DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XLIV, Issue 14006, 10 March 1920, Page 8

DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA.

I.4BREAKERS AHEAD. ißy To revis.it Amenta after an inter\*il cf mare than six jears, and six sucb vears, involves much mental bewilderment, lhe writer has known the L nited Sutes very intimately for over tortv veais, and during, all the prewar" period the keynote for a community that had increased in thirtv-nve \en*rs lrom 40 millions to 100 millions was in its. uiueasoning, unquestioning confident in itself, in its ,iud cspCLLilly in its Constitution—in .ill the things which, with no little ot \jin«'loiious flag-wagging, Americans w >re wont to declare then "manliest dv-tiny " But home fifteen years ago President Rooieielt staked all his popularity, and lost the great stake, b\ vehement predictions and nearly sinister warnings as to the social breakers he saw ahead In this waj lie forfeited the affection, and almost the respect, of many okl friends, and of such ixiends I may claim to have been one of the oldest. We unregeneraLes regarded "my policies' ~ot the bi" stick" order as a menace, calculated to engender class animosities, and thus imperil securities,. nay, but even security. And yet now -.ears onlv have elapsed, and looking imckward we see that the Republican partv has become reunited in an en-.. thusiism of admiration for what Koosevelt did, and is reconciled even to those very "shirt-sleeve" ways in which he did it. .. , . When George W. Smalky was dying in Down street, I was in the habit ol fitting with him for. half-hours each ;,fter.foon--lhis in 1916. had for some years been really . vindictive in his criticism of Roosevelt, but had recanted - and occupied his last hours building with bright and, confident anticipation a great future for his coun trv> in the control of a .purged- and vivified Republican Administration, iSmallev was a cultivated but dogmatic American, dominated by his historic •sense and bv the wildest experience "arnered in other countries than his own I had no particular confidence in'his judgments, whether of men or things, but his death-bed repentance in this matter of President Roosevelt will be accepted as an incident very widely representative. Roosevelt s warnings were taken to heart, and iust in time, both by the quick and the dead, and have, through great tribulation, sowed the seeds of better Democratic practice. If, as seems probable, the elections next year may restore the Republican party to a fresh and a long lease of power it wil bo owing chiefly to the psychology ot ope accidentally its President when this crisis was gathering. The position to-day in America is sc pervaded bv the psychology of yet another President, even more accidentally elevated to the White House than Roosevelt was, and who, like th< Roosevelt of 1906, has focussed, and t( •i far crreater degree, the antipathies of the great majority of writers/am speakers here, that one is tempted tc ask whether Mr Wilson too may b< destined to purge the Democrat!! partv, and in its next generation maki or that party an- adequate governing machine. lam hot interested to pur -ue this political analogy, it indeed 1 exists, but -such a note j,s ringing oi the \tlantic seaboard —that Wilson like Roosevelt, and like Lloyd George has the dominant nature necessary u the evolution of political philosophy and that such natures build bette than thev know. It is a complacen view; w : ho knows but it may evei prove a true view-:- But here, to-day I find all things in business, and poll tics colored bv an event still mor than a vear ahead, the next Presi dential election. It is going to be a election of • unexampled and ugly viru lence, startling even to those ol enough to remember, the Cleveland Blaine contest of 1882. . It is to b hoped that English readers will cult rate short memories for the events c the year ahead, because even our goo friends here are going to say hard aii< untrue things of Great Britain in tli hope that their libels may avail i detach votes from Mr Wilson. It. i sad but true that modern democrat is incompatible with those carditis virtues—truth and honesty—so tin the decalogue goq.s into abeyance du ing the few months in which tl: proles are being educated as to whei thev should write their cross on

