Today -100: June 8, 1916: Of wabbling warfare, unperturbed hugheses, little rooms, and hooge villages

I really want to know who the NYT correspondent at the Republican Convention is, because I’m really enjoying his prose: “Somewhere between 12,000 and 14,000 graven images gathered together in the Coliseum at 11 o’clock this morning and viewed each other with cold, unwinking eyes and chilled steel faces for something like three hours, then dispersed. During those three hours they demonstrated convincingly the hitherto unrealized powers of the human race in the matter of not getting excited.” Sen. Warren G. Harding of Ohio is the temporary chairman and gave a temporary speech. The correspondent makes fun of his arm gestures. Harding does his favorite thing, alliteration, although nothing like that of his speech at the 1912 convention. He accuses D’s of “the mistaken policy of watchful waiting and wabbling warfare.”

Headline of the Day -100:

The Progressive Party is also holding a convention in Chicago. There are 93 minutes of cheering for Theodore Roosevelt (who isn’t even there, although he was listening by telephone), a record in party convention history, although it took floor managers with whips and cattle-prods to produce it, the whole convention being nothing more than cover while Bull Moose leaders negotiate with Republican leaders behind closed doors in a little room. “But when the call came for a prolonged and triumphant shout of coming victory, the triumphant note was lacking. The delegates were thinking of that little room. Yet it was a throng eager to be enthusiastic. No men ever worked more loyally, diligently, and doggedly to be enthusiastic for a longer time than any group of men before them. Even before the major demonstration began the delegates were plainly waiting for the minute that would certainly come and sweep them into the old delirium. In little groups they stood about the floor watching for the spark to fall. They had not forgotten the fervor of four years ago. They remembered it poignantly, hoping it would come again. The leaders had set the stage for that fervor, but they only staged a memory.” That said, the Michigan delegation sang “This is Teddy, we declare / Sure it’s Teddy; he’s a bear,” so there’s that.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Was Donald Trump’s grandfather a German army officer?

NYPD Police Commissioner Arthur Woods admits that the police tap unions’ phones.

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