The Dominion. MONDAY, JANUARY 18, 1018. A REPUBLIC'S LITTLE WORRIES.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1646, 13 January 1913, Page 4

The Dominion. MONDAY, JANUARY 18, 1018. A REPUBLIC'S LITTLE WORRIES.

America hag lately been enjoying one of its periodical troubles: the problem—what shall we do with our ex-Presidents i In the past America has simply done nothing; it has merely looked on whilo the occupant of the Whito House either retired into the oomforta of private life or olse devoted himself to some active public or private occupation, .theoretically, of course, this is the logical thing to do; for the Republic implies that every man Bhould bfl' glad to serve the State in any ■capacity, and should look for nothing in the way of material re-, ward. But Republics have their origin in a denial of one of the cardinal facts of civilised Bociety, and it is not surprising that whenever a Presidont retires the Americans turn uneasily* .to discussing some way of avoiding what they feel (being men; before they tare Republicans) is tho awkward and unnatural phenomenon of a President reduced to tho ranks. The President of the United States holds a position different in kind , from the position of a Prime Minister. He is Republicanism's substitute for a King; no exercises almost unbounded authority, an authority greater, in some particulars, than is possessed by ; tho King of England. Ho cannot help acquiring, and tho Americans cannot help investing him with a "sacred" character; so that his people would be inhumanly abstract and logical if they did not feel a little uncomfortable at seeing him return to\ membership of tho profane multitude. Most of them doubtless feel, either very dimly or. very acutely, that there . is something wrong with a political system which constantly exalte men only to set them down again. Mil. Carnegie lfl ono of those who realiso tho . anomaly of it, but his way of removing anomalies iB to write a cheque. Towards the end of November ho paused the trustees. of tho Carnegie Corporation (to which he recently handed over £25,000,000 for expenditure on good objects) to announce that it would offer to "cach.;futuro' - ex-President of the United' States and his widow unmarried" an annual pension of £5000 "as long as thoy remain unprovided for by the nation, that they may be able to spend the latter part of their lives in devoting their unique knowledge gained of public affairs to the public, free from pecuniary cares." This extraordinary offer was greeted by the press with a tremendous volley of aDuso, although here and there it was applauded. For the most part, however, the only . good words for the offer came in the shape of a hope that this "insolent" proposal might shamo Congress into doing something. The only living ex-President is . Mn." Roosevelt, and ho _oarns an easy £10,000 a year in writing what appear to lis to be miscellaneous articles of no special merit in the New York Outlook. He. has expressed' himsolf against the proposal to pension off ex-Presi-dents, and Mr. Taft agrees with liiml Mr. Taft is going to solve his problem by taking the Kent professorship of law at the Yale Law Schooli It is a wholesome sign that newspapers of all shades of opinion agreed in expressing the utmost repugnance to tho idea that. exPresidents should! be tho beneficaries of a private person, but only a 'few of the papers went so far. as tho New York Sun, _ which did not see why an ox : President should bo "a parasite on a dropsical private fortune" oompiled by discreditable methods by "a strutting little plutocrat." ,: Mb. Carnegie disposed of, there remained the original difficulty. Although the. New York Post was correct when it pointed out that no. ex-President had ever fallen into penury, or anything approaohing it; yet it .is equally true that want of means forced more than ono exPresident to take positions which brought them into alliance with not very respectable business interests. Opinion appeared to bo equally divided on tho question whether Congress ought to make a general 1 provision, for Presidents on their retirement from office; but even 1 those journals opposed to this idea admitted tho general principle, that ex-Presidents cannot bo as other men, by, observing that in case of necessity special legislation could "always be enacted. Those writers wero very few who courageously declared that an ex-President required no special treatment. The New York Tribune, for example, objected to' anything which might restrain an ex-President. from "the normal 1 activities of a citizen": "We'want no endowed national figureheads, set apart liko princes of the blood. Other papers declare that when a : President "relinquishes his trust, ho should bo prepared to take his 1 chance with the rest of us," This i sounds very fine and brave—and it i is certainly tho only logical view of a true Republican to take—but, on : tho whole, there is ample evidence ! that tho bulk of the American people 1 shy a good deal at this particular ] corollary of tho Republican theory. Their ancient instincts—vestiges of ' the human devotion to the monarchical idea in somo form—seem to ' be still alive, sufficiently alivo to t make them realise that thero is after 1 all something unnatural in the Re- ' publican system, which amounts to ( a system of short-term monarchs. 1 This is a feeling which will always ] survive—the belief that every Rc- I public will some day turn itself, or ' be turned into, a monarchy again t has a good basis in human nature. ] But America can rid herself, and . perhaps in some distant future may ' rid barself, of her periodical die- i<

' comfort by reducing the President's office to a smaller and commoner and less powerful thing than it is.