Washington, July 16.
In every part of the country and among all classes of people the Democratic National Convention excited a much keener interest than did the Republican. It was taken for granted that the latter would consign President Wilson and all his works to everlasting perdition, vould applaud the rejection of the Treaty of Versailles by the Republicans in the Senate, would dodge the prohibition and every other awkward question, and finally select a candidate for the presidency from among a couple of dozen mediocre politicians, among whom there was little to choose.
On the other hand, it was confidently expected that the Democratic Convention would be the scene of a bitter struggle between the supporters of President Wilson and the followers of the irrepressible Mr. Bryan; would make clear the extent to which a disposition to agree to substantial reservations in the Treaty in order to secure its: ratification existed among the rank and file of the party; would probably declare in favour of some! relaxation of the stringency of the prohibition enforcement law, and would select from among three or four men of more or less strong individuality its candidate for the presidency, in succession to that unique personality who has for eight years governed—I use that word advisedly—the party and the country.
Brarine rue Ornsr Frtiow.
How the invisible hand of a senatorial clique so directed the proceedings of the Republican Convention as to render inevitable the nomination of one of its own colleagues entirely without popular following, in order by his election to the presidency—if that could be accomplished—to arrest the waning power of the Senate in national affairs, was told in my letter of June 24. I must now state briefly how the Democratic Convention defined the position of the party it represented on the great questions of the day, and how after 43 fruitless ballots it came on the 44th to make the choice it did for the coming struggle for the presidency.
It is a lamentable fact that at both conventions the question with the delegates was not which of the candidates for nomination possessed in the highest degree the qualifications most essential to a president, nor even, to put it on a lower plane, which of them was most likely to lead the party to victory. It was simply, in plain every-day speech, "how to beat the other' fellow." Just as at the Republican Convention the adherents of the leading candidates indulged in umwar. rantable and almost unpardonable personalities regarding one another's leaders that would hardly have been thought possible among delegates all calling themselves Republicans, so at. the Democratic Convention much bitterness was engendered in the struggle for nomination.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.