THE CUBAN QUESTION.

New Zealand Mail, 3 September 1902, Page 14

THE CUBAN QUESTION.

Republican Senators have abandoned their efforts to agree upon the Cuban, Question. The Capitol has laid the prol> lem upon the White House steps, and for the present the eighteen “boxer” or “beetroot Senators are victorious.

The “Evening Post” (New York) says-—, hue President io repudiated by his disrupted party aud the supreme effort for party harmony has ended in unexampled disruption. Cnba is brutally, and as die 1 resident himself has said, dishonourably abandoned.” This ijs a comment upon yesterday's facts rather than upon *.oli crrow s politics. The rejected foundling laid upon the White House steps has been taken inside with alacrity, as possesing promise and potency of popular strength proportioned to the voters’ repugnance to the influences which are temporarily in. the ascendant. Mr Roosevelt is appealing directly to the peoiile who have* already repudiated their false representatives. Thus he has indentified himself with an irresponsible isv’e. cf which Cuba is a small part. Between the adjournment of Congress and the reassembling in December Mr Roosevelt will visit the beetsugar States in the role of “a self-con-fessed tariff reformer.”

Democratic and Republican legislators alike are deaf to popular repugnance to tariff abuses and tariff fostered trusts. The Cuban question is thus fraught with interest to all concerned with American trade, since the question is whether the United States can have reciprocity with the world. The eighteen “boxers” could not defeat Cuban reciprocity unless they, had the secret support cf all protected interests in both parties. The alternative to refusal of any tariff amelioration is general tariff revision. The forcing of this issue upon Mr Roosevelt is the meaning of the course the Cuban question has taken.