DEBT FUNDING TWISTING THE LION'S TAIL."

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 89, 14 April 1923, Page 12

DEBT FUNDING

TWISTING THE LION'S TAIL."

That time-honoured phrase (if honoured be. the word), "twisting the Lion's tail," has come in for special attention in the debates in Congress on the debt funding scheme, and it is' reassuring to have it on high authority that the amusement is losing its savour in American politics. This seems to bs the moment, therefore, to pursue tlio phrase through its long life, declares a correspondent in the "Manchester Guardian." Some people associate it almost entirely with the Irish-Americans, and it is true certainly that a good many Irishmen who succeeded in American politics did amuse-themselves by paying oft at Washington old scores against the English. On the other hand, the amusement,* if not the phrasa, goes back certainly beyond the period when Irishmen began to count in American politics. Indeed, it may be said to bo gack beyond the American Republic. The Assemblies of the old colonial days often amused themselves by making the lives of the Royal Governors a burden to them. The eighteenth-century struggle with France, for the mastery in America was complicated by these feuds, and some of the Governors sent out certainly did their best to invite them.

Naturally, the War of Independence left bitternes behind, and the new Republicans would have been more than human if they had neglected opportunities for "tail-twisting." The Irish kept up the game, but it survived the Irish influence. More than twenty years ago Speaker R/eed was declaring that Irish influence in American politics was waning, and he proclaimed, 1 with the knowledge of an expert, the discovery that "Americans and not Irish übw govern this country." Yet it cannot be said that tail : twisting disappeared in the middle nineties. Traditions, old custom, and the truth that family feuds are more bitter than any others may well have contibuted to the continuance- of the pastime. . It may be that the steady process of leavening the American race .with blood other than British accounts in part for the cljange. ■