The Dominion. SATURDAY, JANUARY 7, 1933. CALVIN COOLIDGE PASSES

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 88, 7 January 1933, Page 10

The Dominion. SATURDAY, JANUARY 7, 1933. CALVIN COOLIDGE PASSES

XlthouHi Mr Calvin Coolidge may not live in history as one of the m-eat Presidents of the United States, it is probably true o sav that Tn character and temperament he more closely a PP lOxn . XX otW the type »f Ln that X sparing of speech. On the whole, not by any means a , personality from the election campaigner’s point of view, but, proved himself to be, an eminently safe President. As it happened he was not called upon to do battle ot V • term as President. He was Vice-President 'vhen Preside nt Barding. dramatically sudden death brought him unexpectedly full administrative responsibilities as the nation s Chief E • -The Vice-Presidency in the United States is an office of smallcon sequence, but on the death of a President during his term of office the personality of the Vice-President immediately becomes a topic of the greatest'public interest, for the latter becomes President ex-officio. prior to that had a clean and highly “"imendable rttord as Governor of Massachusetts, and his firm hand mg of the Boston police strike during his term in that office raised him high in public opinion. Nevertheless it may be doubted whether in ® rdl ” a JJ stances he would ever have obtained his partfs (the ’ nomination for the Presidential candidature because he was extreme } difficult material for propaganda. He had an intense limelight. “Let men in public office,” he said on one occasion, substitute the light that comes from the midnight oil for the limeligh . His personality was unostentatious. He had no gestures, no flowers of speech. Yet in his. first term he satisfied his party and the country that he had been a good President, and could be safely run again For one thing he was predictable. He took the middle of the road and stayed there. For another, his life and character made a strong appeal to the innate Puritanism which is still one of the great moving forces in American society.

Opinions differ as to the form and strength of American Puritanism. Writing of his departure from the White House prior to Mr. Hoover’s entry as President, one biographer observed that “in him American Puritanism has its Indian-Summer. He is a brief pale flowering of the old plant whose bitter sap is in no American to-day, not even in Mr. Coolidge.” But Dr. Cadman, a prominent Congregational divine, takes a different view. American Puritanism, which is not a belief or a creed, but “a way of life, is virile anc, grown,” he declares, By way of proof he cites the fact that Americans insist on being ruled by Puritans.

Every occupant of the White House for as far back as you care to go, he says, has been essentially a Puritan, and every aspirant to the White House has been essentially a Puritan to command the slightest chance oOCsuccess. ... Tn lighter affairs the American people may be willing to be catered to for their pleasure and entertainment by men of another type, but not when the serious business of their naWonal life is involved. In that, province they maintain an absolutely rigid standard of life and conduct. This latter is probably the sounder analysis of the two. Coolidge was unquestionably true to the New England type in a mellowed form. His public utterances had two points of interest in this connection. In the first place they were terse, simple and unadorned. Secondly, they abounded in moral epigrams, such as “There is no surer road to destruction than prosperity without character”; “W r e must eternally smite the rock of public conscience if the waters of patriotism are to pour forth.” Before quitting office in March, 1929, he wrote for his own political epitaph: “I minded my own business.” A commentator, reading it, remarked that if the business referred to his duties as President, it was a fitting flourish to the end of a chapter.