PRESIDENT COOLIDGE

Hokitika Guardian, 19 September 1927, Page 4

PRESIDENT COOLIDGE

lA STUDY OF HIS CAREER

(By F.M.0., in the Sydney Herald)

"When President Coolidge gave his •announcement to the United Press this week ho may have been expressing his native diffidence, or he may have been following his own method of canvassing public attention—and it. has been a highly successful lino. It i.s bettor to say “canvassing public attention” than “advertising himself,” lor Air Coolidge’s chief pride is that he does not advertise. Whether on this count chiefly, or on several counts which include this one, his fellowcountrymen have labelled him all his life as “different.” And Mr Coolidge bore that label for some time before bo ceased to dislike it. Different from a long family line which has carried the Christian nain.es of John Calvin for generations, he i,s not. He probably regards himself as a throwback to tho Pilgrim families rather than as different. Different from those who seo no 'harm in. the American boom of extravagance and boasting he shows himself glad enough to he. “COW” IN FOUR. SYLLABLES.

Nevertheless, lie was 'sufficiently suspected of “difference” from the hulk of his countrymen for au admiring biographer to deny during his term of Presidential office that he had lost, or abandoned, or otherwise cens-

ed to employ the New England accent in his daily speech. His political opponents declared that an operation or. his nasal passages had destroyed the celebrated Vermont method of speech for which he had become known. Coolidge is no chatterer; the strong silent man is the party picture of him; hut this insinuation was as damaging as anybody outside the United States will believe. His auol- | oeist hastened to refute the slur. I “The public may be assured that he speaks as nasally as always,” says Mi- Whit in (“President Coolidge, a Contemporary 'Estimate”). “He can still pronounce ‘cow’ with four syllables.” It has to v " ■ v-'+tad that, “he never played—bov or man—marbles, baseball, golf, anything. His recreations are limited to reading. walking, and the admiration of Nature. He is as far away from the Bull Moose Republicans’ outlook as is the Puritanism of the Pilgrim Fathers from the morals of the present day. He is “different.” yes. But, by Heck! nobody shall allege that he does not say “cow” like a Nev Englander. and get away with it, POLITICAL MODESTY. His attitude towards political office is quaintly un-American. It is that if his people want him they must ctoase

him with any proposals for elevation. When he announced last week, “I <lo not choose to be a candidate for President in 1928,” he was following exactly his characteristic method. For one thing, he wrote it and did not say it; secondly, the sentence is curt to the point of ambiguity; and, above all, it. is suprising that the United States Press did not remember that he had done it before. In 1920, while he was Governor of Massachusetts, an organisation began working to nominate him for the Presitiency. After the work bad reached a serious stage Mr Coolidge issued a public statement, in which be said. “I am deeply appreciative. ... I have never said I will become a candidate for President. ... I have not been, and am not a candidate.” Nevertheless be was nominated without further disavowal, and, after Mr Harding was chosen, Mr Cool id go’s nomination as Vice-President was promptly accepted by Convention on a single ballot. His reason for this attitude in 1920 was that it was unbecoming in a State Governor, or at least a Governor of Massachusetts (for Boston. like Coolidge, is “different”) to enter a contest for delegates. UNITED STATES POLICY.

It is safe to say, however, that nobody knows what Mr Coolidge means to do. not even Mr Coolidge himself. His attitude all through his career is to let other people 'do the pushing if they want him for this office or that. He does not look ahead, least of all in advancement of himself. “Do the day’s work” is his motto, fho Republican committee will have to take the responsibility of deciding whether it is safe or not to run Mr Coolidge for a third term, or for something that will look perilously like a. third term. If they decide to run tho risk, it is on a par with all the President’s past history that he will lot it happen. Rut unquestionably the failure of the Geneva Condolence lias been a blow to him.

The leading features of Mr Coolidge’s policy as President lmve been reduction of taxation, economy in departmental expenditure, tho upholding of the law as a sacred duty to the country. nml the strengthening of the United States’ army and navy that she may play that part in ensuring tho rule of peace and international law which her prestige and position among the nations demand. Art- Coolidge’s foreign policy moves allegedly on strict avoidance of other nations’ affairs, the inculcation of the high morality of friendly relations among all peoples, reduction of world muniments, and the paving the way towards an active World ( ourt o, Justice. I S is 'present disappointment is probably sincere, as it is certainly inevitable. It springs—or so it must seem to British eyes—from the incapacity of the Americans to realise

that tho main lines of their foreign policy are not parallel, but divergent. You cannot stand aloof from other people’s affairs and still lecture them on their sins and on the morality of enforcing debts that arose from a common cause in a great war. VIEWS OF DISARMAMENT.

Moreover, Mr Coolidge’s period of office has been marked by some quite extraordinary events—events which have made United States’ policy even less intelligible to outsiders than it is in theory. These have been, in. the main, tlie exclusion clause in tlie Immigration Act against tlie Japanese; the voyage of an immense United States fleet across the Pacific and around the world; a sporadic outbreak of Anglophobia in the United States press, which was not exactly discouraged by the gratutious attack on" British bona tiues by the Secretary to tho Treasury, Air Mellon; and now the attempt at the Geneva conference to force an agreement under which Britain and Japan reduce naval armaments while the United States should be allowed to build. Air Coolidge was against the Japanese exclusion clause-, but Congress enforced it against, him. It seems that Congress lias taken a strong stand also on the naval question, or at least that the Republican party has. The only alternative is to believe that Air Coolidge has no mind of his own; tor, in December. 1925, in a message to Congress, he said that the Locarno Agreement had diminished the need for European armaments. A'et “there is no escape,” he added, “for our country from bearing its share of the world’s burdens.” Having uttered fb.ls engaging opinion that what is aluxury for Europe is a necessity for the United States, he went on to say that “he would look with gratitude on any action Congress might take in reduction of our own armaments. The only explanation that seems reasonable to one who is not an American is that Air Coolidge badly wants Europe to disarm first, in order that ho may combat an agitation at liomc for larger naval armaments. One of his 1923 election pledges was that tho United States should “assume the leadership” in world disarmament. This does not quite mean what it s |j ems to mean; the 'American undeisbanding of it is that his country should become, with Irreign ncquiesonce, a, director-general of disarmament, and if other countries don't agree to this, they must be badminded and full of evil intentions.