Democratic Birthmarks
348 THE COMMONWEAL August 7, I929 Professor Dixon observed that beer "depresses the higher faculties of the mind and does not exaggerate their activity." Now we seem to remember that when...
...Coming, audaciously enough, at a time when the aspect of the Russian-Chinese crisis was none too reassuring, it gave the strength of sincerity to our own appeals to the anti-war treaties...
...But will there ever be such an organization...
...We believe, on the other hand, that the recipe for success is to be discerned in the greatest of Governor Smith's ideas and achievements...
...and, on the whole, things will move tranquilly in the United States so long as labor does not grow politico-conscious and as agrarianism does not seriously threaten to mark its ballots differently...
...Emily Newell Blair, who as vice-chairman of the Democratic National Committee has seen not a little of campaigning...
...Defense of the status quo is a tremendous advantage when everything is going smoothly...
...To dispel it beforehand, some nation must take the lead...
...The first is, of course, the Civil War-a point so deeply etched upon school and other history as to be one of the few national facts everybody remembers9 The second may be seen in the program of Bryan, with which the present is totally out of sympathy...
...It will probably be defeated by a similar group...
...It is the Democrats who continue to grow vexed and volatile over this and a dozen other dynamitic themes...
...It can always strike a melodious note at the end of a convention with some species of compromise...
...Indeed the latter are probably as much interested in European anniversaries as the countries involved or their nationals...
...Nevertheless Lithuanians in this country will hear the slogan, "Back to Lithuania I" shouted at them from every office that is interested in Atlantic berths or tickets to Atlantic ports...
...For a time it may have looked as if Mr...
...x93 ~ has proved to be a bad year, anniversarily speaking...
...Then followed the Wilson bid for anti-Allied sentiment, and the subsequent repudiation of this by a declaration of war...
...A Democratic organization rooted solidly in states and cities would compensate for the "disrupting force of conflicting ideas...
...The question, therefore, suggests itself: why is all this sort of thing associated with the Democratic party, and why does Republicanism escape it...
...The party of Mr...
...Any question on this t929 Steamships visitation meets the natural explanation that Poland is now celebrating her tenth year of independence...
...Now we seem to remember that when Mr...
...Even if the Magyar government or the Church has not thought of signalizing the occasion, the suggestion has been supplied by astute and far-sighted business men...
...While such important groups as labor continue to hold aloof from any thought of marching toward victory in party formation, more than a few idealistic urges are headed straight for the voting booth...
...We were told recently by an excursion promoter that at present the transatlantic lines are preparing for the eastward passage of Hungarians in I93I...
...That weakness is attributable to heredity, as definitely as any birthmark...
...In all these instances the Democratic party was the group inside which catastrophic explosions of opinion occurred...
...Yet there is a very special Democratic weakness, which hampers the business of "getting breaks...
...But there are several ancestral lapses, difficult to live down...
...Unarmed with enforcement provisions, the success of that treaty depends upon what international political character can be built up for it by its friends...
...Such a plan seems obvious and sensible, but before it can be carried out, President Hoover must overcome the fondness of Congress for the army and navy, manifested by the generosity to which it is stirred whenever their interests are m question...
...Now this lack of agreement and this insistence upon personal beliefs is to a considerable extent the weakness of all "liberalism" as opposed to "conservatism...
...Blair fails to indicate any way out of the predicament, and very likely there is none...
...348 THE COMMONWEAL August 7, I929 Professor Dixon observed that beer "depresses the higher faculties of the mind and does not exaggerate their activity...
...Events, however, have indicated that neither can be created...
...Democracy has not been able to compromise, or to live at peace with itself, since the Civil War...
...Poland and the steamship companies...
...It is a place where ideas may be bandied about like basketballs, where resolutions must be fought, and where such fiery programs as those which used to emanate from Mr...
...The point is dealt with in the current Outlook by Mrs...
...Chesterton was asked how he obtained "inspiration," he replied, "More beer l" It would appear, therefore, that Cape Town has been listening to a subtle and venomous attack upon Mr...
...O. Henry's picturesque tale of the creation of a Central American demand for shoes by sowing cockleburrs in the streets bids fair to be eclipsed by this evidence of ingenious modern enterprise9 DEMOCRATIC BIRTHMARKS FFORTS to give political form to civic ideas are numerous in diverse parts of the land...
...It is a running commentary on the ideas which have presented themselves to the popular mind, and a summary of a thousand debates...
...Her shrewd and thoughtful paper is devoted to proving that whereas the Republicans are interested in winning, the Democrats are set on "thinking...
...A Democratic convention, however, cannot compromise...
...And to the Kellogg pact, which now comes really into existence, it should give a necessary political impetus...
...He was almost the first modern Democrat to understand the importance of good-will and to see that a party could earn it by making local organization so effective and so responsive to the public desire that support in the domain of national affairs would follow as a matter of course...
...Of course in announcing that tax reductions would be realized principally through the success of his plan, President Hoover may have secured for it a kindlier reception than was granted the schemes of his predecessor...
