AMERICA AND FRANCE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18753, 5 January 1923, Page 9

AMERICA AND FRANCE

M. CLEMENCEAU IN THE STATES. Written for the Otago Daily Times. By Frank 11. Simonds. WASHINGTON, November 23. Notwithstanding the fact that Congress has just reassembled under conditions which have very profound meaning to the whole American audience, the centre of the stage has belonged for a whole week to Clemonceau. Ho has swept the front page clear of all competitors pretty generally the country over, and wherever men and women meet the man and his message -have been tile first and the persisting topic of conversation. No foreigner in my memory has scored so instant and complete a newspaper success. His spoken and his written word are being circulated the country over, and he has made the United States think of tho French problem. lie has bad, moreover, a personal success. Laving aside for a moment tho question of conversions, he has convoyed an impression of courage, of sincerity, and of utmost simplicity which disarms his enemies and delights his audiences. Something _in this high adventure of an old man, its isolation its directness, and its daring has caught the popular fancy. Those who damn his record and curse his policies—and of those there are not a few —still more those who disagree completely but without passion, preface their discussion with a personal tribute. Now it is essential to recognise at tho outset that in the larger sense the Clemencoau mission is doomed to failure. Not as a result of his speeches or of his presence will cither the Senate or the mass of tho American people agree to a return to Europe on a basis of 1919. Ho will not persuade Americans to ratify a treaty of guarantee; ho will not persuade them that French views with respect to Germany are correct. Our mind is for a long future closed on these subjects. Such a success as ho may have, as ho has had so far. has been rather in presenting the French view as something beside a brutal militaristic policy. We have, underlying much else, a very real and vital friendship for France, which has suffered a temporary eclipse, partly because French things have become involved in the welter of domestic politics. Clomcnceau is reviving and revitalising this. Wherever he goes there is an obvious and instant of tho friends of Franco and of tho tradition of Franeo-American friendship. In a word, I do not believe Clemenceau is going to change American policy toward France, but there is every present indication that ho is going to influence American feeling towards Franco very materially. No other Frenchman has touched us oven momentarily by tho spoken word, roch was welcome as a symbol. Brinnd was received as tho head of a government, and his remarks greeted with formal applause, and dismissed almost without discussion. (Jlemenceau, on the contrary, is one of tho American heroes of the war. The legend of the man who saved the victory is here. Clemenceau of tho war is still perhaps our most admired hero. It is Clomenceau of the peacemaking that America has condemned, without a hearing, and is now, in tho interest of fair play, giving a hearing. Briand at tho Washington Conference addressed the French Chamber over American heads, and Americans resented it. He remained in France even on the sofa of a Washington Hotel, but Clemenceau was in America even before he arrived. Each of the distinguished Frenchmen who came here to the Washington Conference, and lingered over a boat, gave tho impression of having come merely to make a speech not merely in French, hut to the French. They were unapproachable, uncommunicative save in eloquence of the official sort. There never was tho slightest bit of real contact between them and the American public, and as a consequence France suffered, and they suffered in the American mind. Now Clemenceau has obviously come here to talk to ns, not to carry home something which will be useful to him in French politics. but to leave something which will be useful to France. There is an imnlied compliment in his mission, in his infinite pains to explain, in his obvious desire to bo understood and to understand. He doesn’t understands us. we don’t understand him, but it is a novel experience tor us Americans to have a Frenchman of Clemenceau’a distinction try to understand us. It is true that “the Tiger” has aroused Senate criticism, but that was assured m advance. It is true that Borah and otners are bombarding him with sentences borrowed from Nitti and from Keynes, but this is to he expected, for Clemenceau is challenging the whole position of the Senate. There will certainly be a rallying of the enemy, produced by tho Clembncoau visit; there will be debate, denunciation, and every kind of discussion; but the point is, it seems to me, that no one but Clemenceau could have succeeded in bringing about even a discussion. He has appealed from the Senate to the people, and the people are going to hear him, are hearing him, and, as I said, if they do not change their decisions they are bound to modify them. He is bidding for the inponderables, and not by any means failing. The former French President of the Conpci! comes at a moment when the foreign policy of tho Republican Administration is far from popular. As I have often said there is no discoverable revolt of the mass of Americans against tho policy of isolation. No, the criticism of the Hughes policy is based upon the view that what Mr Hughes is doing is not establishing an alternative policy to that of Mr Wilson, but. is only a rather ignominous imitation. For example, it was Mr Wilson’s idea that we should go to all international fires and help extinguish the flames. But the American people quite patently did not care about attending fires. Yet Mr Hughes in his Lausanne action would seem to advocate that we should attend the fires but resolutely decline to aid in extinguishing them. Lausanne has been, all things considered, a blunder. Most Americans are a little uncomfortable over tho position we occupy there, not because they would have us attend as full participants, but because they feel that we should be better away altogether. The rejection of the Wilson policy seems to me final, but there is a very general feeling that Mr Wilson’s opponents have not found an alternative policy, and, if you please, where he mado us ridiculous, his successors have made us mean. Clemenceau has arrived at a moment when the whole question cf foreign policy is under discussion. He has, in a sense, become the centre of the discussion. The storm is breaking about his head, and it will doubtless be a severe storm. Most of the arguments of Clemenceau may in the end go nast tho mark. His success so far has been human beyond all else. A woman and an old man both have an aclvnntapeou* position in a.n arc'umont. “The Tiger” will profit by this. His years do more than protect him; they are'in a sense _ n privilege. You must see onr American newspapers to get any real conception of the whole episode, and you will find in reading them, no matter from what section of the country, that all have been equally moved to concede the sincerity, the honesty to courage of “The Tiger.” Clemenceau has made millions, literally millions of Americans, read and hear a Frenchman’s statement of the French case. Most of these millions had never before even dreamed there was a French side, and had taken their views second hand from unfriendly or uncomorchending quarters. He has by right of rononest seised the front parre_ in every American newspaper from Maine to California. He has set people to talking in nil tho clubs and street ears and country grocery stores. Ho has pleased, ho has displeased, ho has aroused a nation-wide argument. He had marie a nation weary of European affairs and obstinately set against European ideas listen to a new discussion. As a personal success, as a, triumph in publicity, Clemcncnau’.s achievement has no parallel in contemporary American journalism. But it is thing mom than a personal success. He is not, going to bring_ America back with him to Europe, but he is going to leave a little of France here in the United States, His invasion, moreover, is already becoming legendary. Methuselah will have to look to his laurels.

LAND AND INCOME TAX. TO THE EDITOB. Sib, — I have before me a printed statement suid to have Been made by Mr Massey shortly before Christmas of 1321 to the effect that in M2O tho law with roferenc to land and Income tux was amended in such a way that a man may own land of the unimproved value of £2tnX) anti not bo liable to pay land tax if his income for tho same year does not exceed £2OO. I shall consider it a favour if you or any of your rcaoers can tell me whether or not such is tho law to-dav. —I am. etc., Taxed. [lf the Commissioner of Taxes is satisfied that a landowner is, “by reason of age, illhealth, or other disability,’’ incapacitated from earning an income in excess of £ooo a year, he may allow by way of special exemption a deduction not exceeding £2500 from tho assessment of the unimproved value of the land. —£0..