Evening Star Newspaper, March 3, 1929, Page 17

Editorial Page EDITORIAL SECTION he Sunday St WASHINGTON, D. ( SUNDAY MORNIN( Reviews of Books _ MARCH 3, 1929. T \_Pfr( 72—8 Pn;es 7 FOREIGN RELATIONS GIVE HOOVER 3 Anglo-American Differences, Repara- tions and South petition Are Problems. BY FRANK H. SIMONDS, HILE there is always a temp- tation to describe each change in the presidency as the end and the begin- ning of an era, it is at least true that Mr. Hoover will be the first post-war President. He is the first Chief Executive who will come to the White House to deal both at home and ebroad with a world which has largely escaped from the immediate conse: quences of the World War. More. over. in his foreign relations, Mr. Hoo- ver will have to deal with' a Europe which. in the main, has taken a form like:y to endure for many years. { one contrast the situation cd States and of Europe, both separately and in relation to each with that which confronted Wilsoa only 16 years ago, it takable that the changes are d exaggeration. Those 16 years witnessed the transformation of the United States info a world power the most exact sense of the word, v have seen even vaster changes rope. The problem of International rela- #ons Is no Jonger what it was in 1919 2t the moment of the peace conference, in 1923 during the occupation of the Ruhr or in 26 when the Locarno were being made and Germany some difficulty. entering the | nway of the League of Nations. It | i Do longer the problem of avoiding | chaos and preventing new revolutions, vather 1t is the task of discovering en- | during adjustments for nations and | peoples in conditions destined to last. Three Major Problems. In the existing circumstances the new President will be confronted by three major problems in foreign rela tions, that which grows out of Anglo- American differences, which is perhaps the most considerable and certainly the most acute; that which results from the vast complex network of issues re- lating to debts and German repara- tions, and that which concerns our rela- tions with the great republics and smaller states of Latin America. In addition, there is, of course, the issue which centers about China, but for the moment can be adjourned. As to Anglo-American relations it is patent that all present discussion cen- lers about naval issues, but-what is hardly less clear upon examination, is that the naval detail is rather the ap- parent than the real source of difficulty. What has produced the difficulty is the fact that the sudden arrival of the United States as a world power has automatically disturbed the whole basis of British position in the world. Since the fall of Napoleon, at least, the conception that any nation should oc- | | |mitted 20 sell goods in the American | Morrow has at least begun to achieve | sought by common action to Testrict | MAJOR TASKS American Com- BVSINESS” ARBITRATION |take first mortgage on Germany and _CORMERCE in return furnish the huge sums required to liquidate the allied debts? One alter- native is the reduction or cancellation of the allled debts, but that is contrary to-all his past record. Will he insist that | Europe settle the question without re- | sors 4o the American market? In tiwt | case there may be the slow or #pid | formation of some European combina- tion to face American co) tion. ‘Tariff Qllul!ul Ehters. | Here the question” of tariff obviously | enters. Europe Insists that if the debts | are to be pdid Europe must be per-| markets. But Mr. Hoover is committed to " the preservation of the tariff schedules. - Confronted by the refusal of the United States to open its markets, to reduce its debts claims or to finance the commercialization of reparations, will Europe be driven or led to undertake the creation of some common economic front and to incidental reprisals against the United States in their own markets?> As to South America, there the prob- lem is both political and economic. Better political relations with South America depend upon two things—the removal of the present suspicion that the Monroe doctrine has become a limi- tation upon the sovereignty of South American countries, and the clear evi- dence that such operations as those in Nicaragua and Haiti cover no political or colonizing design. | As to the economic phase, we have | now to face in every South American market the most intensive form of | European competition. And at the same | time we have to face the deliberate at- What of Next Four Years? Many Equations Enter Into Settlement of American and World Problems During Hoover Regime tempt of our economic rivais to ex- ploit the existing suspicion of our motives and methods. What Dwight | BY JAMES T. SHOTWELL, Authority on International Policy. I F history were a science we could | know now what the United States | will be doing during the next four | in Mexico, Mr. Hoover has to find men | to achieve from the Canal to the | Straits. And he starts knowing, as few | of his fellow-countrymen have taken ' years under the leadership o(i the trouble to discover, that today the | Herbert Hoover, for we could cal- United States is disliked and distrusted | culate the future upon the basis of the | beyond all other nations in Latin past just as the physicist can foretell America. the position of bodies at a given time | In becoming, as we certainly have, | by calculating their velocity and direc- the most powerful state on the planet, | tion. we have unmistakably exposed our-| But the velocity and the direction of selves to all the customary steps by | human life escape that kind of calcu- which people, in all past history, have | lation. It is forever full of surprises, and the more intelligence we put into society the greater these surprises be- | come. Invention and discovery change | | the conditions ui?d" thlch dri'_e live, ! and with every change of condition we Foreign Trade Success Seen. must make new plans to meet the new As Mr, Hoover comes determined in | situation. advance to push American foreign | trade to new levels, to gain fresh foreign | era—when the future merely repeated markets, success in this policy must | the past, when life was continued in mean further loss to Europe. . To take | an unbroken routine and the coming the power and influence of a country grown too large to be restrained by any | single power, PRESIDENT-ELECT HOOVER. one before. But the era in which we |are now living is the very opzc;‘s;;e ‘:l those hlistolrl;::tli forces which are al-‘ - the modern | this, and the only sure gener: tion | ready clearly visible, and even in this HEereinas e fime—helgre e | that the political sciences can make | restricted field the attem; about the future is that it will be in- creasingly different from the past. The j most legitimate use of intelligence is to apply it to explain life itself, and this holds as true of the life of the Nation | at large as it does of individuals. One does not need the gift of prophecy of | | things that have not yet happened; | | and ‘statesmanship, above all, is the | | application of this principle to national | life, so that crises may not take us by surprise. But the starting point for an under- standing of the possibilities of the fu- ture lies in a greater knowledge of the | facts of the past and the present. By | the very thought given to the problems of the world today we are in a better position to deal with them tomorrow. Taking thought, however, does not | mean giving free rein to the imagina- | tion; it means, rather, controlling it | upon the basis of knowledge acquired | through experience. These cautions should be kept in Pt to judge | mind at a time like this, when the their relative importance is risking | control of national affairs is handed much. But that risk should be taken |from one administration to another, self to an analysis of those events an COOLIDGE SIL ENCE SEEN AS PROTECTIVE ARMOR President Is Genial, Even Loquacious at Times, BY MARK SULLIVAN. HAT is said here does not pretend to be anything so grandiose as an “estimate” of Mr. Coolidge and his ad- | ministration. Of such esti- | nates and summaries many are being | printed. They vary in value. | hought and care, worthwhile judg- | nents of any closing administration | are possible enough. Nearness to the ime and the subject are handicaps, »ut not insurmountable. | The best estimates, however, can| come only with the perspective of the | years. Today a better estimate could | be made of Theodore Roosevelt, or of | William McKinley, than of Calvin Cool- idge. The god of timeliness demands Fowever, that the estimate be made of Mr. Coolidge. Obedience to that god is being generally made—and in_the results history, 20 years or so from now, will find material for ironic amusement. | Bearing that in mind, the present article refrains from calling itself an “estimate.” Tt aims only to allude to a_few conspicuous aspects of Mr. Cool- idge and his administration, as seen by one observer. One of the best of the current sum- maries was printed last week in the | periodical Time. The Time account | of Mr. Coolidge was good, largely be- | cause it refrained, for the most part, from estimate, from judgment and from | the pretentiousness “which in literary | circles goes by the name of “interpre- | tation.” The article in Time was large- | Iy a summary of the events of me} Coolidge administration. Toward the | conclusion it expanded toward handing | down judgment, and partly expressed its verdict in an epigram: “In a great day of yes-men, Calvin| Coolidge was a great no-man.” That is less subject to impeachment | than the great majority of epigrams.