National Committee went out a bulletin weekly to the newspapers in the districts of these men telling of this program and how their Congressmen were supporting it. In In the Committee rooms were conferences. And a program of tax reduction, spectacular and fundamental, a program calling a recreant majority to account for its public appointees was put through-one of the most brilliant pieces of minority tactics and minority service our Congressional history can show. And the Democrats went into the "Madison Square Garden" Convention of 1924 with a great piece of good work done, with a fine organization by Congressional districts. And then what happened? The delegates there assembled deliberately forgot this program and this record and their responsibility for both and selected their champion without regard to the past record or the future leadership of the party. If, instead of turning their whole attention toward expressing their religious, racial and alcoholic prejudices in their choice of a candidate, these delegates had counseled together and decided that what they wanted was not only a challenger to single combat but a leader who would conduct his campaign on the record of his party in Congress, who would lend his gifts to the reëlection of as many of those Congressmen as possible, and who would then become the leader, either as the chairman of the National Committee or as a Congressman himself, of his party in Congress, then, no matter what happened to that nominee in the Presidential election the program would have gone on, the party

would have grown in strength, and this year of our Lord 1928 would find it more virile, more articulate, and considerably nearer success. For even though it might not be yet trained up to the weight necessary to wrest the executive branch of government from the champion, it would be successful to the extent of having stood before the people for the program which it believed to be in the best interest of the people, of having waged battle and made a record.

But what did happen? Though a brilliant man was chosen candidate and sent out as a David against a Republican Goliath, his challenge was but another incident. Having received the honor and done his best-and it was a brilliant and courageous best-he retired once more to his own place, leaving the party, of necessity, leaderless. For he had been chosen only as a challenger, not as a program maker. Yet his defeat disheartened his followers; such Congressmen as survived felt they did it on their own; and the program was forgotten.

This is of interest to-day only if it has a lesson for the future. Once more the Democratic party will have its opportunity. Soon delegates will be called to name another champion. They may, on the one hand, seek to name as challenger of the Republican nominee for the Presidency a man who will epitomize for the majority of the party some idea-that of personal liberty, for instance-or a man who appeals to them for his qualities of character or of personality; they may award the nomination as a reward for good administration in a gubernatorial place; or they

may give it because they think a man has a really good chance to knock out his opponent. And no one could criticize them for that. Or, failing to agree, they may come to compromise on a man of high moral character and ability, and no one can blame them for that. In either case their candidate, failing of election, becomes an incident and once more the party of the opposition is adrift. On the other hand, they could get together-those men who believe in an opposition, who believe that the time has come to stop emasculation and nullification of Congress by the Executive, who believe the Republicans care naught for Congress if they may control the Executive, who think it more important to fight for the preservation of the power of that branch most close to the people, and they might say: "Our future lies in Congress. What we want is a standard-bearer for the Congressional elections, a candidate whose name at the head of the ticket will help every Congressman on it, who has the confidence and admiration of all Congressmen, who will be the leader of his party not only if elected but also if defeated, who, if not elected, may perhaps if not the chairman of the National Committee, if not a member of the House-be a man who can and will advise the chairman of the National Committee, a man whose opinion will be sought and whose advice will be taken and who can outline a program for the Congressmen he has helped to elect." For then out of defeat will come usefulness, will come attainment, and even who knows-in time victory.

Although such a nominee might have as good a chance of election as one of the incidental variety, he might, of course, prove to be a sacrifice. But sacrifice candidacies are like sacrifice hits. There is always a chance to get to "first," but even when one does not, the sacrifice leads to something. Incidental candidacies lead nowhere. What the Democratic party needs is a leader, a national leader. A national leader must make a business of leading. He must have a goal. He must keep after it in defeat as in victory.

National leaders, professional leaders. Will the Democratic party use its nomination this year to develop one, or will this nomination, too, be an incident in some man's career? There are such leaders at hand. Not one but several. Found, of course, in the Congress, for there only, or in an editorial office, can be found one who is devoting himself to leadership in public affairs as a profession. Into the making of one real leader there must, however, go the sacrifice of all hopefully waiting ones, the would-be leaders. But then no real leader watchfully waits. He sees a goal. He starts for it. He urges others to start for it. And lo, he is a leader. But in following this leader the followers should ask, "Whither? To a challenge for the championship or a long fight, a steady fight for ascendancy?"

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Do I advocate return to the old system of nominating by Congressional caucus? Not entirely. For this leader would be chosen by the convention of delegates from the same districts as those which choose

the Congressmen. And thus the people back home would be behind both. Since Congressmen may not be inclined to get together on their own account, this might be a good way to force cohesion. Delegates would want their Congressmen to stand back of the leader they chose and the Congressmen would soon discover it. In fact, this may be one way by which Democrats may obviate some of the bad effects of the primaries on party organization.

