THE WISCONSIN ELECTION

For the first time since the declaration of war a year ago a representative American electorate is given the opportunity to express its opinion on the issues and conduct of the struggle. In the three-cornered senatorial campaign which ends at the polls today the Wisconsin voters will choose between Len-root, a Republican who supports the war but who reserves judgment regarding its conduct, Davis, who is an out-and-out Administration Democrat, and Berger, a Socialist who runs on the astounding platform that "the American army should be immediately withdrawn from Europe to give complete security to the United States and a general peace negotiated."

The election is interesting not because the vote of a Democrat or a Republican or a Socialist more or less will have any effect upon the legislation of the Senate, but because it will indicate the change, or lack of change, in sentiment in that hitherto pacifistic state. More than half the representatives from Wisconsin voted against declaring war last April and the legislature has only been induced after the lapse of a year to censure the notoriously disloyal La Follette. While the majority of the press and public men have since come out in support of the Government's war policy, it remains for the inarticulate mass of voters, protected by the secrecy of the ballot box, to express the true verdict of the state. The election returns will indicate, more clearly than can newspapers or public speakers, whether the Germans of the Northwest, whose loyalty has been questioned, and the Northwestern farmers, on whose efforts so much of our success must depend, will wholeheartedly support the nation in its sacrifice for democracy.