| Of all forms of conveying truth on any subject, the epigram is one of the most tallible. Truth and non-truth do not in nature ordinarily so distribute them- selves that all the truth can be forced into the rigid form of an epigram and all the untruth left outside. Truth does sometimes lend itself to this form of expression. Of epigrams of the better sort Mr. Coolidge himself has uttered many. As a rule, however, the writer of an epigram is more intent on a “snappy” form of words than on com- prehensive statement of truth, accom- panied by all the qualifications of the truth. Called “Great No-Man.” This “great no-man” epigram abou Mr. Coo!glri e is, as such “wise-cracks’ Yet there Writer ! | Nary-Haugen biil. Humorous and Asserts. 1 community or a local hero. On such occasions, necessarily, a President must ask his secretary to get together the material about the man, or the com- munity, or the subject that is to be honored. The secretary does a perfunc- tory job, and in consequence the result- ing speech has areas of perfunctoriness. Some such explanation as this accounts for the fact that portions of a few of Mr. Coolidge's speeches have no more elevation than an article in an encyclo= pedia. Indeed, a few of Mr. Coolidge's speeches show evidence that his secre- tary leaned heavily for his material on an encyclopedic origin. In Mr. Coolidge's speeches there has been comparably I of this. He has been a hard-working President. So far as human limitations permitted, he has driven himself to the writing of his speeches with the same fidelity that he has given to all his tasks. When Mr. Coolidge has done this, when he has been at his best, his speeches have ranked with the best It is commonly supposed that Mr. Coolidge as ex-President will do a good deal of writing. It is possible he may make writing his career. Assuming he does, he can, subject to one proviso, become very valuable to America. The proviso is that he shall be without self- consciousness, that he shall get rid ¢f repression. Repression and self-control have been outstanding qualitics of Mr. Coolidge's actions as President. For the manage- ment of public affairs they are, in some eras, valuable qualities, but in writing, repression and self-consclousness are impediments to value. Indeed, they are the negation of value. A writer is val uable, other things being equal, in pro- portion as he gives free rein to what he really thinks and feels. Mr. Coolidge did some writing for magazines during a period when he was Vice President. Most of that output was disappointing. His circumstances st that time made him cautious. As Vice President he could say nothing that might conflict with the views of his su- perior. That was one cause of repres- sion. Moreover, as Vice President he could not know whether or not he would have a larger future, whether he might become President. A prudence even less than Mr. Coolidge’s would have dictated that he must be careful to say nothing which might interfere with his later career. ‘There are several examples of the way Mr. Coolidge can hit out when he is free from repression—when he releases the brake and opens the throttle. One of the most conspicuous was the veto message with which he ended the Mc- Such phrases as “bureaucracy gone mad,” “a mass of ponderously futile bureaucratic | go, fairly close to the marl naval supremacy from Britain and ' years wers simply like those that had | historian, therefore, should limit him- | from time fo time, for, after all, the | (Continued on Fourth Page) | el St pieRes TeoA cUaIcE cupy the position with respect of Britain which we have definitely indicated we mean to occupy, has seemed intolerable in British ey There is no way under Heaven toda’ by which Britain can have that ulti- | mate security she has hitherto en- joyed by reason of her fleet, and we possess that security for our ever-grow- ing commerce and that guarantee against being involved in the next Euro- pean war which are the objectives of American national desire today. We have either got to agree never to use our equal fleet against Britain, when she is at war, no matter what her course, or Britain has got to resign herself to run the risks incident to such use of our fleet. Real Extent of Dispute. Mr. Hoover takes office at the moment when the real extent of the Anglo- American dispute is being envisages The most important immediate issue before him will be some method of ad- Justment of the difference. As far as I can judge the British are rapidly coming to the point of per- ceiving that nothing can prevent or even long postpone the arrival of a when we shall have equality on that basis which we assert to be parity. But there remains in Britain a very general conviction that the menace such parity has for England can be | abolished by some such device as the | Capper resolution or by some other | expansion of the Kellogg pact. | Mr. Hoover is bound to be faced by a | ies of concerted efforts in Europe, | and particularly in Britian, to tie us | into the existing system of order| ‘ounded upon the League of Natlons. | And all these efforts will center in the attempt not to persuade