VOLUME XLIX THE WORLD'S WORK JANUARY, 1925 NUMBER 3 LMOST A one THE MARCH OF EVENTS hundred years ago, a new period began in American history which has ever since been known as the "era of good feeling." President Monroe's reëlection in 1820, when he received every vote of the Electoral College except one, marked the virtual disappearance of political parties and political factionalism and made possible the coöperation of all public spirited groups in the important work of developing the new country. Properly considered, Mr. Coolidge's recent triumph was almost as unanimous as President Monroe's a century ago. Leaving out Leaving out the Solid South, which, for such comparisons, should properly be ignored, Mr. Coolidge carried every state except Wisconsin. The rebuke everywhere administered to the insurrectionary elements in his own party should make for Republican harmony. Senator La Follette has disappeared as an influential force in American politics. His power in His power in the present Congress must greatly weaken after this demonstration of the slight extent to which he exercises influence outside of the State of Wisconsin. Senator Brookhart, whose majority as a Senatorial candidate, two years ago, was 160,000, returns to Washington with a majority of 755 votes. It is absurd to maintain, after this exhibition at the polls, that "blocs," and the things they represent, are popular with the American rank-and-file. The spirit of the nation still insists on organization and order. It has taken a strong stand in favor of the political party as an agency of legislation and government. The fear, which has recently found widespread expression, that the political party was breaking up in the United States, and that Congress, divided into antagonistic groups, would present a picture of helplessness and demoralization not unlike that of the parliaments of Continental Europe, is now seen to have been groundless. That there will be evidences of independence in the new Congress may be taken for granted, yet it is absurd to suppose that the emphatic voice of the American people, registering a protest against the disharmonies that have marked recent legislative procedures in Washington, will not exert a restraining influence upon the proceedings of the next few months. Certainly few Presidents have had the 232 Another "Era of Good Feeling" opportunity that the recent election has given Mr. Coolidge. He is President no longer by accident, but by the free and overwhelming choice of his countrymen. Out of the six Vice-Presidents who have succeeded to the Presidency, he is only the second who has obtained a reëlection. If Mr. Coolidge had any sense of insecurity before, there need be no reason why he should feel unsupported now. The election has made him the unquestioned leader of his party. The lesson of the last session of Congress is the necessity for such leadership. It is not likely that the experience has been wasted upon the President. The acclaim that greeted the Coolidge Message to Congress a year ago was caused by the definiteness with which the President marked out his legislative program, as well as the excellent features of the program itself. What the nation applauded was the capacity for leadership which this message indicated, and such criticisms as were visited upon the President as the Congressional session continued were inspired by the belief that he had not vigorously enforced his leadership. The spectacle presented was not a new one in American politics; it again illustrated, indeed, the weakest spot in the American system, the lack of coördination between the legislative and the executive departments. Congress rewrote the President's tax scheme, it overrode his bonus veto -indeed, it almost consistently ignored the influence of the White House. It is not too much to say that Mr. Coolidge's reputation as a statesman will be gauged entirely by the extent to which he makes himself the leader of the Republican party, initiates a plan of legislation that measurably meets the public needs, and develops the personal force that carries this plan through Congress. The advantages are now all on his side. The party has a majority, though a slight one, in the Senate, and a much larger one in the House. The nation has shown its confidence in the President by a vote of huge proportions; that the victory was primarily a Coolidge victory, and not a Republican victory, is self-evident. The auspices therefore are favorable for one of the most successful administrations in American history. Above all, it is time for another "era of good feeling.” Senator Lodge's Place in History I' T IS impossible, at this time, to fix the place of Henry Cabot Lodge in the American story. It is almost as difficult as to fix that of Woodrow Wilson. Despite the fact that Senator Lodge's public career covered forty years of our national life and that he became associated with many of the most interesting men and the most stirring events of his time, history will know him for his participation in a scene in which President Wilson was the other most conspicuous actor. The repudiation of the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations by the United States Senate as that exciting achievement takes its place, in the perspective of the next hundred years, as one of the blessings of modern history, or one of its most lamentable mistakes, will Senator Lodge be regarded as a worker of good or of ill. President Wilson's fame rests largely upon the same decision. On the personal side Senator Lodge's career of course has the utmost interest. His contact with American politics dates from James G. Blaine and has been continuous since that date. There were few Americans of importance during that period whom he had not known at first. hand, and with whom he had not had close contact. Probably no American Senator of his time had so many friends and correspondents among European statesmen. It is doubtful whether even the mind of Roosevelt was so complete a storehouse of American events during