POLITICAL MEETINGS IN AMERICA

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 3652, 12 October 1912, Page 9

POLITICAL MEETINGS IN AMERICA

THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN'

By a Correspondent to the “Times.")

From now onwards till election day, with a partial intermission during the hot weather, the American Presidential campaign begins to go full blast. In tactics and strategy, in organisation and methods, it is remarkably unlike a general election in Groat Britain. Wo have nothing at all resembling the American system of nominating candidates; our parties do not assemble in conventions and formulate “platforms" that are held to ho binding on each and all of their members; we are far behind the Americans in the technique of electioneering-

There is, however, one weapon of offenco which is common to the campaign of both nations —the mass meeting. Here- again, the advantage of sizo and of superior organisation is with the Americans. Audiences of from 20,000 to 30,000 people are nothing out of tho way; specially erected buildings are often run up for their accommodation; and the speaker of the evening if he is a real “spellbinder," is not unlikely to receive for his effort as high a fee as l-OOOdol. WOMEN AND POLITICS. • An English spectator at such a gathering notes at once tho comparative paucity of women. Indeed, all through a Presidential election women play a much less significant and effective part than in our own political campaigns. There is nothing in tiie United States that corresponds to tho Primrose League, just as there is

nothing that corresponds to the Carlton or National Liberal Club; and the social- earthquake that accompanies a general election in Great Britain is unknown in America, where politics and society, to the loss of both, are all hut wholly unconnected. American women have, it is true, appeared as duly accredited delegates to the National Convention; the Prohibitionists not merely countenance, but welcome their co-operation; in the anti-slavery agitation of the fifties tliey tocv an honorable and stimulating part, and of late years they have shown an increasing desire to intervene in municipal elections in opposition to the regular parties and on behalf of the independent candidate. But as a sex they stand almost altogether aloof from active participation in national politics. They rarely appear on the platform as spectators, and still more rarely on the stump as speakers; and no party has yet discovered their immense usefulness and devotion as canvassers.

WAR-CRIES AND CAT-CALLS

In other "ways, however, the preliminaries of a political meeting in the States are considerably more entertaining than in England. Most arresting of all are the groat national cries and counter cries. A man gets up, when the spirit moves him, and yells, “What's the matter with Roosevelt?” or whoever may happen to be his political deity. Back comes the answer from the 20,000 long and slowdrawn emphasising the first word and rising slightly on the last. “He's all right!” Then a pause, and “Who s all right?” demands a man. “Roosevelt!” shriek the 20,000, backing their opinion with volleys of cheers. Or perhaps someone may propound the time-honored conundrum, “Who was George Washington?” This is the signal for an immense stamping of feet, over which surges the brisk, unanimous response, like 20.000 drums beating marching time, “First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts or his countrymen.” These cat-calls are very American in more ways than one. They are trivial to the point of puerility; yet they are exceedingly effective, and they show the orderliness and good-humor of the American people in allowing the question to be put and the answer given without interruption. After an hour or so of these exercises the audience has worked itself up into a state of expectation that an uninitiated Englishman would regard as the forerunner of an exciting, if not a- turbulent meeting. But the sequel would very rarely square with his anticipations. It is not that the audience lias exhausted its energies. The cheering—and, by the by, those who have not heard Americans cheer do not know what cheering is—and the flag-waving, and the vocal outburst continues to the very end. But when once a meeting has been formally opened, and the set speeches are in process of delivery, the custom of public life in America ordains that they should he listened to without open dissent. Just when an English audience wakes up to its duty of making things hum, and insists on any active share in the proceedings at which it is assisting, an American audience lapses into an attitude nor. unlike that of spectators at a play. They are there to witness an entertainment, not to take part in one. It is for the man on the platform to speak, and for them to listen. The orator of the occasion would be only less taken aback than a parson in his pulpit or an actor on the stage, if someone were to arise in the body of the hall and attempt,to argue with him. Americans regard heckling as bad manners. It is this sort of thing that makes America the paradise of tiie political speaker. He has everything his own way, and whatever he says “goes.” If he fails to please he is not informed of the fact with our brutal British directness. He is not told to. “Shut up!" or “Sit down!” His voice is not drowned in a universal shuffling of feet and sticks, in angry coughs and protestations. He never has to do battle with the incomparable interjections of a voice. In the rapidly emptying seats he will find the sole, but, at the same time the sufficient, proof of his incompetence. There are times when one suffers agonies of boredom, and longs for tho uprising of a pertinacious heckler, and resents the deference paid to these eloquent despots. Nor is it altogether for the benefit of the speaker himself that lie should be immune

from interruption. Much, of the partisanship and almost all the highfalutin 5 that disfigure American political oratory are due to the speaker's consciousness that he is not going to be called to account on the spot, and that the more he exaggerates the louder will he the applause.