Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler has an inveterate habit, to the suandal of mere politicians and pussyfooters, of saying what he thinks and of thinking clearly before he says it. In a statement issued at Chicago he exhibits the presidential preference primary in all its futility and impotence

It has failed, as it was bound to fall. It is unsound in theory, unworkable in practice, and as un American as any political device that has yet been suggested by anybody. This system has invited, indeed has almost compelled, huge expenditures on the part of those who have fallen victims to its solicitations, and yet it has proved nothing except that the great mass of Republican voters await with entire confidence the unprejudiced and untrammeled discussion by the delegates to the National Convention.

As a method of exaggerating the importance of small minorities this system is quite ideal. The newspapers announce that somebody or other has "swept" a given State, but, when we get the facts, it is found that the "sweeping" consisted in polling somewhere between four and twenty percent of the party vote. It is probable that in all the recent primaries so widely advertised throughout the land there were not so many votes cast for all the contestants as will be cast for President alone in the City of New York next November.

The primary results "are a fraud upon the people and mislead thousands of well-meaning persons who have not been brought face to face with the facts." An exact description, which the American people, with their "ancient and inbred honesty and integrity," ought to make an obituary, of this costly humbug device to find out nothing. --New York Times.