THE H.B. TRIBUNE FRIDAY, AUGUST 10, 1928 PRESIDENT IN PROSPECT

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVIII, Issue 203, 10 August 1928, Page 4

THE H.B. TRIBUNE FRIDAY, AUGUST 10, 1928 PRESIDENT IN PROSPECT

rpO-DAY affords occasion to extend greetings on the celebration of the 54th anniversary of his birth to the gentleman who seems to have every good chance of taking, next March, his seat in the presidential chair of the United States of America. Although Herbert Clark Hoover—he has a “middle” name, but, unlike most Americans, he does not parade it much—the Republican nominee, has a douehty opponent in Alfred Emanuel Smith, chosen of the Democrats, the balance of political opinion as appearing in the American press would seem to go strongly in his favour. There is no need just now to go into the reasons, almost entirely of a domestic nature, that enter into these forecasts. What we, in common with the rest of the outside world, are concerned with are the prospects of any change of attitude in White House towards that outside world. Assuming that the predictions cited will be fulfilled, there seems to be s'ome quite reasonable hope that it will:

In Calvin Coolidge, the present occupant of the chair, which he has now held for just a week over five years, we have one through whose record we may look without finding any very noteworth} expression of sympathy, whether verbal or practical and whether official or personal, with the distressed nations of the earth. A very self-contained and undemonstrative man, it may well be that he is liable to be misjudged. But we can only take him as he has shown himself and, doing this, there is not a very great deal to be discovered for which any but his own fellow citizens have to thank him. That he has had their special interests very much at heart, and apparently in a personally disinterested way, cannot be gainsaid, and no doubt that is the secret of his manifest popularity among them.

■ Mr. Hoover, too, is a man who is by no means effusive or talkative — in fact, his defects as a public speaker provide one of the weaknesses that are likely to go against him among a people given t< the worship of ■ oratorical declamation. But, from the outside pon of view, he has the inestim able advantage of having moved about the world, while Mr. Coolidge has scarcely been outside the boundaries of his own country, and has never crossed the ocean either in one direction or the other. Mr. Hoover, moreover and specially to be notpd, has been the leader among the many Americans who have shown practical regard for the sufferings of the peoples of Europe, their “asso ciates” in the latter stage of the war. For months that ran into years he pracically devoted himself to their relief, and it was mainly owing to his fine organising ability that this relief was made as fully effective as possible. So that should he, it - difficult office, to which he appe likely to succeed, do nothing verj much more we still have something

in him that has earned our gratitude.

But there should be something more than this that we may look forward to should next November see Mr. Hoover’s candidature successful. The familiarity his wide-flung European pilgrimages have gained for him not only with conditions in the war-worn Old World, but also with the regard in which his country and its Government are held there, can scarcely but influence the lines of the foreign policy he will endeavour to shape. There may thus be some ground for believing that, with his accession to the presidency, there should be at least some little relaxation of the rather inflexible stand which America, with her plethora of war-won wealth, hjs taken towards those who for so long, anif without her assistance, fought her battles for her. It will not do, of course, to expect too much from him at first, for he will have a tremendous obstacle to overcome in the deadweight of the general indifference of the great mass of his countrymen to anything but their own immediate concerns. But we may at least entertain some thought that he will forward their education towards the more sympathetic views to which quite an appreciable number of them have already been won. So, with remembrance of the past and hope for the future, we roaj’ all wish well to Herbert Hoover on this his 54th birthday.