Guns, Treaties, Taxes
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. In all these in- stances the Democratic party was the group...
...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...
...Blair fails to indicate any way out of the predicament, and very likely there is none...
...In all these instances the Democratic party was the group inside which catastrophic explosions of opinion occurred...
...And to the Kellogg pact, which now comes really into existence, it should give a necessary political impetus...
...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...
...Unfortunately, however, it has also been, during the major part of seventy years, a narrative of defeats...
...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...
...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...
...But will there ever be such an organization...
...A Democratic organization rooted solidly in states and cities would compensate for the "disrupting force of conflicting ideas...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...Events, however, have indicated that neither can be created...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...Unarmed with enforcement provisions, the success of that treaty depends upon what international political character can be built up for it by its friends...
...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...
...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...
...A similar wariness would mean failure for the I93I meeting...
...A great personality will, of course, occasionally coincide with a crisis...
...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...
...Neither party can, for instance, become wet any more than either party has been dry...
...It will probably be defeated by a similar group...
...It is important that England and America seem to have effected a conjunction which should make easier the undertakings of the next disarmament conference...
...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...
...Volsteadism was sponsored by a group organized to use politics rather than to be political...
...It is a running commentary on the ideas which have presented themselves to the popular mind, and a summary of a thousand debates...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...To dispel it beforehand, some nation must take the lead...
Vol. 10 • August 1929 • No. 14
