The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox | Page 5

which appears
signed to all official documents is James M. Cox. The Middleton seems
to have had its origin in a bit of journalistic levity, probably having
reference to Middletown, Ohio, the city in which he got his early
training as a newspaper reporter.
The Governor's family consists of his wife, a little daughter, Anne, who
is slightly less than a year old, a married daughter, Mrs. Daniel J.
Mahoney of Dayton, and two sons, James M. Jr., and John, age ten.
While the Governor's devotion to the equal suffrage cause has been of
many years' standing, the interests of Mrs. Cox are of a domestic nature.
The time not devoted to her baby daughter is spent in the outdoors, he
hobby being her garden.

CHAPTER III
WHY COX IS A CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT
James M. Cox is a candidate for President because he hopes to be the
instrument of divine Providence in a great accomplishment. He knows
that the man who secures America's adherence to the League of
Nations is as certain of a permanent place in the scrolls of fame as
those who laid the foundations of freedom or those who preserved it in
the days of fiery trial. To a famous correspondent, Mr. Herbert Corey,
who put the question, "Why do you wish to be President?" The

Governor has answered: "It affords an opportunity to take hold of a
knotty situation (the League) by the back of the neck and seat of the
pants and shake a result out of it."
The answer rings true to the man. The candidate has called it an issue
of supreme faith, elaborating his views in a recent communication to
the "Christian Herald," in which he has said:
"'Fighting the good fight of faith'--these words from the epistle to
Timothy might well be our text for this campaign before the American
people, which, within the limits of our strength, has been carried to
every fireside in this broad land of ours. Ours is a fight of faith--faith
with a world that accepted our statement of unselfish purpose, faith
with fathers and mothers, wives and loved ones, who gave their sons,
husbands and brothers to war upon war, faith with those who made
sacrifice in homes, faith with those who toiled, faith with the living and
faith with the dead.
"If there were in this contest nothing but the question of whether one or
the other of two editors should sit in the seat of power, nothing but
whether one organization or another should taste the sweets of office,
we could not insist that there is involved a fight of faith. There is,
indeed, an issue between two views of government, one looking
forward and the other backward. But temporary control by one side or
the other for a brief period of four years is not necessarily a supreme
matter of faith. We might try one or we might, in a spirit of experiment,
try another.
"In speaking of this we would have our personal fortunes forgotten.
They are of transient interest to ourselves and we might say of less
interest to others. To hold the exalted office of President of the United
States, to occupy the place of Washington, of Jefferson, of Lincoln, to
be looked to for leadership in public questions, to be the first citizen in
this great land is not a trifling but a gigantic ambition, worthy of all
honest striving but involving, in the ordinary sense, no supreme issue.
So if personal reasons only animated us, we could not muster the
temerity to state our case with the ardent zeal that controls us.

"But the motives that guide us are of greater import. As leader of a
great organization which has had its part in interpreting the aspirations
of the American people, and in shaping Americanism through the
generations we have been invested with a sacred commission, a
mandate sanctified by the reckless bravery of our sons and ennobled by
the heart impulses of our daughters. Through circumstances not of our
own choosing we have become the custodians of the honor of the
nation, we have been called to fight the good fight of faith.
"We as a party willed otherwise. In the face of bigoted denials of our
good faith we sought only concord of all our people in the tasks of
American in the world. There was glory enough for all and we never
advanced the claim that it was a partisan matter until the fact had been
established through long and weary months of purposeful
misunderstanding and unconscionable intrigue for party advantage by
our opponents. There is in this no suggestion of unkind sentiments
toward our leading adversaries. We can utter the sentiment voiced on
the hill above Jerusalem and when America has come to