THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, JULY 4, 1925. AMERICA'S INDEPENDENCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19061, 4 July 1925, Page 10

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, JULY 4, 1925. AMERICA'S INDEPENDENCE.

It is customary, on the fourth of July, for the President of the United States to make a. speech for all the world to hear. The anniversary of the Declaration of Independence will doubtless be so marked again this year; but Mr. Coolidge, as his nation's spokesman, lias found occasion a iy earlier, his inspiration being tih one-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of George Washington's taking command of the "continental" army. "Let us now praise famous men" was ever an inspiring counsel, older far than any national calendar. Thore is not a revered writing, on rock or tablet or papyrus, without record of its influence. It breathes in Holy Writ, in Homer, in Norse saga and in Polynesian legend with equal fervour; and Americans do well to recall the first name in their roll of national worthies. For Washington was a great man, great all the more certainly for his lifelong scepticism as to his fitness for the exalted positions to which he was successively called. He was reluctant to ally himself with the party of independence, dreading rather than hoping that war would come between the American colonies and the mother country. Attending the first Continental Congress as one of Virginia's seven delegates, he felt constrained, however, to express his conviction that organised military resistance in the struggle over taxation would become inevitable. His forecast was unhappily justified; and when the second Congress, after the fights at Lexington and Concord, recognised the need to select a com-mander-in-chief of the forces of the United Colonies, the choice unanimously fell upon the Virginia colonel who was serving on all its military committees, and had proved splendidly capable there and in the field. Refusing salary, looking for no recompense beyond a reimbursement of expenses, he accepted the position, asking "every gentleman in the room," however, to remember his declaration that he did not believe himself equal to the command and took it only as a duty made obligatory by the unanimity of the call. Into his eulogy of the fipt in the line of his presidential predecessors Mr. Coolidge has weaved a homily to 'Europe. "Independence Day" has thus cast its spellupon this commemoration of July 3, 1775, the date of Washington's taking command of the levies assembled for action against the British garrison in Boston. The President has found it hard ■? to harmonise, in his thinking aloud upon the housetops with all Europe eavesdropping by invitation, the conflicting currents that move in American thought to-day. Much has happened since Washington's time, to make thinking in hemispheres difficult. The Atlantic has become a herring-, pond, a frequented highway instead of a watery wall. So into the presidential ken swims easily the prospect of "leadership" in international example and even a sense of responsibility to .give Europe helpful advice. But, with all his eagerness to urge co-operation as a policy for Europe, Mr. Coolidge shrinks from endorsing it'as one for his own country. The advice he tenders is uttered with a pose of aloofness, and is vitiated accordingly. Why talk to European nations of the grandeur and sweetness of "mutual covenants for their mutual security" and of sacrifices to be made in the keeping of these covenants, when America is so reluctant to have part and lot in Europe's fortunes'? It is all very well for Jews to urge peace between contending Samaritan tribes; but what weight has the urging when the Jews will have no dealings with the Samaritans'? "Our country should refrain from making political commitments where she does not have political interests," says Mr. Coolidge. In that dictum one aspect of the Monroo Doctrine's traditional principle manifests itself—the principle of non-intervention in European affairs. But the doctrine belonged to a day of monarchical ambitions touching Soutli America, and insistence on Europe's keeping her hands off there was the logical justification for America's determination not to have a hand in Europe's business. That justification no longer exists, and with it has gone whatever reason lay in America's holding aloof from Europe.

The plain fact is that, Mr. Coolidge's assertions notwithstanding, America cannot help having political interests in Europe. Is the lesson of the war-so soon forgotten 1 ? Concerned in the problem of reparations, did not America become committed to a scheme for Europe's reestablished solvency? Can Mr. Coolidge forget that his own VicePresident will be remembered in history chiefly for that plan, bearing his name, upon which a new departure was hopefully begun? It is to be feared that he is playing with words. He talks of America's "leadership." Wan there ever leadership worth the name that did not imply contact? The wide world of Washington's time has shrunk to small proportions, and there can happen no event of importance —in war or peace, in finance or research or social change—without the whole of it being affected. If there is one thing more certain than another to-day, it is the farreaching repercussion of happenings and policies in any of the greater nations. The increasing tendency of these, however national in their arising, is to become international in l their bearing. America is a great nation—too great for even its President to shut it up in a glass" ease, , Its independence, mean-

ing by. that its vaunted freedom from others' "unwarrantable jurisdiction,''' is in no danger such as menaced the United Colonies in the time of that King George against whom their "declaration" Vas formulated. But with national maturity has come a responsibility to the whole world which America can refuse to discharge only at the cost of national honour. Itß cordial readiness to participate regularly and fully in international affairs will find as friendly a welcome as has been uniformly given to its spasmodic co-operation at times of unusual crisis.