NEXT U.S. CONVENTIONS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIV, Issue 929, 30 January 1924, Page 7

NEXT U.S. CONVENTIONS.

CHOICE BEFORE DEMOCRATS. MR. McADOO’S CHANCES.

The political situation, in the United States as elsewhere, is like the theatre programme, “subject to change without notice.” With this invariable reservation, it is possible to say (wrote the Washington correspondent of the London Times recently) that President Cpolidge will be the candidate of the Republican Party in Hie election of \m. If it were not for one unknown factor, it might be added with equal confidence that his Democratic opponent would be Mr William Gibbs McAdoo, husband of Mrs Woodrow Wilson’s favourite daughter, former Secretary of the Treasury, Director-Gen-eral of Railroads during the period of State operation, and now a resident in California. The unknown factor is his father-in-law.

Since March 4, 1921, when he left the White House to drive down Pennsylvania avenue to the Capitol with his successor, Mr Wilson has lived in a quiet house in “S” street, in the northwest district of Washington. His pale and tragic face is sometimes seen, and always saluted, as he drives through the streets and the parks of an afternoon, and his occasional appearance at the theatre will rouse a cheer. W r hen his birthday comes round his admirers gather before his house, and he emerges on the arm of a negro attendance to make a brief speech of thanks and will reiterate his belief that America will some day put away materialism and step out beyond her borders to share the burdens of the world. In what he has said and written—■ it is not much—there is nothing to show that he has moved so much as an inch from the position he held when he gave up the Presidency. He is for the League of Nations and for full and unquestioning American membership in it; he is for Ihe hold acceptance of reresponsibility in world affairs as the price a self-respecting nation must pay for the advantages it seeks. The stubbornness and thes heer political audacity which were his in the years of his Presidency are still his; affliction has broken his body, but has not tamed his spirit. Mr Wilson has not changed, and it is perhaps this fact which is turning the minds of an increasing number of his fellow-countrymen toward him. in the year of the amazing election of 1920 he was hated as no American of our time has been hated. Sixten million Americans then voted for Harding, not because they were for Harding, but because they were against Wilson, bitterly, blindly, hotly against him, and against anything that spoke in his name. The sentiment was as cruel as it was unreasoning, but the man against whom it was poured out neither whimpered nor weakened. He went quietly to his retreat, and there, with his wife, he has ermained.

jMR MfADOO AND THE LEAGUE, | To-day the heat and the bitterness have died down, save in the hearts of a few. The rehabilitation of W’oodrow W r ilson in the esteem of his countrymen has gone on, imperceptibly but surely, in the lust thirty months, until to-day he wields an influence which only the most passionate of his disciples could have believed possible when he left office. His is no longer a name ; to frighten Republican children with, and in the Democratic Party he has power sufficient, not to name a candidate of his own choosing, but immensely to weaken the chances of the man he should oppose. i Will he support his son-in-law ? Since there is a doubt that he will, there is also a doubt that Mr ivicAuoc will secure the Democratic nomination. If it is rigid, unbending advocacy of the League of Nations, the whole League and nothing but the League, that Mr Wilson would have in a candidate, then Mr McAdoo will haruty fill the bill. He is immensely clever, ! he is bold, he is consummately a polii tieian, but he J is not a champion of 'the causes he considers lost. Just at . present with the enthusiastic support l of the wealthy and equally astute ->xr ; Bernard Baruch, he is applying himself to the cause of the wheat farmers, j If he can persuade them that he is ;the Moses to lead them out of their i wilderness—and there is no reason why he should not, while the Republicans seem so impotent—he will become a i figure indeed. His record as Directori General of Railroads made him popular with organised railroad labour, and he believes that he will have its powerful and well-drilled organisations behind him. Thee are nine months to run before the nominating convention is held, and his strength is growing daily, jar Wilson, however, in the quiet house m i “S” street, has not yet expressed an

opinion of hiss on-in-law’s fitness. There are other candidates, of course. There is Senator Oscar W. Underwood, of Alabama, able, forceful, popular, an adroit leader of the Democratic minority in the Senate. He returned from Europe not long since with the message that for its own Bake America must help that stricken continent. It was just about this time that Senator Hiram Johnson, of California, landed with the warning to his countrymen that all the evils of Pandora’s box would be loosed upon this land unless it held to its isolation —and the warning perhaps offset the message. Then Italy seized Corfu, and Senator Underwood drew in his horns a little. The story that he recanted his faith in the League of Nations he has denied, but it seems that he is a little troubled as to the future of that institution. PARTY PROSPECTS.

Mr John W. Davis, former Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, is, as the newspapers 3ay, “prominently mentioned.” He has resumed the practice of the law, however, and is counsel for certain great coporations, which is generally considered to make his candidacy undesirable if not impossible. What special form of sin is implicit in the legal representation of a great corporation it would be difficult io say, but it has become axiomatic that men. whose livelihood is gamed as Mr Eliliu Root nnd Mr Davis gain theirs cannot be elected President. If is a tribute to the brilliance and the flawless integrity of Mr Davis that even the axiom cannot entirely remove him from the list of possibilities.

There are yet others, chief among them being Mr John. Hessin Clarke, who resigned from the Supreme Court of the United States to devote the remainder of his days to the advocacy of the League of Nations; and Senator S. M. Ralston, of Indiana, generally regarded as a likely “compromise candidate”—a man, that is to say, upon whom the choice might fall if a deadlock occurred in the Convention. Any one of those named is a possible choice, and any Democrat who runs is a possible President, though with less chance of election than he would have had if President Harding had lived. The fact is, though it seems ungracious to say it, that the death of Mr Harding has given the Republican Party a new lease of life. His Administration had earned, justly or unjustly, a great deal of dissatisfaction, since it was believed to be responsible for the economic situation. The election of 1922, which reduced the Republican majority in the Congress almost to the vanishing point, was the expression of this dissatisfaction. Now President Coolidge comes to office free—at least for the present—of any responsibility for conditions not of his making, and guiltless of any act which his opponents of the Democratic Party or his rivals in the Republican ranks can exploit to his disadvantage. His party must nominate him, unless one of two things happens: that the radical Republicans should take control of Congress and force a party split, or that his Administration of affairs should be so patently u failure as to unfit him for leadership. Three months ago the predictions were all of a Democratic victory in 1924; to-day the wiseacres say that the result is an even chance.