The Hawera Star. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 14, 1925. MR. HUGHES STEPS DOWN.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 14 January 1925, Page 4

The Hawera Star.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 14, 1925. MR. HUGHES STEPS DOWN.

Delivered every evening by D o'clock In Hawera Manaia, Normanby, Okaiawa, Eltham, Mangatoki, Kaponga, Awatun.i, Opunake, Otakeho, Manutahi, Alton, / Hurleyville, Patea, Waverley, Mokoia, Whakamara, Ohangai, Meremere, Fraser Road, and Ararata.

The resignation of Mr. O. E. Hughes, the American Secretary of State to our minds Foreign Minister —appears to have caused a' considerable stir in Washington, although the popular mind is chiefly concerned in seeking a, reason for the decision which the statesman has made, not in contemplating the probable effect of his retirement on foreign policy. Britishers can afford to ignore Mr. Hughes’s personal intentions; but, by his resignation they are losing a, good friend. The American Cabinet system is quite different from our own and it is impossible to illustrate from our governing machine the position which Mr. Hughes has played, and which his successor will play, in United States diplomacy. Probably the nearest parallel, if such a, term he permissable, is to be found in the case of a British Prime Minister who is his own Foreign Secretary, as Mr. Ramsay MacDonald was last year; although it is the President, not the Secretary of State, who is the head of the American Government. At all events, the influence of a strong Secretary of - State is always reflected in America’s dealings with other nations, and Mr. Hughes has been a strong man, a man whose vision reaches out past the Statue of Liberty in New York harbour to the greater world beyond. Close on a hundred years ago, when what are now the South American ■republics were shaking themselves free of Spanish and Portugese overlordship, President Monroe, in a, message to Congress, laid down the lines of his policy to keep the New World from interference by the Old, with an equal undertaking that the United States would keep its fingers out of the European pie. And, despite what their country wa-s forced to do for civilisation in 1917, despite the fact that she is to-day gorged with European gold, there are p'otty-minded public men in America who still advocate that policy of splendid isolation. With a film of Stars and Stripes over their eyes, these cannot

see that a nation wliiclf profits by international trade —a, nation whose motorcars the world is riding in, whose gum it is chewing—has obligations as well as privileges. The country that sells in all the world’s markets cannot justly refuse to share in facing present-day international problems. Mr. Hughes did not hold the narrower view, and he has done much in the past four yeans to discount the power of that element in the Senate, and especially on the Foreign Relations Committee, which has looked with cold suspicion on every suggestion that America should take her place at the council table of the nations. Senator W. E. Borah, who has succeeded the la.te Senator Lodge a,s chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has very pronounced views on the part which the United States should not take in world affairs; and there may bo a good deal of truth in the report that Mr .Hughes does not wish to continue in office along with Senator Borah. If it chooses, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee can practically dictate America’s foreign policy, and Mr. Hughes, is not a man to be forced to work along lines which lie believes to be against the best interests of his country. For he is essentially an American, with a patriot’s jealousy of American rights and prestige; no man can be a great statesman otherwise, yet neither can any he great whose vision is bounded by the three-mile territorial limit. Mr. Hughes is to be succeeded in President Coolidge’s new Administration by Mr. F. B. Kellog, at present American. Ambassador in London. As yet Mr. Kellog is hardly so big a, man as Mr. Hughes, but it will be satisfactory to Britain that foreign affairs across the Atlantic are to be guided by a. gentleman who has had some experience of the Court of St. James and who, it may be assumed, is more closely in touch with the present condition- of things in Europe that those senators with whom he is bound to find himself in disagreement before his term of office has run far. Mr. Hughes is leaving as one monument to Ms ability and tact the work of the Washington Conference. In actual result there is perhaps nothing very concrete in that; but .if the first international conference on disarmament had done nothing beyond convening in the spirit of aarmony and brotherhood, it would have more than justified its meeting. Now that the conference to have been held under the auspicies of the League of Nations next June seems likely to lapse, Mr. Kellog may have an opportunity to pieside over the next such gathering. If he follows in the footsteps ot his predecessor America, will lose none of her standing in the eyes of the w<irld. But the task upon which the new Secretary of State enters is not likely to prove an easy one; while the President may find it difficult to repoi i the .gap in. the general strength of liis Cabinet which the loss of Mr. Hughes will mean.