CHAPTER III

WHY COX IS A CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT

James M. Cox is a candidate for President because he hopes to be the instrument of divine Providence in a great accomplishment.  He knows that the man who secures America’s adherence to the League of Nations is as certain of a permanent place in the scrolls of fame as those who laid the foundations of freedom or those who preserved it in the days of fiery trial.  To a famous correspondent, Mr. Herbert Corey, who put the question, “Why do you wish to be President?” The Governor has answered:  “It affords an opportunity to take hold of a knotty situation (the League) by the back of the neck and seat of the pants and shake a result out of it.”

The answer rings true to the man.  The candidate has called it an issue of supreme faith, elaborating his views in a recent communication to the “Christian Herald,” in which he has said: 

“’Fighting the good fight of faith’—­these words from the epistle to Timothy might well be our text for this campaign before the American people, which, within the limits of our strength, has been carried to every fireside in this broad land of ours.  Ours is a fight of faith—­faith with a world that accepted our statement of unselfish purpose, faith with fathers and mothers, wives and loved ones, who gave their sons, husbands and brothers to war upon war, faith with those who made sacrifice in homes, faith with those who toiled, faith with the living and faith with the dead.

“If there were in this contest nothing but the question of whether one or the other of two editors should sit in the seat of power, nothing but whether one organization or another should taste the sweets of office, we could not insist that there is involved a fight of faith.  There is, indeed, an issue between two views of government, one looking forward and the other backward.  But temporary control by one side or the other for a brief period of four years is not necessarily a supreme matter of faith.  We might try one or we might, in a spirit of experiment, try another.

“In speaking of this we would have our personal fortunes forgotten.  They are of transient interest to ourselves and we might say of less interest to others.  To hold the exalted office of President of the United States, to occupy the place of Washington, of Jefferson, of Lincoln, to be looked to for leadership in public questions, to be the first citizen in this great land is not a trifling but a gigantic ambition, worthy of all honest striving but involving, in the ordinary sense, no supreme issue.  So if personal reasons only animated us, we could not muster the temerity to state our case with the ardent zeal that controls us.

“But the motives that guide us are of greater import.  As leader of a great organization which has had its part in interpreting the aspirations of the American people, and in shaping Americanism through the generations we have been invested with a sacred commission, a mandate sanctified by the reckless bravery of our sons and ennobled by the heart impulses of our daughters.  Through circumstances not of our own choosing we have become the custodians of the honor of the nation, we have been called to fight the good fight of faith.