He averred that the nation’s foreign policy is “based on the theory that right must be done between nations as between individuals.” This is a specimen of “speaking softly.” The “Big Stick” follows almost immediately in the almost frantic state of mind he seems to be in concerning the needs for a great army and navy. Even the small boys ought to be trained in rifle practice! If he had added the hope that small girls would be taught to mould bullets and scrape lint, he would have been patriotically sublime!
That portion of his message which demands that members of legislative branch of the government be prosecuted as are those in the executive, and his sneer at Congress as being afraid of the Secret Service has created intense excitement in both houses and the language used in the message may be totally expunged from the records. Both Democrats and Republicans concur in the disposition to ignore matters of party and act in this matter, casting a stigma upon them all, as a whole.
Mr. Roosevelt’s bold assertion that the Panama Canal is a model for all work of that kind will meet many challengers. Philippe Bunau-Varilla, formerly Panama minister to the United States, has just issued a statement declaring that the Canal will cost $280,000,000 and that the plan now being carried out, owing to the dangers from the Gatun Dam, (which has already shown itself unreliable) “will result almost surely in the greatest disaster in the history of public undertakings.”
The President’s message, altogether, is like the President himself: commendable in some respects, partisan to a degree and strong in language rather than logic.
Reforming the House of Lords
Someone has said that every twentieth Englishman is a genius and the balance dolts, or something of that tenor. The Special committee of the House of Lords, in its report recommending a radical change in that body, seems actuated by a desire to retain as many of the twentieth type as possible and eliminate the rest.
At present, this august body contains 618 members, consisting of the royal princes, the Archbishops of York and Canterbury, two dozen minor bishops, the English peers and those Scotch and Irish peers who have been elected by their fellows to represent the nobility of these respective countries.
The committee each of the colonies send elective peers; that the 24 bishops elect one-third of their number to the Lords at each Parliament. The Archbishops are to remain permanent features and about 130 hereditary peers are to be retained, including such as have held the position of Cabinet minister, or of Governor-General of Canada, or Viceroy of India or have enjoyed high positions in the army or navy; and all who have served for twenty years in the House of Commons. Five judges are to be added as “law lords” and of the remaining number 200 are to be elected as representative peers.
By this selective, as well as elective, method, the fittest in brains, skill and ability would survive. It is equally probable, however, that, so far as broad, progressive policies are concerned, a House of Lords so made up would be even a greater handicap to the popular will than as it stands today. The average Lord now accepts his seat therein with that nonchalance which characterizes his attitude toward those other favors of fortune which are his by birth. He feels no added pride and seldom any real obligation to interest himself in measures that come before the House. While he is an obstructionist, it is after a rather passive fashion. To change this so as to make a seat in the galaxy of Lords a prize to be contested for, while limiting the eligibles to the race in the arbitrary manner proposed, would inevitably mean a powerful governing body, supersaturated with class-consciousness and hyper-sensitive to the faintest breath against its own aristocratic dominance. The reactionaries would entrench themselves by electing the most brilliant men of their own views. The lonely members from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa would have slight influence in shaping the destiny of the Empire as a whole and none as to England’s domestic affairs. To public opinion, then, as now, the House of Lords would be almost impervious. How, indeed, can any set of men taught to regard themselves, from infancy, as superior beings, be affected by the ideas of the plebeians? They have always assumed their class to be the natural governor and guardian of the hoi polloi. If the H. P. doesn’t thrive, it’s not the fault of the nobility.
It is no wonder that the House of Lords itself should be shamed over the survival of a caste system which permits even an idiot, born to the purple, to share the honors and responsibilities of membership in the highest assembly of their government, but even those apologists who maintain that the Britisher of rank feels obligations to humanity as does no other public man must take fright at the proposed concentration of power the new plan would insure. Certes, after many years of thwarted hopes for bettering of general conditions, the patient English people could only rise, in holy wrath, and abolish the House of Lords altogether. And, as a real and permanent reform measure, why don’t they do it now?