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HE Presidential campaign now reaching its end has not been a particularly inspiring one. Circumstances six months ago promised one of the liveliest contests in American history, but it has really been one of the dullest. The four years' record of the Harding-Coolidge Administration, in the judgment of its Democratic opponents, had virtually made a gift of the Presidency for the next four years to the Democratic party. It was believed that the issue of honesty in government, for which ample materials were furnished by the scandals of last winter, would inevitably result in a change in administration. Yet this, which at one time seemed to be the chief question involved in the contest, has really cut little figure in determining the result. The lack of public interest in the matter has been indeed discouraging. Probably the Democratic convention is chiefly responsible for the failure; the word most frequently heard at that convention, constantly broadcasted to millions of listening ears, was the word "oil." The epithet was directed against one of the leading Democratic candidates and was doubtless an important influence in preventing his nomination; it also created a general im

pression that Democrats, as well as Republicans, were unpleasantly involved in this scandal. The justice of this impression or the injustice is a fair subject for argument; yet the mere fact that it can be argued and, indeed, has been constantly argued in the course of the last three months, shows that the main Democratic issue lacked that spontaneity and that unquestionable, clear-cut character, which is essential if the point is vividly to take hold of the public mind and decide the election. A question to which there are two sides, even though one side is not so clear as the other, lacks that emphasis essential to a political issue.

Yet in any campaign men, and not the issues, are the most interesting objects, if not the most important. It cannot be said that either Mr. Coolidge or Mr. La Follette has developed any new or unexpected qualities. Both have appeared in their now long familiar guises. Mr. Coolidge is still reticent, silent, secretive, unimpassioned, undefined. He has been unaggressive as a political candidate, just as last winter he was unaggressive as a party leader. The campaign has developed in him no fighting qualities and even the livelier aspects of the struggle have failed to make him strike anything

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resembling fire. He has displayed no precipitancy in meeting Mr. Davis's challenge on the Klan, and he has failed to take advantage of many openings made by Mr. Davis in his campaign speeches. The spectacle of a Republican candidate for the Presidency' 'coolly ignoring his Democratic opponent is the one novel feature of the contest. Nothing like it has ever been known, and this, in itself, would account for the listless character of the struggle. Victory or defeat by default -the thing is without precedent. The policy may be wise or admirable or statesmanlike in some new, misunderstood guise; but it certainly is not interesting.

A political contest on a continental scale, if it is nothing else, should be a debate a debate that will not only entertain the masses, but also be a chief means of instruction in the main matters that, as citizens, concern their happiness and interest. Yet there can be no "campaign of education," in which one party to the contest contents himself with a few dry, crisp, uninspiring remarks on public questions, and then retires to seclusion. This course only confirms the fact already sufficiently apparent, that Mr. Coolidge is a very different type of President from any of his predecessors. The gift of staccato statement and energetic leadership is not his. If reëlected the nation may count on four years of the most unruffled calm in the White House. It is plain that this quality is not displeasing to a large Coolidge following which sees in this disinclination for excitement a philosophic temper, a judicial poise, a painstaking devotion to duty, and a solid grasp of public problems which are particularly useful at the present time. On the other hand, there are others who interpret the Coolidge impassivity as an absence of imagination, a lack of animating constructive ideas, a constitutional aversion to make decisions or to take action, and a caution that is only another name for timidity-all qualities, of course, that seriously handicap a public man. The prevalence of these two contrary conceptions of the President's character and capacity, and the discussions that every