us to join the | league, but to promise that when the| league declares war against some| nation, adjudged by it to be guilty of ageression, we will not insist upon our right to trade with that nation, that we shall, so to speak, respect the police lincs established by the league Any such agreement would auto- matically abolish any danger of colli- sion between Britain and ourselves at | sea, because the British, as members | of the league, would at all times be| assured of league warrant for any of | their hostilities. But, on the other hand, | any such agreement would mean in | reality our promise to embargo our ex- | Ports to any nation adjudged guilty by | the league and would impose upon us an | ormous and disproportionate cost. If Mr. Hoover refuses to support either an Anglo-American partnership or a broader partnership with the | ue, he is bound to face the possi- bility either of a British resistance of the principle of parity by means of an expansion of British ~ tonnage, or some form of Anglo-French or other entente, Reparations and Debts. parations and debts, it is clear that ce the present voung commission has terminated its labors, always assuming ngreement is reached. the situation will be this: Germany will be required to pav » certain sum of money annually for a ixed number of vears. This sum will equal to the sum of the yearly con- butions paid to us and to each other the formerly allied nations and the ser amount paid by um on account of the ed them to defray the costs of Tecons| ng their devasted This amount can be idated by direct relations between many, France and Belgium. Thus, what will exist will be two sets of contracts, those made with us by our debtor associates, those made by these assoclates with Germany; and they will be equal. The next step will be to find zome way by which the allies may dis- appear and the whole transaction may b n any 1o us. But this means that dertake 1o sell in the Al of d s worth of roceeds to our we up the ? the allies, and what remains v be a contract between Germany e American investor. In a word estors will lend to Germany the to enable the date their debts to our treasury. Il Mr. Hoover agree that the in- rs in his country should agree to allied debtors to economic and financial supremacy from | Europe as a whole is patently to invite, | indeed to insure, counter activities throughout Europe and to meet Euro- Ppean opposition all over the world." What Americans pay far too little | attention to is the conception of their own country, which has been taking form during and since the war. At home Europe cuts very little more figure than | it did before 1914. Most of us live our | lives, attend to our business, shape our | existence with practically no conscious- | ness of Europe. But by contrast from Moscow to Dublin, the American | shadow lies heavy upon Europe. No in- ternational conference meets without | having its attention divided between | the matter in hand and the American | attitude toward the pending issue. | There is hardly a budget framed by cny European Parliament which does not contain a considerable appropriation to | meet an American obligation. Mr. Hoover is going to have to deal with a United States visibly and vigor- ously pressing outward. But he is Just as patently face to face in Europe with the growing sense of the permanent challenge of the American phenomenon, a Europe increasingly obsessed by the sense of a common peril arising from the disproportionate growth of the United States in recent years. For 10 years Europe and the United States have talked ceaselessly about co- operation, but in that time we have or- ganized the most extensive competition modern Europe has ever known. Idr, Hoover comes at a moment when the spirit of economic imperialism, the de- terminations to conquer new world markets is at its apex and he is, him- self, in the eyes of his countrymen and | of Europeans alike, the incarnation of cotemporary America, as Theodore Roosevelt was of the America of 1900, BY ANNE HARD. HAD listened to their stories, these tales of the “trade commissioners” —sparrow hawks of American busi- ness. I had heatd them over the coffee cups on a terrace while the thousand lights of Rio sparkled far below and the jungle of Brazil lay black, | far out there beyond us. Under the shadow of the Great Pyra- mid I had heard them, under the palms of Damascus, by the soft waters of the Danube, in the gray lights of London, on the green hills of Cork, and on the deck of many a ship from the Black Sea to the south Atlantic, where the Southern Cross hung diinly above us. And I had seen them in action, those trade ambassadors, at their offices in Buenos Aires or Prague, in Constanti- nople or Paris—islands of business en- terprise whirring with the high powered | efficiency of New York and Boston and Cleveland and Philadelphia and Chicago | and Los Angeles—or America. They provided scenes of the great national adventure of our foreign trade. | _The brilliant sweep of this work of | the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce during the seven years after its reorganization by Mr. Hoover makes This fact, perhaps, justifies the conclu- sion that the new President marks a new era. (Copyright. 