In the political life of our country, until now, there were practically speaking only two parties. It has its advantages because only under this system is it possible for the people to effect a clean division of majority from minority, of a government and an opposition party. But the system also has its disadvantages. It gives the party leaders an opportunity to hush up problems of national importance the solution of which is urgently demanded by the people. When a third party of any importance is in the field this is not possible, because it is clear that the third party will take up those problems and utilize them for campaign material. This has been done in the present campaign by Senator Robert M. La Follette with the Ku-Klux-Klan. The Republican National Convention accepted in its platform a plank which was drawn up in accordance with the recipe of diplomats - the speech is supposed to hide the thoughts. Through a genial egg-dance the Klan problem was settled in such a way that the plank in question could be considered as a declaration for or against the Klan. This plank is, in fact, a master piece. At the dedication of an orthodox Jewish synagogue, it could have served as a motif just as well as at the jubilee celebration of a volunteer fire brigade.

The Republican press characterized same as a declaration against the Ku-Klux-Klan. On the other hand, the Klan press considered it an endorsement, a defense, and a glorification of the Klan. For instance, the Fellowship Forum one of the country's leading Klan organs, wrote, "The friends of the Ku-Klux-Klan won a brilliant victory when they succeeded in destroying the efforts of R. E. Creagers, a member of the Republican National Committee from Texas, to put an anti-Klan plank in the platform".

A few days ago Robert La Follette junior, the son of the candidate for the presidency stated that his father's party would undertake a general offensive against the solid Democratic south. That was enough to compel John W. Davis, the Democratic presidential candidate to take an energetic and undisguised position against the Klan. An strangely, two days later, the heads of the Republican party, also discovered that they were against the Klan. General Charles G. Dawes, the hot-tempered candidate for the vice-presidency, made the observation on a campaign trip to the east, that there is a just and an unjust side to all such things, and that he and his party are obliged to back up the side which stands for justice. For this reason he declined to have anything in common with the Klan, because he considered them an unAmerican organization.