SETTLES THE HAWAIIAN QUESTION.

A person who subscribes himself “Clarence E. Edwords” and bounds into fame from the columns of the Kansas City Journal has settled the perplexing Hawaiian question to the satisfaction of everybody who is willing to accept his settlement. Mr. Edwords has the advantage over all dabblers in Hawaiian affairs in that he speaks “advisedly” and admits it, and, although he spent only one month on the island, it was sufficient for a man of Mr. Edwords’ masterful spirit. It might as well be said at once that Queen Liliuokalani is to be restored to the throne. There is no use beating about the bush or following false leads as to republics or annexation because they are pleasant. Mr. Edwords has been there and returned with the facts clinched, advisedly, and Mr. Edwords knows a thing or two, and both are to the same restorative effect.

It is too late to question the quality of mercy that inhabits the breast of Mr. Edwords for waiting until he returned to Missouri to announce to the world that the Dole administration was “sitting on a smoldering volcano.” It was hardly treating Dole fairly to leave him sitting in that unpleasant position and sail away. A word of warning might have caused Mr. Dole to rise and look about him and possibly evade the volcano. But one cannot question the methods of such a man as Edwords nor expect he can bother with such trifles as warning indiscreet administrations to beware of volcanoes when he has the more weighty matter on hand to settle the fate of a nation or two. But the announcement by Mr. Edwords is hardly more remarkable than the tribute he pays to the estimable lady who by the grace of Edwords is thus to reassert her divine right. Says Edwords:

Probably no woman has been more maligned than the Queen. Before the overthrow her virtues and good qualities were extolled to the skies by those who now lose no opportunity to slandering her in the hope of bolstering their own cause. The people of the United States have been told all sorts of malicious stories regarding the private life of the Queen, and she has been pictured as an untutored, uncultured, coarse woman, whose sole object in life was her personal pleasure. This is anything but the truth. She is a woman of education and refinement, every inch a Queen in talk, appearance, and manner. Her face, which the published pictures of her much belie, shows deep thought and delicate refinement. There is strength in every line of it, and her every-day life is a counterpart of what it depicts. A member of the Episcopal Church, she is a devout and sincere Christian, doing no lip service, but making her life conform to the tenets of the belief. Heer desire is that her people may advance and profit by the wonderful resources of the islands and reap the benefits of improvement. In their present condition of subjection to foreign domination this is impossible.

President Cleveland, in his happiest mood, when Liliuokalani was his particular charge and not the particular inspiration of the muse of Edwords, never painted the dusky and somewhat bulky beauty in such glowing colors. Edwords, in a month, has advisedly solved more Hawaiian problems than all the rest of the United States and part of Europe has been able to propound for years, including the ex-Queen, and strangest of all the source of Mr. Edwords’ information comes from the Hawaiians themselves. While others have seen a people presumably glorying in their independence with perhaps a longing for annexation to the United States Edwords of Missouri in a month has found all this was but a mask to hide a burning desire to boost the retired Queen back to the throne. Says Edwords again:

Queen Liliuokalani will be on the throne, not through any effort or design of her own, but by the expressed will of a vast majority of the people of the islands.

And this is what he says “advisedly.” Who could doubt it now?

[Unfortunately, the 1896 Kansas City Journal issues are not available online. Edwords seems to have been the managing editor and owner of that newspaper.]

(Chicago Tribune, 7/7/1896, p. 6)

The Chicago Tribune, Volume LV, Number 189, Page 6. July 7, 1896.