ballot-paper. . If Mr Wilson were to be nominated for a third term, the real issue of the elections next vtar would be the statu? of the Senate in the Constitution. The President, in a recent speech iu Pueblo.- categorically challenges the time-honored view that Uie Senate is partnered in the treaty-making power. But the elder statesmen, men such as Lodge and Knox and Root, are utterly determined to maintain this view of their illustrious Chamber, and they sav that to permit the Chief Magistrate to continue, as he-has done since the war. to ignore the- Senate, would be on their part a' treason to the Constitution. In our electoral contioversics over the Parliament Bill we were much agitated because our Constitution was being strained or tampered with, so at least many thought. But the feeling is infinitely stronger here that the Senate has been tricked and gagged-Mii order that "enlanglinir alliances" foreign to the spirit of the Constitution--should be bound uji in the same cover with a ..treaty of peaceIt is remarkable that a President so intelligent, should, in treating the Senate, have followed a course so provocative, the more so that Mr Wilson has put on record his view of the relation between Senate .and President. In chapter 5 of his "Constitutional Government of United States," Mr Wilson writes:— "But there is another course which the President may follow, and which one or two Presidents ot" unusual political sagacity have followed with the satisfactory results that,were to have been expected. He may himself be less stiff and offish, may himself act in the true spirit of the Constitution, and establish intimate relations of. confidence with the Senate on his own Initiative, not carrying his plans to completion, and then hiving them in final form before the Senate to be accepted or rejected,- liut keeping himself in confidential communication with ""the leaders pf the Senate while his xilans »*re. in course, when their advice will be of service to him, an<J his infonlia- | tioii of the greatest service to them, in I order ; that there may be veritabl? j counsel and si real accommodation of ' views, instead of a final challenge-and. [ contest. The policy which has made j rivals of the President and Senate has shown itself in the President as often as in the Senate, and if the Constitution did intend that the Senate should, in'such matters, be an executive council, it is not-onlv the privilege of the 'President to treat it as siK:h; it is.also his best policy and his plain duty." -'There is always in President^Wilson's make-up some incorrigible Mr Hyde.in conflict with admirable "*and benevolent Dr .Tekvll. Tt is this fatal ambidexterity which is continuing rapidly to recruit the anti-Wilson forces. TheYe was the Washington ■speech in Miiy. 1316.. in which the President said. "Witlt the causes and objects of the war we are not concerned." And 'again, at Shadow Lawn, on the very eve of the electioji, in 1916, he said, "The certain prospect of "the success of the Republican Party is that we shall be 'drawn" in one form or

another into the embroilments of the European war." But when thc'indig--nation: of Roosevelt and- the Roots and Choates 'and Lodges-had burned to fever heat over such utterances, and over the demand for their "neutrality in thought,'-' Hydeism" next flows over., once more in this message ,". to Congress, - . a • message sent full: seven mouths after the murder- of tania, :in which message the President, after denouncing Hun outrages; and intrigues' in. the United States,' stigmatises: ■ v ... .. . . ■ . : '>• "Men amongst us calling themselves Americans, who have so far forgotten themselves' and their "honor -as citizens as .to put their- paramount svmpathy with one or the.other, side in jShe great j European- conflict- above - their - regard. I for the peace of the.-United States. They also preach- and practise disloyalty. VNo laws can,reach corruption of the .niind and heart, but I should not speak of others without also speaking of these, and expressing thej#tfen I deeper - humiliation and scorn .which :everv self-nOssessed and thoughi-fully patriotic Amerian must, feel when he

thinks, of them and of the discredit they are daily- bringing upon us." This was the/ mirror held up to suchAmericans as Roosevelt and Choate and Murray Butler, who were finding it increasingly difficult to plaj ~the role of onlookers. , , And. finallj we have had this summer this latest pronouncement) equalh puzzling to the President's friends and enemies. Addressing the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate (August 10, 1919), the President, when replying- to Senator M'Cumbei, offers this I strange moral survej of the United States and the war Senator M'Cuiuber Would moral coin lotion ol the unrighteousness ot the Geiman war ha™ brought us into this wai if Germany had, not committed an\ acts against us without the League of' Nations, and. we had no League of I Nations at that time 1. The Piesident I hope it would eyentuall\, Senator, as things developed. Senatoi M'Cumber Do jou think that it Germ.uw had committed no act of war or no act of injustice against our citizens that we would have gott-on into thiswar? ; i, •i" The President: Ido think, so.; Senator McCumber: You; think we would have gotten in anyway? The President: I do. . -■-.'■'■-:■■.■ Such a mentality as this, weighed, in the- balances of history, may undoubtedly attain- to £reatness,_of certain kind, but it is.not surprising,,, that.Air. Wilson is', in < the last degree unra-■tellio-ible to Lincoln's "plain, people, arid -that the pacifist Republican: vote which gave him his bare handful ot a maiontv in', 1916 -\believes noV only that it was betrayed, but that the et- | forts of their Chief Magistrate for the two previous vears hati been: directed, to switch his own party out. upon-a perverted plane of thought and . reason and had in this way made a really solid public opinion in America, sible We must never forget. that a proportion •of this electorate, foreign born, and foreign to. the verv language of the country of its adoption—a mass which generally he : Democratic Ticket —. gives a blank • cheque to its Chief Magistrate on elec- • tion dav. A *mere phrase or two-*rom i the White House contains about all '■■ the direction* and education which ever • penetrates the ignorant indifference ot J these newcomers;, To make such a com- ; niunity as thfs is "Safe for democracy . ' requires-of its President qualities of ; heart even more than qualities ot head. I No one disputes Mr Wilson's elever--1 ness, but is he not perhaps that fatal t thing—too clever?