the period in which it was most active. It was in the field of foreign affairs, a field unfamiliar to most Americans, that Senator Lodge was most expert. It has been said that his attitude toward President Wilson's peace negotiations was prompted by wounded vanity and personal spite. Perhaps a more accurate statement would be that he regarded gration Law T IS already apparent that one of the subjects which will again loom largest President Wilson as a parvenu in under- Attempts to Break Down the Immitakings of this sort. The Senator from the great state of Massachusetts, the state that had sent to the Senate Daniel Webster, Charles Sumner, and George Frisbie Hoar, had concerned himself with American foreign policy for more than thirty years. All its problems had been his daily companions during that time. Senator Lodge, too, was a scholar and a historian. What was this Princeton professor-so it is conceivable to imagine this elder statesman saying to himselfwho presumed, without consulting him, to overturn the teachings of more than a century, to reverse completely American tradition, and to launch the country on a scheme of partnership with Europe? For a generation no American President had taken a step in foreign relations without consulting him; why should a man of the opposite political faith now ignore his experience? It is an interesting circumstance that all the Senator's learning and philosophy had not induced in his mind anything except a feeling of distrust toward Europe. He could see no sincere friends of the United States on the other side of the Atlantic-not even Great Britain. The organization of the League of Nations he regarded as a European scheme to use this nation's resources and power for its own aggrandizement. Senator Lodge was an old man; he had read deeply in Revolutionary history and the history of the fifty years following; he had personal and bitter memories of European diplomacy during the Civil War; and he could not reframe his beliefs and his prejudices in accordance with what many regard as the more enlightened political thinking of his later time. If the League of Nations becomes the most important element in the political organization of the world, then the part played by Senator Lodge in its defeat before the Senate will not redound to his reputation as a statesman. If, however, it fails in its fine intention, then his position as a far-seeing public man will be vastly enhanced, with both present and future generations. at the present session of Congress is that of immigration. There is a popular impression that the comprehensive bill passed last winter had solved this problem, at least for the present generation. It is already apparent that this is not the case. At least three phases of the unending debate are rapidly taking form. One represents a concerted and persistent attempt to bring about the repeal of the existing quota law. On the other hand, Mr. Albert Johnson, Chairman of the Immigration Committee, will introduce bills intended to make that legislation even more restrictive. That Japan is still unreconciled to the exclusion of her nationals is already apparent. By far the most important matter at present is the campaign launched for the repeal of the Johnson Act. This campaign is almost exclusively alien in its inspiration and purposes, though it has enlisted the sympathies of certain elements of the established population. The idea is being circulated that the quota law is merely a temporary measure, passed in haste and panic, and intended even by its framers to remain upon the statute book only until Congress has found the leisure to study the question exhaustively and determine the nation's "permanent policy." The demand is therefore made for "commissions of experts" to study immigration in all its details and to present a definite solution of our most perplexing problem. Nothing could be more absurd than this contention. The present immigration law is not a temporary expedient: it represents a permanent solution, and was so accepted, when passed, by the Administration and the public. It was not hastily passed; it was the result of years of study, and was the final product of the most experienced students of the subject. That any necessity exists for the further "investigation" of immigration is hardly a candid claim, for there is probably no single subject affecting our national life that has been so completely investigated in the last fifty years and upon which information is so complete. It was with all this data at its disposal that Congress, last session, framed the present legislation. It was passed in response to the strongest possible public demand, by an over whelming majority in both houses. As to its main features -the admission of aliens from European countries on the quota basis-there was practically no difference of opinion. Congressmen, Senators, the press, the public, and President Coolidge were almost unanimously for it. The Nation's Fixed, Unalterable T Policy are entering the United States far in excess of the quota is an evil calling for immediate remedy. That a great mistake was made in not extending the quota law to the North American continent becomes daily more evident. At the present time there is no limitation on immigration from Canada, the West Indies, Mexico, Central America, and the entire North American continent. The reason for this liberality was mainly sentimental, there being a natural hesitation in closing the doors on our own American neighbors, especially at a time. when the cultivation of amicable PanAmerican relations seemed a desirable national end. But the quality of immigrants coming, in large numbers, especially from Mexico, must soon cause this question to be regarded in its practical light. Canada naturally presents a special problem; immigrants from her English-speaking provinces-English, Scottish, and Irish-are always desirable, but French Canadians present a hopeless problem in assimilation. With all these immigration questions before it-with alien groups seeking the