Roosevelt Is Wrong, Says La Follette.

New York Times 100 years ago today, July 13, 1912:
No Need for Third Party, Except for the Colonel's Desire for a Third Term.
BRYAN'S MORAL STRENGTH
He Sacrificed Himself to Progressive Cause—Neither Taft Nor Roosevelt Had Majority in Convention.
    WASHINGTON, July 12.— Senator La Follette, in an editorial in the current  number of La Follette's Weekly, has contrasted the behavior of Col. Roosevelt at Chicago and Mr. Bryan at Baltimore.
    "Bryan at Baltimore," he says, "foregoing all chance of his own nomination, marshaling all his forces, braving Tammany and the trusts to rescue his party from their domination, carrying the convention for the adoption of the most progressive Democratic platform yet offered and the nomination of the most progressive Democratic candidate available, was a towering figure of moral power and patriotic devotion to civic righteousness.
    "Roosevelt at Chicago, backed by money derived from the stock-watering operations of the Steel Trust and the Harvester Trust, organizing what are now confessed to have been fake contests as to nearly two hundred delegates in order to control the Republican Convention and secure his own nomination, refusing to aid in making a progressive platform, bound to have the nomination, or destroy the Republican Party, was a most striking example of misdirected power and unworthy ambition.
    "Roosevelt had as great an opportunity to serve the Progressive cause at Chicago, as Bryan had at Baltimore. But Roosevelt was serving the man, not the cause. He wanted one thing— he wanted the nomination. And yet he did not have enough votes to nominate himself upon any honest basis.
    "He did have enough delegates in that convention ultimately to have nominated a real Progressive and adopted a strong Progressive platform. He could even have nominated Hadley on such a platform, and Progressive Republicans could have supported Hadley in much the same spirit as hundreds of thousands of them will now support Wilson. Neither Hadley nor Wilson is a veteran in the Progressive ranks. Neither of them has been tried by the severest tests. Both appear to be men of high ideals, whose records, though short, give promise.
    "But Roosevelt would not consider Hadley. He would have no one but himself. At the first suggestion of Hadley, he ordered the third party manoeuvres, lest he lose his followers.
    "If he had the evidence to prove that Taft could not be honestly and fairly nominated, why did he not direct his lieutenants to present that evidence to the National Committee, and then to the convention and the country, so clearly that the convention would not have dared to nominate Taft, and that Taft could not, in honor, have accepted the nomination if made?
    "The reason is obvious. An analysis of the testimony will, I am convinced, show that neither Taft nor Roosevelt had a majority of honestly or regularly elected delegates. This the managers upon both sides well understood.
    "Each candidate was trying to seat a sufficient number of fraudulently credentialed delegates, added to those regularly chosen, to support him, to secure control of the convention, and 'steam roll' the nominations. It was a proceeding with which each was acquainted, and which each had sanctioned in prior conventions.
    "This explains the extraordinary conduct of Roosevelt. He could not enter upon such analysis of the evidence as would prove Taft's regularly elected delegates in the minority without inevitably subjecting his own spuriously credentialed delegates to an examination so critical as would expose the falsity of his own contention that he had an honestly elected majority of the delegates.
    "He therefore deliberately chose to claim everything, to cry fraud, to bully the National Committee and the convention, and, having thus created a condition which would make impossible a calm investigation of cases upon merit, carry the convention by storm.
    "That this is the true psychology of the Roosevelt proceedings becomes perfectly plain. He was there to force his own nomination, or smash the convention. He was not there to preserve the integrity of the Republican Party and make it an instrument for the promotion of Progressive principles and the restoration of government to the people. Otherwise he would have directed his floor managers to contest every inch of the ground for a Progressive platform before the Committee on Resolutions and in the open convention.
    "But Mr. Roosevelt was not governed by a suggestion of that spirit of high patriotic and unselfish purpose of which Bryan furnished a magnificent example one week later in the Democratic Convention at Baltimore. Instead he filled the public ear with sound and fury. He ruthlessly sacrificed everything to the one idea of his being the one candidate. He gagged his followers in the convention without putting on record any facts upon which the public could base a definite, intelligent judgment regarding the validity of Taft's nomination.
    "He submitted no suggestion as to a platform of Progressive principles. He clamored loudly for purging the convention 'roll' of tainted delegates, without purging his own candidacy of his tainted contests and his tainted trust support. He offered no reason for a third party excepting his own overmastering craving for a third term."