HOOVER

BY THE HON. GEORGE H. MOSES

AUGUST 2, 1923, was a fateful date in this country. A President had died and another President, in natural succession, took office. August 2, 1927, was also a fateful day in this country. The President who had succeeded, four years earlier, and who had confirmed his succession in his own right by the most sweeping of majorities, renounced his office. I say renounced, because no man doubts that Calvin Coolidge could have had another nomination, no matter what its digital designation, or that he could have had another election, though not by anything like the seven million margin which he secured in 1924.

The laconic sentence with which the President made known his decision found the country ill-prepared for it. With few exceptions, public men looked upon another Coolidge candidacy as inevitable. I was one of the small group who held otherwise; and I had not hesitated to say so. It required no great genius of political ratiocination to perceive that the Presidency is a sucked orange to Coolidge; that there is nothing for him in a continuance in the White House beyond the dubious kudos of having served longer than Washington, Jefferson, Jackson or Grant; that another term would be recognized everywhere as his last, and that in it would come the natural falling away from him of those politicians whose eyes are turned to the rising rather than the setting sun; that with this would come a slackening of his grasp upon Congress, never too secure; that his nomination, to be really prized, must come with substantial unanimity and with a great show of enthusiasm, neither of which could be guaranteed; and that the march of his ensuing term must not be written with excess of diminuendo. The Coolidge tradition runs in the ascending scale-from member of a city government to the Presidency; and, more than any of our public men, he observes the canons of consistency. His course was plain and he followed it.

Nor is it possible to doubt the form of words which he chose to clothe his choice. We of New England, at any rate, know our vernacular. When Calvin Coolidge said, "I do not choose to run for President in 1928," he meant that he is not a candidate and that he will not be a candidate. Those who seek to read another meaning into his words are doing him no real service. Whatever else he may be and I have heard many criticisms of him, in some of which I have joined he is not a double-dealer. He is a man of whom one may tell what he thinks by what he says. Those who have declined to take him at his word may be readily classified. They consist of a group who see themselves fading out of the picture when he takes his departure and another group who have been taken by surprise and, not knowing what to do, are running around in circles and seeking to make use of Coolidge as a convenient hitching-post until they can reach a conclusion. At any rate no bill of attainder can lie against those of us who have foreseen that Coolidge would not again be our candidate and who were not taken unawares by his renunciation, though we had not expected it to come until later. I, for instance, had thought he would make his statement in December, when the assembling of Congress and the meeting of the Republican National Committee would synchronize. I had entirely overlooked the connotation of the anniversary of his accession.

But neither I nor those now acting with me have been at any time oblivious to the fact that Coolidge is bound to be a large factor in the approaching campaign. I do not mean in the sense that he will attempt to name his successor. This course would fit his tradition no better than any of the others which I have already named; and I doubt if he will lift his finger or raise his voice in this regard. But there is no doubt of the widespread confidence in and enthusiasm for the Coolidge policies. To continue them is the plain purpose of the great majority of the American people. Whoever carries the Republican banner in the campaign of 1928 must march under the Coolidge colors. Naturally, therefore, those of us who knew that Coolidge himself would not lead us have been casting about for the man who best could.

The natural sources from which to seek a President are the Congress, the Governors of the States, and the President's Cabi

for which he marshalled them in war time touched that vein of sentiment of helpfulness which all women possess; and, seven years ago, they constituted a large part of that impressive popular support which he had in the preliminaries to the campaign of 1920.

The politicians have been slow to see in Hoover anything of a kindred fellowship. They doubt his partisanship and they especially doubt his quality as an organization man and his willingness to "play the game.' They cannot have observed him very closely in these last six years nor can they have listened to him very attentively. Hoover himself has said: "I am a partisan member of my party." He has vigorously declared his belief in that aspect of our constitutional system which makes for the twoparty scheme of political control. He has not attempted to upset the accepted order. I am sure he will not do so as President.

There are many hurdles which Hoover must top before reaching the White House finish-line. His opponents will set them up; therefore I need not dwell upon them. But I think he will top them all. There is much political map-making these days. Most of it proceeds on the theory that a few leading candidates will dominate the Republican convention and will at last devour each other. Then the dark horse will be brought out to claim the blue ribbon. This is good political reasoning in general. It has one present flaw, however: We intend to make Hoover so strong between now and June that nothing of this sort will occur.