...As a consequence the story of Democracy is very interesting and constantly vital...
...Whether the credit for breaking the ice in this case belongs to President Hoover or to Premier MacDonald, who has had something to say about restricting war games, does not matter...
...Unfortunately, however, it has also been, during the major part of seventy years, a narrative of defeats...
...Chesterton's methods...
...A similar wariness would mean failure for the I93I meeting...
...A party of "individualists," as Mrs...
...When Ramsay MacDonald declared that "the government has kept in view the changes in the problem of national security as affected by the peace pact," and then announced the suspension, cancellation and slowing down of naval construction, he made a contribution to the pact's prestige...
...and it still regards Mr...
...The President's statement that "there is less real danger of extensive disturbance to peace than at any time in more than half a century," might have seemed like a blundering misstatement, considering conditions in the Orient, if it had not been backed by a program for curtailing the budgets of our own forces on land and sea...
...Hoover were going to create an oasis inside the G. O. P. area for the advocates of drought, thus transcending that skilful inditterence to Volsteadism which characterizes so many among the Root-Hughes-Coolidge crowd9 But now it is fairly evident that the said oasis will be used principally for a good long nap...
...Hoover is welded together by the conviction that it alone can "save the country," and therefore personal ideals of civic conduct must remain purely subordinate matters...
...Neither party can, for instance, become wet any more than either party has been dry...
...President Hoover did the same thing when he said that "our whole situation is certainly modified by the Kellogg pacts" and then called for a reconsideration "of our whole army program...
...It may be that Mr...
...Bryan may rend hearts and stir the enemy to wrath...
...Waltman has exaggerated a trifle, but you can skim a good deal from his remarks and still have a heady brew...
...By spreading the future projects to which we are already committed over a long period, and by eliminating obsolete services, the President believes our expenses may be materially reduced...
...During the last four years our military costs have increased $224,ooo,ooo, which is as much as the yearly total before the war, and according to all the estimates they will increase another $12o,ooo,ooo by I933...
...If the delegates adjourned with less good feeling than when they first met, it was largely because of the suspicions which were aroused whenever land forces were mentioned...
...Blair says, it "insures its defeat" by giving uncontrolled rein to the expression of opmlons...
...A great personality will, of course, occasionally coincide with a crisis...
...At a distance from the scene this may appear to be no formidable obstacle, yet it blocked President Coolidge's early ambitions for military reduction, and eventually, by a process of resistance, turned him into an advocate of bigger military budgets...
...That year will be the nine hundredth since the death of Saint Emeric, son of Saint Stephen, the great patron saint of Hungary...
...Volsteadism was sponsored by a group organized to use politics rather than to be political...
...Furthermore, the figures mark for us an increase of $6o, Ioo,ooo over the year I92728 as compared with a reduction of $I9,294,2oo for Great Britain and slight increases for France and Japan...
...Careful research of calendars, encyclopaedias and histories has only brought forth the fact that in 93 o, Vytauto, obscure yet respected king of Lithuania, saw the last of earth...
...GUNS, TREATIES, TAXES HATEVER becomes of President Hoover's plan for retrenchment in the matter of military expenditures, it has already left an impression on world affairs...
...The domestic appeal of the President's statement is that our military expenses are already the heaviest in the world, amounting, for the year 1928-29, to $624,6o0,00o as compared with $551,464,ooo for Great Britain, $4o7,915,ooo for France, and $224,352,ooo for Japan...
...But having arrived at such literary inferences from a scientific lecture, it may be well to await the complete text before proceeding farther9 IT IS estimated by passenger agents that approximately eleven thousand Poles, residing as either naturalized citizens or aliens in this Anniversaries country, will have visited Poland durand ing the year...
...Elsewhere in this issue we are printing an analysis of the situation in Virginia, so typical of the drift we have indicated...
...The hope for naval economy, of course, depends almost entirely upon "international agreement," but the preliminary conferences at Geneva this spring indicated that there can be no lasting agreement on limitation of the fleets without a correspondingly substantial reduction in the equipment and make-up of armies...
...Roosevelt's break in t912 not merely as a black spot on that great leader's record, but also as an exceedingly dangerous rebellion which all but ruined the nation...
...It is important that England and America seem to have effected a conjunction which should make easier the undertakings of the next disarmament conference...
...Particularly may this be true in the Middle-West, where a majority of the newspapers have been impressed with the need for a robust military and quick to criticize any attempt at reduction, yet where the prospect of a tax cut will be received at least as cheerfully as anywhere else...
...In some ways, of course, Democracy comes of excellent stock, and such writers as Claude Bowers have traced this lineage well...
...Finally one comes upon that antipathy between northern city and southern domain which every step of the route between A1 Smith the August 7, I9Z9 T H E C O M M O N W E A L 349 governor and AI Smith the candidate for President was necessarily destined to widen...
Vol. 10 • August 1929 • No. 14
