DRAMATIC MR. DAVIS

Consciously or unconsciously Mr. John W. Davis is instilling the idea of English Parliamentary government into the people of this country. In a speech in Illinois he told his hearers that if he were elected, he would spend the first two years cleaning house, and ridding the government of corruption. He also said that if at the end of that time he had not kept his promise, he would call a special election, and ask the people to repeat their vote of protest. It is significant that it is Mr. Davis who is to decide whether government is once more free and unspotted.

But a special election is not necessary, nor could it conceivably do any good. If the corruption is in Congress, where presumably Mr. Davis could not get at it, there is a regular election within two years. Since Mr. Davis is making his whole fight on republican corruption he should not have accepted the Democratic nomination if he thought that he would be an incapable spring cleaner. Attacking corruption in places under the control of the office for which one is contending implies an ability to deal adequately with the situation if one is elected.

The idea of a special election is intensely dramatic, and is the more surprising coming from Mr. Davis. Senator La Follette has the keenest dramatic instinct of all the Presidential candidates, and he was certainly the logical man to propose a special election. Senator La Follette has also set a time limit to the house-cleaning he will do if elected but being less conservative than Mr. Davis has stipulated eighteen months as his maximum. President Coolidge has said nothing about corruption. Being the most conservative of the candidates, he would doubtless place his estimate at four years. Perhaps, since he is the only person in a position to know, he thinks that no length of time would be sufficient.