Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1, 1927. IDEALS AND PRACTICE

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 126, 1 June 1927, Page 8

Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1, 1927. IDEALS AND PRACTICE

The apparently inexhaustible capacity of President Coolidge for the emission of innocuous and almost entirely meaningless platitudes and for convincing other people that there is really something in them is again illustrated by the half-column which was cabled from Washington yesterday. The speech which he delivered at Arlington Cemetery during the Memorial Day observance must have made a considerable impression upon his countrymen, or it would not have been deemed worthy of such liberal treatment. Our cabled extracts actually exceed in length the full text of the speech delivered by one of the greatest, if not the very greatest, of, Mr. Coolidge's predecessors on a similar occasion. To contrast the quality of Mr. Coolidge's speech with that of the immortal address in which Lincoln dedicated the National Cemetery at Gettysburg during the Civil War would be unjust, since neither the funeral oration of Pericles nor perhaps any other speech would stand the strain, and in 1927 the Memorial Day. dedicated to the memory of those who fell.in that war provided no commensurate occasion. But it is nevertheless permissible to wonder how an eminent man dealing with great issues can spread so far and say so little, while at the same time maintaining a sort of oracular air which suggests that he is. really thinking quite hard all the time. It is perhaps this oracular air which makes President Coolidge's platitudes palatable and acceptable to his countrymen but at the same time produces a mildly irritating effect upon outsiders. As most of us are talking commonplaces most of the time we cannot afford to be too hard on the politicians who are so often called upon to do the same tiling in public. But when they become too complacent, too homiletic, too edifying, we are disposed to rebel. It appears to suit the American taste, but in this respect-the British are more squeamish, and they are probably more alienated by the President's perfectly proper insistence that "things of the spirit come first," and his less indisputable statement that his countrymen are "soldiers of the cross" who are not out for material gain, than by any specific differences of policy. His latest utterance, however, contains nothing to intensify this feeling but merely a string of commonplaces which are quite unexceptionable, but so thin as to be of very little value, and suggest no invidious comparisons between America and other nations but rather between her ideals and her practice. Whilo we wish peace everywhere, says President Coolidge, it is our desire that it should be a peace not imposed by America, but a peace established by each nation for itself. Although well aware that in the immediate past, perhaps even now, there are certain localities where our citizens would be given over to pillage and murder but for the presence of our military forces, nevertheless it is the settled policy of our Government to deal with other nations, not on the basis of force and compulsion, but of understanding and goodwill. There is nothing amiss here, nothing to which Britain could not subscribe, nothing from which even Soviet Russia would venture to dissent publicly, and therefore nothing to make a fuss about and nothing or next to nothing that was worth saying at all. The only point of any interest is in the parenthesis which indicates that no more than the unregenerate nations can America bring her practice into entire agreement with her ideals and allow that blessed word "self-determination" to have a free run. "In the immediate past, perhaps even now, there are certain localities" where America has had to interfere by force to protect her citizens from pillage and murder. One of these places is Nicaragua, where, while designing that she was "intervening," she has nevertheless interfered with military and naval forces in a domestic quarrel, occupied large areas of the State and' proclaimed them "neutral," and compelled the people to submit to the rule of President Diaz which, if they had been left to themselves, they would apparently have overthrown. The terms of the truce declared in Nicaragua three weeks ago, which America engineered and to' which she is presumably a party, were .reported in our cabled summary to be as follow:— The arrangement provides for President Diaz to remain in office, disarmament on both sides, immediate general peace, a political amnesty, return of rll seized property, participation of Liberals in the Conservative Government, organisation of native constabulary commanded by Americans, American supervision of 1928 elections, and a continuance of American marines in Nicaragua to maintain order. If Americans are able to maintain order at the elections in Nicaragua next year, they will do more than

they were, able to do for Chicago a few weeks ago. If, on the other hand, they were to apply to Nicaragua the same logic that a majority of the nation is apparently anxious to apply to CHna, ther would have told their fellow countrymen in Nicaragua to pack up and go and to expect no military protection from their country except for the purpose of ensuring their safety during the process. But Americans have great financial interests in Nicaragua, and the whole nation is vitally interested both in the Panama Canal and in the greater canal by which it hopes to pierce Nicaragua before very long. Circumstances alter cases even for the most confirmed idealists. Britain recognises that American control of the Isthmus is for her-own good and for the good of the world. She therefore indulges in no envious or carping criticism of the Imperialism into which willy-nilly the Americans are being gradually driven. She merely asks that the same charity may be extended to herself in the ventures which American idealism is so ready to denounce.