The Hoover League wished to submit this editorial to the CRIMSON in the form of a comment or communication, but, as space did not permit the CRIMSON to print it, the League has had it published in this form for circulation.

Because of the editorial's clear and accurate statement of the issues involved in the campaign for Herbert Hoover, the League is reprinting it entire. It is significant that the New York World, a Democratic paper, comes out for Hoover regardless of what party may nominate him.

In the judgment of The World the best equipped and best qualified man to succeed Woodrow Wilson as President of the United States is Herbert C. Hoover.

We should be glad to support Mr. Hoover as the Democratic candidate for President on a platform that represented the historical principles of the Democratic Party. We should be glad to support him as an independent candidate on a platform of progressive liberalism. We should not hesitate to support him as the Republican candidate on a platform representing the kind of government which Mr. Hoover has exemplified in his public career.

Among the Democratic politicians the chief objection to Mr. Hoover is that he has been successively a Republican and a Progressive, but has never affilated with the Democratic organization, although he was appointed to office by President Wilson and was the most distinguished of all the President's lieutenants during the war.

Among Republican politicians the chief objection to Mr. Hoover is that he never was an organization Republican and that in the fall of 1918 he had the independence and courage to urge the election of a Congress that would work harmoniously with President Wilson. If the country had followed Mr. Hoover's wise and practical advice it would not today be the victim of a deadlocked Government which is virtually unable to function.

The partisan objections to Mr. Hoover are arguments in his favor. The American people are tired of professional politicians and disgusted with party politics. The old party lines have broken down so far as the rank and file of voters are concerned, and in respect to principles both parties are bankrupt. Although the spirit of partisanship has rarely been more bitter or more brutal, and never since Secession has it been more inimical to the welfare of the country, the battle of these warring politicians is a fictitious conflict.

Party Lines Have Broken Down.

Mr. Taft was Mr. Wilson's opponent for the Presidency in 1912; yet in so far as fundamental questions of government are concerned it would be difficult to detect any important differences between Mr. Taft and Mr. Wilson. Mr. Hughes was Mr. Wilson's opponent in 1916, and it would be equally difficult to detect any important differences between Mr. Hughes and Mr. Wilson. They might disagree about this policy or that policy; but in so far as their public utterances of the last three years are an index to their political principles, these differences would be personal rather than partisan in any true sense.

And if one wished to carry the parallel further he might well ask what there is to distinguish a Democrat like Attorney General Palmer from a Republican like Speaker Sweet of the New York Assembly. Both of them have set forth to establish a new doctrine of Prussianism which is a veritable crucifixion of the spirit of American institutions.

Abraham Lincoln declared in his First Inaugural that--

This country, with its institutions belongs to the people who inhabit it.

The Palmers and the Sweets are seeking to set up a wholly opposite theory, which is that the Government no longer belongs to the people, but that the people belong to the Government, and have acquired a subject status under which their most elementary rights and liberties can be denied whenever the Government itself undertakes to regard those rights and liberties as seditious or inimical.

It is needless to say that when Democrats and Republicans can unite in the advocacy of such a construction of the powers of government under free institutions and when Democrats and Republicans can unite in resisting such an invasion of American traditions, party lines have become artificial and party adherence has degenerated into a more matter of prejudice, habit, self-interest and cynicism.

Present Cleavage in Opinion Not Parallel With Parties.