1929.) Polish Towns Are Lavish With Literary Awards one of the many graphs by which you may chart the possibilities of the in- | | coming administration. | This department now has 51 foreign | | offices. Seven years ago there were 27. | There now are 23 district offices in the | United States. . Then there were nine. | There now are 2,770,773 individual serv- | ices rendered in a year. Then there | were 505,661. Formerly the cost of each Commerce’s Sparrow Hawks How Trade Commissioners Help American Business Men Abroad—Efficiency a Hoover Contribution | by going through with them. nearly every other office for which one of those flat pins nestles on the map, this work of arranging for reliable local agents goes on. In Brussels in the same way, you might have seen in a few months’ time $100,000 saved to automoblle makers of Michigan and Wisconsin, and other thousands to other Amerijcans. And then you might have seen our trade commissioner put on his hat and go over to the charming old building in which the Bdgian equivalent to our Treasury sits, to embark upon a tactful and logical argument on the subject of the latest rulings on the Belgian tariff. | So tactful yet so logical was he that the increase in duties on automobile parts destined for assembly in Belgium was reduced, a consequent saving to two automobile manufacturers in Michigan of something under a quarter of a mil- lion dollars. Work of a Successor. M. M. Mitchell, who carried this on, | has left Brussels and Raymond C. Mil- le]r. formerly of Paris, has just taken his | place. I could expand upon my theme of the dollars and cents value of our trade commissioners from Mr. Miller's work in Paris, but I prefer to illustrate the quiet power of them from a personal experi- ence. When I was ordered to interview a certain great man and arrived in Paris with a suit case full of letters by which to get on with it, I began in a thoroughly routine and ignorant way I got nowhere and I wasted an enormgus amount of time. Casually, I made the acquaintance of 'to do any of these things is to give Polish towns are taking to the idea | SerVice averaged $2.75. Now it averages of giving llterary prizes. Some of them | These achievements and scores of have adopted elderly writers who have | others were not the result of a natural won more glory than wealth from lit- | EfOWth, but of an uncanny and far- Mr. Miller, and equally casually I hap- pened to mention my difficulty to him. Twenty-four hours later that appoint- ment (which at the end of 10 days of When one turns to the old problem of | erature and given them permanent | pensions. | Among others, it s seeing policy. That policy envisaged many things. w that the strength- Bydgoszez, for example, adopted in | ening of the purchaser’s buying capacity this way the novelist Weissenhof, | famous for his word pictures of nature | in Eastern Poland. The great manufac- | | turing city of Lodz gave a prize to Tu- wim, one of the best of the younger poets in Poland. Warsaw gave a prize recently to Tetmajer, famous fq | dialect” stories about the Carpathian | mountaineers. All awards are not equal- {1y applauded. It has been said that only two things are certain about the laureates of Lwow | —first, they are completely unknown, and, second, they have always inhabit- 1ed the town that has rewarded them. | worid, but if there be no genuine sery- Cracow recently offered three prizes for new plays. The awards had scarce- ly been published when one of the jury rushed into print with an article criti- cizing both his colleagues’ decisions and the plays selected, particularly because | one of the prize-winners had written | a play deprecating Cracow 15 yvears be- fore. This started a dispufe which had the result that two of the prize | | winners refused to accept their prizes, | putting municipal patronage of liter- r his | 4, | | man is judged by results. He may write 1 combination of qualifications before he increased the manufacturer’s possibility of selling. Simple as it s, it is an idea which I found in frequent interviews with important men of affairs in Europe lay entirely outside the scope of their thinking. Yet in the work of our American ade commissioners an important ele- ment is their surveys of the possibilities | of further economic development in the countries to which they are accredited. | Again, the element of individual per- ] sonality plays an important part. Every | the most beautiful paper reports in the ice in him he doesn't stay on that. job very long. Each one must possess an Incredlbl?; is even tried in the field. He must have a thorough