THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, JUNE 22, 1908. AMERICAN MONORCHISM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13782, 22 June 1908, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, JUNE 22, 1908. AMERICAN MONORCHISM.

Philosophers and academicians notwithstanding, it is still in the blood of the Gothic peoples to follow a leader and acknowledge a king ; an ingrained characteristic which is as commonly evidenced in the United States as in- the United Kingdom, whenever great occasion arises for united action. Theoretically, great movements should be directed by the collective wisdom of the representatives of a nation in council assembled, and no weight should attach to the speaker but only to the words spoken. For are not all men created equal, and is not one man's opinion as good as another's? In practice, however, the American has never failed to meet and solve every great national problem by the simple and ancient process of lifting a trusted leader to power ; and much of the political success of the Republic is due to the unwavering loyalty with which, in time of trial, through good report and evil, through good fortune and bad', the great mass of citizens have upheld the authority of their uncrowned kings. Washington, as everybody knows, might have become, actually king had he been prepared to assent to the wishes of the men who starved and shivered and fought with him, while the theorists of the colonies discussed constitutions beside warm stoves. And Lincoln, the nineteenth century ■ Washington, swept the Northern electorates after three long years of desperate civil war, and after he had temporarily established a . militant autocracy such as the Tsar himself could hardly have maintained. This phase of the American temper is so notorious and so remarked that it is the dread both of those sincere and honest theorists who absolutely believe that the only advisable form of Government was evolved by the Mediterranese peoples and popularised by students of the classics, and of those doubtfully sincere, politicians who advantage or hope to advantage by the nominal republicanism which gives such power and yields such profit to those who control the party machinery. Neither of these powerful elements in the American nation trust the American people. They instinctively feel that beneath the fair outward acceptance of republicanism and the unchallenged triumph of democracy there is, a latent and incomprehensible yearning for the simpler and more human political system which remains unshaken throughout North , Europe; nor can they deny to modern intelligence that in Europe constitutional monarchy and the highest political, religious, and social liberty go hand in hand, nor that the British institutions of contiguous Canada compare most favourably with their own. As a, consequence of their fear, they exert all their influence to make a fetish of the refusal of Washington to accept Presidential office" for more than two terms., conceiving that by rooting in popular prejudice an ineradicable aversion to continuance in office of any person, they make it quite impossible to re-establish monarchism under any guise whatever. Yet the enthusiastic nomination of Mr. Taft by the Republican National Convention is an unmistakable sign of the unabated strength of that tendency to import personal attachment into politics which'for five long generations American theorists and politicians have been striving to eliminate.

For Mr. Taft is recognised by everybody as the personal nominee of Mr. Roosevelt, and it has been accepted that the relations between the two men are so close and intimate that they form a veritable political partnership. The Republican Party managers are bitterly opposed to Mr. Roosevelt and to Mr. Roosevelt's policy. They are incensed ft* his open contempt for their advice and perplexed by his no less open attacks upon institutions and corporations which have been identified with the Republican Party and luve been generous contributors to Republican Party funds. No secret whatever has been made of the determination of the Party authorities to rid themselves of Mr. Roofevelt and his policy— the Convention affirms his policy with very little qualification, and gives his /friend and colleague, Mr. Taft, thi party nomination by a tremendous and de-

cisive majority on the very first ballot. It is plain that if Mr. Roosevelt had -wanted the nomination he could have had it, and that the organised opposition to his policy and purposes has been so completely routed that for the time being it has ceased to exist. Nor is this extraordinary, unless we lose sight of the monarchical tendency in the dominant racial elements of the American national character. For at least three-fourths of the American people are derived from free nations to whom kings appear-jpre-eminently natural, and who have found that to " trust and follow:' a national leader is the way to make their common purpose effective. To them Mr. Roosevelt has appealed, both he and they unconscious and unwilling that they have chosen him their chief in the same spirit as their forefathers chose one they trusted when confronted by any pressing emergency For America faces a great emergency : she is not far from the verge of war, and needs to guide her a fearless yet cautious patriot ; she is stricken with social discontent and confronted by stupendous social problems, and needs to guide her a strong reformer who will not pull down the whole social structure in the process. Mr. Roosevelt has convinced the great majority of the Republican Party— may even say the great majority of the American people— that he is competent to arrange their domestic difficulties, and to guide their foreign policy, and that even when he makes mistakes he is still loyal to their best interests, and ready to try again Against him have worked the party managers and the party machinery for him has worked the inexplicable sentiment which never yet failed to make the Gothic peoples rally automatically in an emergency around a leader or king. Had Mr. Roosevelt been willing to accept the nomination it was obviously his. But he is a good American, and the good American has been imbued with the two-term fetish ; nor will the blunt rough-rider shelter himself behind the pretence that, nominally, he has only had one term. So we have a spectacle presented to us which is most literally and deliciously American. Mr. Roosevelt refuses, upon principle, to continue in the greatest office in the gift of the American people ; but he points out that his friend, Mr. Taft, is his political alter ego. And to Mr. Taft, in spite of Party managers and of antagonistic influences that in Europe might shake thrones, goes immediately the Party nomination which practically carries with it the Presidency election.