overthrow of the whole law, with restrictionists insisting on more exclusive laws, with Mexico, Canada, and South America presenting special issues, with Japan insisting on the repeal of Japanese exclusion-it is apparent that the Immigration Committees will be one of the most interesting in Congress this winter. HE only phase on which there was any disagreement was the clause excluding "aliens ineligible to citizenship"-that is, Asiatics and Mongolians. As to the most important feature of the law-the one which provided that, in future, the bulk of our immigrants should be derived from the northwestern countries of Europe, and the smallest possible number from southern and central Europethere was no difference of opinion then as there is not now. That idea, embodied in the Johnson Act, represents the fixed, unalterable policy of the United States. The efforts of certain racial groups to change this conception, and to change it not in the interests of the United States but in the interests of their The Religious Issue in the Democratic own people now living in Europe, will not alter the American attitude on this question. It will merely be an additional evidence of the unassimilability of the groups who sustain the agitation, and will be a further demonstration of the truth of the criticism so frequently made, that their loyalty is not concentrated upon America and its institutions, but is still, above all, a loyalty to their own race and religion. P Party ERHAPS the most interesting ques tion arising from the results of the November election is the future of the Democratic party. This is certainly the oldest political party in this country and perhaps in the world; it has survived many shocks in the past and there is little likelihood that it will not survive its latest misfortune. A That the present immigration and party that can always cast 136 votes in naturalization laws are incomplete is the Electoral College, that has elected clear enough. But the need is more 12 Senators and 183 representatives to restriction, not less. That immigrants the new Congress, can hardly be re garded as dead or even moribund. Yet its future does present certain difficulties, and developments since its recent disaster have not tended to make them any more simple. That the party went to pieces, not in the first week in November, but in the last two weeks in June, is now the outstanding fact that should be properly taken to heart by the party leaders. The truth is that the "Democracy" was not destroyed by its opponents, but that it committed suicide at the Madison Square Garden Convention. Two irreconcilable elements, the McAdoo and the Alfred E. Smith factions, tore for two weeks at each other's vitals, and, as an incident to this personal struggle, drew the whole organization down to temporary ruin. Developments since the Republican triumph indicate that the nomination of Mr. Davis represented merely a truce, for both sides to the Madison Square Garden battle now seem to be preparing a renewal of Armageddon. Governor Alfred E. Smith won an unprecedented victory, attaining the governorship by a majority of 115,702, at the same time that the Republican candidate for the Presidency swept the state by nearly 900,000 majority. Normally such a demonstration of popularity, in the state that casts 45 electoral votes, immemorially regarded as indispensable to the success of a Presidential nominee, could have only one result. Grover Cleveland became a Presidential candidate by virtue of a much less spectacular victory than this. Not unnaturally Governor Smith's supporters have interpreted his election, under these circumstances, as giving him something of a vested right to the nomination of 1928. They have, for all practical purposes, already entered him as a candidate. But Mr. McAdoo's followers have similarly refused to take his defeat at the 1924 convention as marking the end of his political career. The fact that Woodrow Wilson became President in 1916 without the electoral vote of New York State, they regard as establishing a new political era. The Solid South and the Western states can control the Presidency, and in a combination of this sort they have already started Mr. McAdoo's campaign for 1928. A situation of this sort in the Democratic party bodes nothing but evil for that party, and, indeed, for the nation as a whole. Its most unfortunate aspect is that it introduces an entirely new note into American politics. Up to the present time religion has played a negligible part in our political differences. Unfortunately, the Smith-McAdoo feud has taken on a religious character which it will never lose. Its continuance will mean that the Protestant and Catholic elements will lock horns for another four years, with another convention that will merely duplicate the one of 1924, and with a party, at the end, even more demoralized than it is at the present time. There are few disinterested political observers who believe that either Governor Smith or Mr. McAdoo can ever receive the Democratic nomination, or that, in case either one does, he can ever be elected President. The disappearance of the candidacies of both men is therefore an essential preliminary to the reorganization of an historic party. It suffers from other ills, some of them exceedingly grievous ones, but this is the most discouraging and the one that calls for immediate treatment. When American Life Had Dignity T HE Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, in opening a new wing devoted exclusively to American interiors and American furnishings and furniture, has made a graphic contribution to that work of Americanization which is one of the pressing needs of the time. A hastily judging world has chosen to regard American "taste" as representing everything that was tawdry and grotesque; it is apparent that the misconception arose from taking the manifestations of our crudest era as typical of national culture in the longer range. Nothing more absurd than the domestic arts of the latter half of the nineteenth |