knowledge, among other things, of the principles of economics and banking and foreign trade and American business practice and of the ! resources of the United States. He ' must read and speak fluently at least | one foreign language. i Incredibly, the first task was nearly as difficult as the second. The picture of | the enlightened American business man | | waking up every morning with his eye | on a new market is not always accurate. | But Arnold persisted and Arnold achieved both. ‘Worried Into Error. “I should never have done it” al Chinese capitalist remarked to a friend dom in even its most minor manifesta- :1'! ,mine, “but Arnold worried me into tions abroad. It follows that precisely because he | has the stamp of our Government's ap- proval upon him, because he has Gov- ernment credentials in his pocket, the | American frade commissioner, the American commercial attache, can add a certain distinction to his acts which no private representative of our indus- try achieves. In that process its careful choice of its representative gets justified. In consequence, more than $30,000,000 worth of American textile machinery has been sold to China since Mr. Arnold got his bright idea. That pin in Johannesburg is really | Perry J. Stevenson. To observe what | Mr. Stevenson accomplished for Ameri- | can business is to see two specific lines ilong which our trade ambassadors must function. The first is in the finding of reliable local agents, citizens of the | | even if it went over a cliff; every hat on | making machinery in a certain country effort had seemed as far away as before I sailed from New York) was made. Mr. Miller had known the right person to see, and he had been on sufficiently good terms with that right person to fix it for me. There is always a right person everywhere, and I have almost always found in my wanderings across the earth that our trade commissioners | know him, 1 One of the most important matters which Mr. Miller—like all our commer- cial representatives in Europe—has had | to know a great deal about is American ! films. Our motion pictures, as every | one knows, swept across the fleld like prairie fire. Foreign exports represent a third of our film production. They were—and are—actually great missionaries for our homemade prod- ucts. Every detail of our domestic scene, from: electrical appliances to plumbing; every speeding automobile the heroine and shoe on the hero be- came an ad for an American product. One of our commissioners, for in- stance, told of the direct sales of road- of Central Europe that followed the showing of an American film. In the wake of the road-making machinery | ature under a cloud. And, with equal stress, he must be | the sort of persof who can be tactful and diplomatic in his contacts with On the great worla map which hangs on a certain wall on the eleventh story of the Commerce Building in Washing- country in question, who can act as representatives of an American exporter. The second is in discovering local op- came more automobiles, more tires, more accessories, more gas and oil. reduced 1o a direct payment. by Ger- | | Parti-Colored Sla;;e of Apollo Discovered ! An important discovery has just been I made in the excavations of Pompeli which Vesuvius buried around 300 B. C In the Via of Abundance, so called be- cause of the many statues and old ob- Jects unearthed, a statue of Apollo 3 feet in height, of excellent Grecian composition, has come to light. It is made of marble, but bears traces of polychromatic coloring. This usage of painting over marble and ~Wwooden statues was frequently adopted in Ro- man and Greek times. Except by some ultramodernists in Germany this method 'has been completely abandoned. foreign business men and foreign offi- clals, and then be good enough on his feet to put over with audiences of American business men accounts of what he has learned abroad. t These are not museum pieces, but. | live wires. These are not only scientific | students but preceptors for those who ' cannot go out and see for themselves. + Furthermore. it is by policy and not by aceident that women have been given an cqual opportunity with men | to qualify for the service, Reference to Officialdom. Tt is wellnigh impossible for the or- dinary American citizen to realize the place” a Government representative holds abroad. We cannot easily imagine the national deference paid to official- ton, a round yellow or red pin shows where one of those offices of our trade ambassadors is to be found. There are 104 of those yellow or red pins. But, as 1 look at them, I see not a pin, but some interesting and energetic person. That yellow pin on the shores of the Yangtse-kiang is really Julean Arnold, who has lived most of his life in China, speaks the language like a native, lives with the Chinese and has their confi- dence. ‘Watching the Chinese at their age-old hand-looms, he thought of American textile machinery. He