On this day in 1918
Thursday, Oct. 3, 1918
Mayor Cornelius F. Burns has a bizarre but friendly exchange with Governor Charles S. Whitman at the Rensselaer County Fair today, The Record reports.
Our reporter calls it “a happy exchange of compliments” and notes that “although some might have professed to see a real significance in the utterances of the officials the larger part of the audience correctly interpreted it facetiously.”
The mayor is a Democrat while the governor is a Republican seeking a third two-year term in office. Since both men’s main purpose at the fair is to sell Liberty Bonds, Burns can say sincerely that “There is nothing political in this assemblage.”
In the absence of partisanship there’s room for humor, or an attempt at it. “Some of the papers credit the governor with being very popular with the ladies,” Burns says, “I am not so sure he would stand so well with the opposite sex if another candidate was opposing him.
“Of course, on that subject I have to speak very modestly, but then the governor has a very pleasing personality and I take great satisfaction in again presenting him to you.”
Taking the podium, Whitman says he hopes that Burns will remember what he said about the governor’s pleasing personality on Election Day. “I’ll agree to furnish the pleasing personality then,” Whitman cracks, “if he’ll furnish something else I may need.”
The joking tone is gone when the subject turns to Liberty Bonds. “We are raising six billions of dollars,” the governor says of the Fourth Liberty Loan, “Have you ever tried to comprehend how much a billion is?
“Do you know there have not been a billion minutes since Christ was born, and so if you come through on this loan, as we most certainly will, we will have contributed six dollars for every minute of the Christian era and much more than that. It is a tremendous price to pay for victory, but the cost of defeat would be a great deal more.”
Noting that New York State has contribtued 370,000 troops to the U.S. military, Whitman urges the crowd, estimated at 1,000 people, to “show ourselves worthy of the boys representing us before the world today.
“Of course you’re proud of them. Confident they will win? Why of course you’re confident. Why wouldn’t you be? You know the stuff they’re made of. You know the homes they came from. You know their fathers and mothers.
“God grant there shall be no need for further sacrifices, but my dear people, we have not begun to give – we have not begun to suffer.”