Do I forget all the academic objections to the deadlocks arising from Congresses in opposition to the President, which make it impossible to accomplish anything and to fix responsibility? By no means. But since we have seen Congresses of the same party as the President block his will, what argument is that? Besides, for what was the legislative check designed but for use in just such an extremity, when it seems impossible to break the hold of one party on the Executive? Why was Congress to be close to the people except that it should be easier for a minority to become a majority through Congressional

elections? Why was it to be elected every two years but that it should be made responsive to the popular mood, when the Executive might not? Why, indeed, a legislative branch at all if it is not to differ from the executive? Certainly the Democrats must feel that the time has come when they may use this check, when they may strive through the legislative to speak their will.

In a government like Great Britain's where the executive is responsive to the legislative branch and both directly to the people, such a policy would be impossible, but where the two are elected by different processes, one of which it seems well-nigh impossible for one party to negotiate, surely good sense dictates that this party should seek control of that branch which is elected by a process it can negotiate. Good sense and good patriotism, too. For after all, discounting all the merely commercial politicians among them, the reason that Democrats desire their party to have a rôle must be because they believe it is the party that can best serve the interests of their country.

T

HE song is vaguely associated with troop trains crowded with soldiers clad in blue, whose officers had a broad white stripe down the seam of each trouser-leg. It seems now that it must have rung in the ears of a small boy in North Carolina who stood by the railroad tracks wide-eyed, hoping to catch a bit of hard-tack flung from a car window with "Just from Cuba" written upon it. Perhaps the rollicking air postdates the Spanish war, but I hope not. I prefer to believe that I heard it the first time bellowed from the leather lungs of the infantry. It suits them so admirably: "I got a gal in Baltimo' Street-cars run right by her do', Turkey-red carpet on the flo'. . ."

The city meant nothing to me then, and not much a few years later when, as a gangling school-boy, I joined with others in issuing impassioned pleas to be carried "Back, back, back to Baltimore." But its name was a sonorous, mouth-filling vocable, and presently as the world began to impinge upon the consciousness of a growing lad, it began to gather other associations. There was a Baltimore boat running out of practically every South Atlantic port. There were consignments from

Baltimore to most of the village merchants. There were trips to Baltimore by these same merchants. Presently there was a Baltimore fire of such tremendous magnitude that the old Charlotte "Observer,” driven into a frenzy of excitement, shattered all precedents by printing a twocolumn head on the front page!

A little later our State went dry in a sort of tentative, cautious fashion. There were no saloons any more, but postal facilities were adequate; and presently some philosopher observed that to judge by shipments through the express-office, North Carolina lived exclusively on fish and whisky, both shipped from Baltimore. Then a sinister phrase crept into one's consciousness; people, grave-faced, would say of a neighbor, "They have taken him to Baltimore," and the mood induced was precisely that in which The Preacher must have written, "Man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets." One realized without being told that it was practically all up with the poor fellow, and the family physician,

his own resources exhausted, was reduced to conjuring with those magic names, Osler, Halsted, Welch and Kelly.

There was a superior person whom one scorned publicly but admired.

filled Uncle Ben, who was crippled by a Minié ball at Sharpsburg, with positively pious fervor. Baltimore might have her stains, but her streetmobs had fallen furiously on the soldiers of the Union in 1861, however much might be forgiven her. Her heart was in the right place.

And then, somehow, Baltimore seemed to get lost. The giant of the North bit by bit absorbed her radiance, and she slid out of the consciousness of the South. People's studiedly casual references began to be to Fifth Avenue and the WaldorfAstoria, instead of to Charles Street and the Rennert. The railroads throttled the Baltimore boat lines. The Anti-Saloon League throttled the whisky business. "East side, West side, all about the town" drowned out "Turkey-red carpet on the flo'," and small boys who had stood wide-eyed while the blue-clad

soldiers passed, grew up themselves to go swarming in dun-colored garments down to the sea at Hoboken while the bands played "Over There." The very term "Sunpaper" became strange in ears accustomed to "Woild, Hur'ld 'n' Amurrican." Baltimore faded into an old refrain sung by voices already faint and rapidly vanishing in the distance of many years: "I got a gal in Balt-"

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Enter, then, along about the year 1913, a professorial gentleman, laughing. He held a copy of the Baltimore "Sun" to which he invited attention in a surreptitious and picaresque fashion; for, being a professorial gentleman, he was not quite sure he had a right to laugh. The article which he pointed out was a report of a revival meeting lately held by the Rev. Billy Sunday. The story carried a by-line which held no significance until the article had been read; but when he had read it, the reader, utterly bemused, returned to the by-line and stared at it, knowing that a new planet had swum into his ken. It read, "By H. L. Mencken." Shortly thereafter a book appeared containing, among others, an essay entitled, "The Sahara of the Bozart." That essay whipped away in a breath the mists of antiquity that were settling around Baltimore in the eyes of the South, and endowed the city again with a startling, but distinct, individuality. Patriots damned Baltimore with damns both loud and long, but they thought about it again, and that before they began to fear they had cancer of the stomach.

So this was Baltimore Unvisited— a cosmopolis from which the ancient