The Donaldsonville Chief

Postmaster General Payne says that the matter of naming the Mississippi office was not brought to the attention of President Roosevelt at all: that the president had no knowledge of the case nor of the decision reached, and that the postoffice authorities are alone responsible for the action taken. It was concluded—and most righteously—that a man who could be guilty of uttering and printing such language about the president's mother or any other woman was unworthy of even the little honor of having a country cross-roads post-office named for him, and every self-respecting man and woman in the country, irrespective of political or personal bias, ought to applaud and indorse the decision.

The Chief is pleased to note that by no means all of its democratic contemporaries that have commented upon this incident agree with the Picayune's view. On the contrary, there are very many dissentients, and their number will undoubtedly increase when the facts become more fully and generally known. The New Orleans Item, for instance, says:

Mrs. Roosevelt was a Southern woman with the highest social position and with a host of relatives and ardent admirers in Georgia and South Carolina. She had two brothers in the Confederate navy. Her noble qualities as a woman, the angelic purity of her character, should have caused the dirty pen of a partisan scribbler to drop from his paralyzed hand before penning an allusion which was devoid of wit and remarkable only for its reeking vulgarity. It is inconceivable how any one could expect the friends of Mr. Roosevelt to honor a man who had sought, either wittingly or unwittingly, to dishonor the memory of his mother.

The Baton Rouge Times, official journal of the state, unequivocally indorses the action of the postoffice authorities and closes a forcible editorial on the subject with these plain words:

Upon its face it seems preposterous that the great state of Mississippi has elected governor a man whose instincts are of that low order which permits of the indulgence of such language as that attributed to Jas. K. Vardaman. The same words, printed about the mother of any true man, no matter from what portion of the country he hails, no matter in what position he stands, entitle the man who utters them to a coat of tar and feathers rather than the honors which have fallen to Vardaman.