Pocahontas Star Herald

A New Birth of Freedom

The nomination of Woodrow Wilson for president means a new Democracy. It means a new epoch in American self government.

The Democratic party at last has broken its shackles. It has emancipated itself. It has rehabilitated itself in power and principle. It has turned its face to the rising sun, to re-establish the faith of the American people in their own institutions.

Woodrow Wilson will be the next president of the United States. But he will be more than that. He will be the first president of the United States in a generation to go into office owing favors to nobody except the American people and under obligations to nothing except the general welfare.

No political boss brought about his nomination. No political machine carried his candidacy to victory. No coterie of Wall street financiers provided the money to finance his campaign. He has no debt to pay to corrupt politics or to corrupt business. He was nominated by the irresistible force of public opinion, and by that alone. He stands before the country a free man.

The American people have set out to regain possession of their government, and Woodrow Wilson was nominated for president because he embodies that issue. The bosses and the plutocrats who tried to prevent his nomination were beaten by the power of the people, and the power that nominated him is the power that will elect him.

With Woodrow Wilson as the Democratic candidate for president it makes no difference what Mr. Roosevelt does. It makes no difference how many third parties he organizes.

Progressive Democrats and progressive Republicans now have a candidate of their own. The contest between Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Taft is now a contest for the control of the Republican organization, and nothing more. The menace of a third term no longer hangs over the country. The menace of personal government no longer threatens American institutions. The United States is not to be Mexicanized. It is to be re-Americanized.

It is because Gov. Wilson represents this vital principle that the World so persistently urged his nomination. It is because Gov. Wilson represents this principle that the opposition within the party was forced to surrender. It is because Gov. Wilson represents this principle that he will be triumphantly elected in November.

Such a man is imperatively needed. and the American people, true to their traditions in every crisis, have again found him.

Gov. Wilson's nomination means that the rule of the boss is over. It means that the partnership between corrupt politics and corrupt business in national politics is forcibly dissolved. It means that the old regime of protection to privilege and plutocracy is on the scaffold. It means that the old gods are dead.

The United States is back to the benediction pronounced by Abraham Lincoln on the battlefield of Gettysburg—'that this nation under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.'—New York World.