 928, 000 more votes than were cast for Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Taft together in 1912, and 859,000 more votes than were cast by a united and triumphant party for Mr. Taft in 1908. He was defeated through no failure or fault of his own, but by conditions beyond control. No possible campaign of his could counteract the effect of the Wilson cry: "He kept us out of war!" Even Mr. Roosevelt's great popularity in the West, where he spoke in that campaign, could not convince the voters that they had any responsibility in Europe. The Republicans lost Kansas because the issues of the war were dimly perceived there, and the Republican farmers, prosperous from the demand for their produce, were persuaded that nothing would induce Mr. Wilson to enter the struggle. The Democrats had the advantage of posing as guardians of prosperity and peace, while the Republicans were handicapped by the fear that their victory meant war. Mr. Hughes was criticized for excessive moderation by ardent ProAllies in the East, but aside from political expediency, no man with a sense of patriotism would enter the White House, even if he could, committed by his campaign to foreign partisanship. Despite that difficulty, he carried the East by impressive majorities.

He faced an impossible situation with a large part of the country still under the spell of Mr. Wilson's soon-to-be-abandoned pacifism. And yet he almost won. He lost California and the election solely because the "Old Guard" leaders in that State did not keep their pledges not to let faction interfere with the national campaign, but tried to use Mr. Hughes and his visit there as an asset in their fight in the Senatorial primary against Hiram Johnson, by parading themselves as the exclusive friends of the candidate. Mr. Hughes sought to show every courtesy to Mr. Johnson, but before the slights to the latter's friends by the machine managers were discovered, the impression had been created that determined them to make Mr. Johnson's victory emphatic by contrast with the vote for the national ticket.

The prejudice against running a defeated candidate is pure superstition. It if had been regarded, Grover Cleveland would

never have been President a second time, and Alfred E. Smith would not have been restored to the Governor's chair and put on the road to a Presidential nomination. Mr. Hughes's prestige today is far greater than it was in 1916. He is wiser, he has mingled more with men, he has outlived many old antagonisms, he has dealt more with large affairs. He has become not only a national, but a world, personality. And he is probably the only Republican, except President Coolidge, who can be looked to with confidence to carry New York against Governor Smith.

He has never lost the State, but every time he has gone before its people they have given him increased pluralities. In 1916 he had 119,800 plurality, while the best Governor Smith has done in a Presidential year, when the rural Republican vote comes out, was 108,000, in 1924. In 1920 Mr. Smith lost the State by 74,000. Even his off-year pluralities of 385,000 in 1922, and 247,000 in 1926, do not appear so remarkable when the greater ease of getting out the city vote at such times and the fact that the electorate has been almost doubled by woman suffrage, thus tending to double old time pluralities, are considered. The suggestion of friends of some Western candidates that New York is not needed for Republican victory, is a counsel of temerity. However reluctant Southern Democrats may be to vote for Governor Smith, it is chimerical to suppose that he would lose any one of the Southern States, with the possible exception of Kentucky and Tennessee, and he would be strong in New Jersey and Massachusetts. Mr. Hughes would be stronger than any Republican mentioned to succeed Mr. Coolidge in the East, and, pitted against Governor Smith and the sidewalks of New York, would need to fear no defections in the West.

If, when the National Convention meets, the Republicans as in 1920 foresee certain victory, they are likely to do as they did then, pick some favorite son in a midnight conference. But if, as now seems probable, they face a hard and doubtful campaign against a candidate who inspires enthusiasm and is thought of by thousands of the plain people as one of themselves, the problem, even for friends of other men will be: Can they get on without Mr. Hughes?