The man in the street: Papers on American topics

by Meredith Nicholson

VI

In the cool airs of the North Smith and I have honestly tried to reduce the league situation to intelligible terms. Those voters who may feel constrained to regard the election as a referendum of the league will do well to follow our example in pondering the speeches of acceptance of the two candidates. Before these words are read both Governor Cox and Senator Harding will doubtless have amplified their original statements, but these are hardly susceptible of misinterpretation as they stand. Mr. Harding’s utterance is in effect a motion to lay on the table, to defer action to a more convenient season, and take it up de novo. Governor Cox, pledging his support to the proposition, calls for the question. Mr. Harding defines his position thus:

With a Senate advising, as the Constitution contemplates, I would hopefully approach the nations of Europe and of the earth, proposing that understanding which makes us a willing participant in the consecration of nations to a new relationship, to commit the moral forces of the world, America included, to peace and international justice, still leaving America free, independent, and self-reliant, but offering friendship to all the world.

If men call for more specific details, I remind them that moral committals are broad and all-inclusive, and we are contemplating peoples in the concord of humanity’s advancement. From our own view-point the programme is specifically American, and we mean to be American first, to all the world.

Mr. Cox says, “I favor going in”; and meets squarely the criticism that the Democratic platform is not explicit as to reservations. He would “state our interpretations of the Covenant as a matter of good faith to our associates and as a precaution against any misunderstanding in the future,” and quotes from an article of his own, published in the New York Times before his nomination, these words:

In giving its assent to this treaty, the Senate has in mind the fact that the League of Nations which it embodies was devised for the sole purpose of maintaining peace and comity among the nations of the earth and preventing the recurrence of such destructive conflicts as that through which the world has just passed. The co-operation of the United States with the league, and its continuance as a member thereof, will naturally depend upon the adherence of the league to that fundamental purpose.

He proposes an addition to the Covenant of some such paragraph as this:

It will, of course, be understood that, in carrying out the purpose of the league, the government of the United States must at all times act in strict harmony with the terms and intent of the United States Constitution, which cannot in any way be altered by the treaty-making power.

There is no echo here of the President’s uncompromising declaration that the Covenant must be accepted precisely as he presented it. To the lay mind there is no discernible difference between a reservation and an interpretation, when the sole purpose in either case would be to make it clear to the other signatories, through the text of the instrument itself, that we could bind ourselves in no manner that transcended the Constitution.

Smith is endowed with a talent for condensation, and I cheerfully quote the result of his cogitations on the platforms and the speeches of the candidates. “The Republican senators screamed for reservations, but when Hiram Johnson showed symptoms of kicking out of the traces they pretended that they never wanted the league at all. But to save their faces they said maybe some time when the sky was high and they were feeling good they would shuffle the deck and try a new deal. Cox is for playing the game right through on the present layout. If you’re keen for the League of Nations, your best chance of ever seeing America sign up is to stand on Cox’s side of the table.”

Other Smiths, not satisfied with his analysis, and groping in the dark, may be grateful for the leading hand of Mr. Taft. The former President was, in his own words, “one of the small group who, in 1915, began the movement in this country for the League of Nations and the participation of the United States therein.” Continuing, he said, in the Philadelphia Ledger of August 1:

Had I been in the Senate, I would have voted for the league and treaty as submitted; and I advocated its ratification accordingly. I did not think and do not now think that anything in the League Covenant as sent to the Senate would violate the Constitution of the United States, or would involve us in wars which it would not be to the highest interest of the world and this country to suppress by universal boycott and, if need be, by military force.

In response to a question whether, this being his feeling, he would not support Mr. Cox, Mr. Taft made this reply:

No such issue as the ratification of the League of Nations as submitted can possibly be settled in the coming election. Only one-third of the Senate is to be elected, and but fifteen Republican senators out of forty-nine can be changed. There remain in the Senate, whatever the result of the election, thirty-three Republicans who have twice voted against the ratification of the league without the Lodge reservations. Of the fifteen retiring Republicans, many are certain of re-election. Thirty-three votes will defeat the league.

Smith, placidly fishing, made the point that a man who believed in a thing would vote for it even though it was a sure loser, and asked where a Democratic landslide would leave Mr. Taft. When I reminded him that he had drifted out of the pellucid waters of political discussion and snagged the boat on a moral question, he became peevish and refused to fish any more that day.

The league is the paramount issue, or it is not; you can take it, or leave it alone. The situation may be wholly changed when Mr. Root, to whom the Republican league plank is attributed, reports the result of his labors in organizing the international court of arbitration. Some new proposal for an association of nations to promote or enforce peace would be of undoubted benefit to the Republicans in case they find their negative position difficult to maintain.

The platforms and speeches of acceptance present, as to other matters, nothing over which neighbors need quarrel. As to retrenchment, labor, taxation, and other questions of immediate and grave concern, the promises of both candidates are fair enough. They both clearly realize that we have entered upon a period that is likely to witness a strong pressure for modifications of our social and political structure. Radical sentiment has been encouraged, or at least tolerated, in a disturbing degree by the present administration. However, there is nothing in Mr. Cox’s record as governor or in his expressed views to sustain any suspicion that he would temporize with the forces of destruction. The business of democracy is to build, not to destroy; to help, not to hinder. We have from both candidates much the same assurances of sympathy with the position held nowadays by all straight-thinking men—that industrial peace, concord, and contentment can be maintained only by fair dealing and good-will among all of us for the good of all.

From their public utterances and other testimony we are not convinced that either candidate foreshadows a stalwart Saul striding across the hills on his way to the leadership of Israel. Mr. Harding shows more poise—more caution and timidity, if you will; Mr. Cox is a more alert and forthright figure, far likelier to strike “straight at the grinning Teeth of Things.” He is also distinctly less careful of his speech. He reminds the Republicans that “McKinley broke the fetters of our boundary lines, spoke of the freedom of Cuba, and carried the torch of American idealism to the benighted Philippines”—a proud boast that must have pained Mr. Bryan. In the same paragraph of his speech of acceptance we are told that “Lincoln fought a war on the purely moral question of slavery”—a statement that must ring oddly in the ears of Southerners brought up in the belief that the South fought in defense of State sovereignty. These may not be inadvertences, but a courageous brushing away of old litter; he is entitled to the benefit of the doubt.