At present it is alternating between one and the other, according to the needs and opportunities of the immediate political situation.

It is trying to find room within its hospitable folds for both Alton B.Parker and William J.Bryan, and it has such an appetite for inconsistencies that it may succeed.

But in that event one would expect some symptoms of uneasiness on the part of a Democratic reformer with "Gallic clearness and consistency of mind, with an instinct for consistency, and a hatred of hypocrisy." V WILLIAM R.HEARST AS A REFORMER The truth is that Mr.William R.Hearst offers his countrymen a fair expression of the kind of "liberal ideas" proper to the creed of democracy.

In respect to patriotism and personal character Mr.Bryan is a better example of the representative Democrat than is Mr.Hearst; but in the tendency and spirit of his agitation for reform Hearst more completely reveals the true nature of Democratic "liberalism." When Mr.
Lincoln Steffens asserts on the authority of the "man of mystery" himself that one of Hearst's mysterious actions has been a profound and searching study of Jeffersonian doctrine, I can almost bring myself to believe the assertion.

The radicalism of Hearst is simply an unscrupulous expression of the radical element in the Jeffersonian tradition.