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HOUGH persistently ignored by his opponent, Mr. Davis has tackled the issues with considerable vigor. His speeches and his platform manner have confirmed the impressions generally entertained of his ability, his skill as a speaker, his personal charm, and his grasp on public questions. He has been criticized, indeed, for his aggression, and his tendency to denounce the record of the Republican party. There is little logic in such criticism. This government is a government by party, and no party that has held office for four years can expect to have the record unexamined. There is a popular impression that there is much in the Republican record that is unsafe to encourage by silence. Mr. Davis, harsh as may have been his criticisms, has not been undignified in his manner or careless in his accusations. If Mr. Davis, in this and in other things, has felt inclined to talk on a democratic level, it is perhaps because he entered the campaign with a certain handicap. He was regarded as an urbane gentleman, somewhat remote. in feeling and in ideas, endowed with a distinct gift for polished utterance. More serious still, Mr. Davis's affiliations and personal sympathies were under suspicion; he was accused of moving extensively in Ambassadorial society and of acting as the favorite lawyer of the trusts. Mr. Davis's attempts to free himself from these implications probably explain certain platform opinions that have been received with some dismay by his admirers. Though always an advocate of military preparedness and of the use of force as a last resort, his acceptance of C. W. Bryan's views on Defense Day had the unfortunate effect of making him appear as a pacifist of the Bryan type, and apparently the Davis views in the use of injunctions in labor disputes differed little from those of Mr. Gompers. On the

other hand, Mr. Davis's challenge to the Ku Klux Klan had a fine, manly sound, and in general his campaign procedures have increased the admiration of his friends and have won the respect of his political foes.

La Follette's "Revolutionary"

Proposal

HE one issue in the campaign that has aroused real interest is Senator

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La Follette's attack on the Supreme Court. He advocates a Constitutional Amendment which would virtually deprive this body of its right to declare laws null and void as violative of the Constitution. It is the La Follette proposal that such a law, set aside by the Supreme Court, shall again be referred to Congress, and that then, if that body repasses it, it shall become effective. That is, the suggested plan gives the Supreme Court a temporary veto, much like that now possessed by the President, and subject, like the President's, to reversal by the law-making body. This change has brought from President Coolidge his one energetic utterance of the campaign; he strongly disapproves, as does Mr. Davis, while Mr. Dawes describes the proposal as "revolutionary."

nothing of this one. One can imagine the excitement that would be caused in Great Britain should the highest court there declare an act of Parliament null and void. When President Coolidge therefore declared in Baltimore that the La Follette proposal would degrade America "into a communistic and socialistic state" he was simply talking nonsense. Great Britain, France, Italy, and all the other civilized states of Europe have no supreme courts with such sweeping powers, and certainly these countries are not "communistic and socialistic states."

This is an issue which it is easy to becloud and misunderstand. It is not "revolutionary" in the sense that it would strike at the roots of government, confiscate private property, and usher in an era of socialism or anarchy. From the intemperate denunciations levelled against the La Follette plan one might think it would do all these things. The fact is that the United States is the only country in the world where the courts have, or exercise, the right to set aside the acts of the legislature. Such a power is, as Mr. Coolidge intimates, America's most important contribution to the art of selfgovernment; it is a feature of our system that has won the admiration of many European statesmen, such as Lord Salisbury and Mr. Gladstone. Yet England, the source from which we derive our political and judicial institutions, knows

A Parliamentary System for America?

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HE La Follette proposal, which is far from being original with the Senator-it comes up, indeed, at frequent intervals-is "revolutionary" only in the sense that it is a plan completely to change the American system of government. We have lived for one hundred and thirty-five years under a constitutional system; La Follette proposes, though apparently he does not grasp the fact, that we shall change this for a parliamentary system. In Great Britain the Parliament-more correctly, in view of recent changes, the House of Commonsis the supreme governing authority. It knows no limitation, except its own will. As Bagehot said, Parliament can do anything, except make a man a woman or a woman a man. It could abolish the monarchy to-morrow and establish a republic-simply by a majority vote. is what is meant by a parliamentary system. Our Congress has no such power; in fact, its powers are defined and limited. The supreme authority, the people, has extended to Congress the right to pass laws on certain subjects, and has specifically forbidden it to pass laws on other subjects. Mr. La Follette now proposes to abolish all these limitations and restrictions and to give Congress power to legislate as it will. That is what a removal of the Supreme Court veto amounts to. For the chief purpose of the Supreme Court is to see that Congress does not disregard the limitations.

That