THE PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS.

Evening Star, Issue 18502, 8 December 1923, Page 4

THE PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS.

The first address of President Coolidge to Congress is not an inspiring document. Nine-tenths of the deliverance, we are told, was devoted to domestic affairs, which he declared furnished the country’s main problems. There were circumstances which made it inevitable that the President should prefer caution to boldness in his enunciation alike of domestic and international policies. The majority of 7,000,000 votes which his party was given hy the last Presidential election, has molted away. When the more radical "Republicans and the insurgents of the now Farmer-Labor Party choose to join forces with the Democrats it has not oven a majority in Congress. The Radicals have been showing their power by delaying for several days the election of a Speaker in a fight for greater freedom of debate. As a sample of the type of new Farmer-Labor members which the Middle West has been producing, a first speech by Mr Magnus Johnson may be quoted: You see, I used to be a glassblower in Sweden before I was a farmer, and blowing glass makes big lungs, and that is what I’ve got. I got a pretty good farm, and T got a good-size mortgage on it, and 1 got a wife and children, and I got twenty-four cows, and my wife and children milk those cows, too. I don’t believe in digging too deep into things. I am for the common people, and I want to be common, I don’t give a damn for books. I want things that are alive, not things that' have been dead for a thousand years. I have read more histories than any man, but only about Lincoln. I stand whore ho stood. He was a

great man. ,1 quote him in my speeches. . With men of this type holding the balance of power it would bo unnatural to expect that we should hear much from the Government about America’s relation to world politics. Instead, we have had from Mr Hughes a reaffirmation of the great principle of the Monroe doctrine, which is the Magna Charta of her aloofness.

Mr Coolidgo hao indeed endorsed, ns an act of duty, Mr Harding’s plea for America’s inclusion in the World Court,, without recognition of the League of Nations, but the terras, almost apologetic, in which he does so aro most significant. “ As I wish to see the court established,” ho pronounces, “and since the,,proposal presents the only practical plan on which many nations have over agreed, though it may not meet every desire, I commend it to the favorable consideration of the Senate.” It is not such a small number of countries—about fifty in all—which have agreed in support of the League of Nations. One can gather from the mild terms of Mr Coolidgo’s recommendation of the proposal, which was urged with real enthusiast by his predecessor, that if the Senate smothers it, as it is expected to do, ho will not feel affronted. America has been prosperous; the Budget shows n largo surplus for the year, and reductions in taxation axe announced, following the example of other countries. The reduction will be grateful to the farmers, who were complaining of taxation, in some instances, absorbing one-third of their farm income as compared with less than one-tenth before the war. The endorsement of co-operative marketing, presumably on a national basis, makes also a concession to. them. The high tariff policy, which has worked with the least satisfaction to their interests, is not to be altered, except that more elasticity is to be given to it to prevent inequalities. The complaint of the man on the land was that effective duties were imposed to protect the manufacturer, which raised the price of his tools of trade and other commodities to the farmer. Ineffective duties were imposed on inconsiderable agricultural imports which, he was assured, ,would keep the price of hia

grain on a level with tho increased cost of his requirements,’ but they did not prevent tho bottom from falling out of tho wheat market. Tho signs are that tho proceedings of Congress, for tho term which it has still to run till tho next election of a President in November next, will have tho liveliest interest for Americans and the least interest for tho rest of the world.