And-more than all else he can not only be elected but reelected. I do not fear for 1928. The scars which the Democratic donkey put upon himself in 1924 are still fresh and there are many of his grooms who take delight in showing them. But 1932 is another matter. Hoover will give us such an Administration that we shall hold and augment all those elements which have combined in two successive campaigns to give the Republicans their unprecedented majorities. The chieftains of my party may be content to play for the stake of a single term more of Republican control of the Nation. I am not. I want to foresee and to assure Republican control until the fourth of March, 1937. That is why I am for Hoover.

ISLANDS FOR DEBTS

BY CHARLES H. SHERRILL

So widespread was the approval of the Administration's policy of adjusting the amounts to be paid us by creditor nations in accordance with their capacity to pay, (which resulted in our foregoing about fifty per cent. of those debts,) that one hears nothing more from the few bitter-enders who clamored for the "last cent". Fair-minded equity has routed the Shylock policy. Let us hope we have heard the last of those extremists. But, on the other hand, a new voice lately arose in the land; certain groups of learned Professors demanding that all foreign debts be cancelled and forgiven. German Professors were so constantly wrong during the war that one wonders if these American Professors are more infallible now than were then their Teutonic prototypes! One must be kindly in criticising the logic of Professors, because (unwittingly) they suffer from a distressing handicap, viz.: their audiences cannot answer back, so they lack practice in logic for defending their theses.

But is there not a middle ground between the two extremes of an intolerant Shylock and a benignant Professor lavishly surrendering to foreigners American savings invested in the Liberty Loans that provided the money now owed us by other nations? "Charity begins at home" is a narrow minded slogan, but nevertheless charity need not be exclusively reserved for foreigners; surely some may be expended upon our national needs and particularly our national defense.

The writer believes there is a way by means of which the burden of these debts upon foreign taxpayers may be lightened, while at the same time vital features of our national defense may be safeguarded. Such vital factors are the defense of the mouth of the Mississippi, that majestic artery feeding and fed by the heart of our great Middle West, and the Panama Canal, that water link between the coastwise commerce of our Atlantic and Pacific

seaboards. Never let us forget that this canal doubles the value of our Navy, our first line of national defense, by permitting its speedy transfer from one ocean to another in case of need.

President Wilson's purchase of the Danish Islands in the Caribbean Sea will be even more heartily approved, as safeguarding an American peace in those regions, by our descendants than it is by us. Posterity will probably acclaim President Roosevelt more for championing the Panama Canal than for any other act of his Administration. All friends of President Coolidge hope that in similar fashion he will father the Nicaragua Canal, a waterway needed not only for our rapidly growing inter-ocean traffic, but also for doubling facilities for rapid transfer of our defensive war ships from one coast to the other. Present statistics of Panama Canal traffic show that it is approaching its limit of capacity, so there is no time to be lost in commencing construction of another such waterway. The world's commerce needs the Nicaragua Canal, and so do our own merchant marine and especially our Navy. The efficiency of our Navy would be vastly increased, and the safety of its transfer from one ocean to another materially advanced, by the possibility of its using two canals instead of one. At present an enemy navy and its airplanes need to watch only the Panama Canal. It would be a far different problem to watch two Pacific outlets from the Caribbean-a certainty would be dissolved into anxious guessing! By all means let us put the work in hand, and with that energy for which our constructive ability is famous. But, says the reader, what has all this to do with lessening the burden upon foreign taxpayers engaged to pay back part of the money lent by American investors in Liberty Loans? Everything. Following and developing the principle of the original Monroe Doctrine, which excluded new European Colonies from the American Hemisphere, those foreign debts could and should be reduced or cancelled by the relinquishment by England, France and Holland of their islands and coastal possessions in and around the Caribbean Sea. These colonial possessions do not pay, but are a burden to English, French or Dutch taxpayers, and so that burden would be reduced as well as the greater one of their war debts. Thus those taxpayers would be doubly relieved.