set about inter- esting American manufacturers in sell- | hendling (at a consevative estimate) ing in China, and he set about making more than $3,5000,000 worth of busine: the Chinese desire to substitute ma-,cery year. chinery for their traditional processes. Not only in Johannesburg, but in portunities for American business or investment. Stevenson found the business of two American firms, with a huge annual turnover, seriously jeopardized through | the character of the local agents who were handling it. Through the conucts‘ I and the information he was able to get, he arranged for new local agents and so succeeded in clearing that situation. Then he went ahead wiring up connec- tions between other agents and other American firms until there are now 250 such local agents representing American producers in the region, » Immersed in a large variety of prod- ucts, it soon became impossible for any single trade commissioner to give to the subject the attention it required. A special trade commissioner for films had to be appointed—now George Canty, with headquarters in Paris, Formality of Protest. When a formal protest is mad against a discriminatory ruling by a | foreign government, it has to be lodged through our embassy or legation. But there are often times when the more informal—though official—character of the trade commissioner can arrange discussions with both sides in the con- troversy. ro ple of th (Continued on Fourth Page. ) are many qualifications to it. As resyec‘:.s words, Mr. Coolidge has universally the reputation of a silent man. As respects actions, he has the corresponding reputation—to put it roughly—of a man who took no step that he could avoid taking. The judgment of many who know Mr. best is that he is not by na- ture a silent man. There are scores of men who will testify that Mr. Cool- idge, when the conditions are right, is genial, humorous, even loquacious. The silence that he presents to many has been a protective armor, painstakingly constructed and rather painfully worn, as a defense against a condition that bedevils every President. That condition, and the experiences that made Mr. Coolld{ge a silent Presi- dent, will shortly confront Mr. Hoover. Almost the rarest thing in human pature is a man who can talk with a President and can thereafter resist the temptation of beginning countless con- versations with “as the President said to me.” To find himself quoted—and often incorrectly quoted—is one of the most frequent and most embarrassing experiences of every President. To| guard himself against being quoted is | one of the principal and most difficult tasks in every President’s routine. To quote a President incorrectly, or to quote him in such a context that his meaning is misunderstood, or, in- deed, to quote a President at all, except | when he has given thought to his words | and intends that he shall be quoted rise to infinite embarrassment—embar- rassment, that is, to the President, not to the quoter. It may hurt the feelings of third persons, it may give rise to false rumors about policy, it may cause resentment in the always jealous legislative branch of the Government, it may work dis- aster to pending legislation, it may | alienate friends, it may wreck party | programs, it may give rise to party cleavage. Mr. Coolidge, one feels, learned all this long ago—and adopted an intens reticence as the nearest he could find to a practical defense. And even Mr. Coolidge’s reticence has not been a complete defense—as several unfortu- nate episodes testify. Coolidge Silence Myth. ‘The myth of Mr. Coolidge's silence is denied by the fact of his utterances. ‘They have not been markedly less nu- merous, and they have been, on the whole, rather more meaningful, than those of most of his predecessors. De- cidedly—most decidedly—Mr. Coolidge can talk when he chooses to. The writer of this article has had occasion, during the last few years, to read most of the speeches of all the Presidents since Benjamin Harrison. Such a review leads to two judgments. First, that Mr. Coolidge’s public utter- ances as a whole have been more meaty than those of any other President since Grover Cleveland. Second, that Mr. Coolidge's speeches have been much like those of Cleveland. ; To his judgment there will be vio- lent objection from partisans of Theo- dore Roosevelt and especially from par- tisans of Woodrow Wilson. It is true that Wilson had exalted events to deal with. It is also true that some of Wilson's addresses had high quality, and that his correspondence with Germany, preceding the armistice, probably will always have a high place in the records of that kind of diplo- matic exchange. But Wilson’s speeches, compared with the best of Mr. Coolidge's, had the lit- erary defects that accompany idealism. two of Cleveland’s that became famous, “innocuous desuetude.” But Mr. Cool- idge’s denunciation of the McNary- Haugen bill was really more pungent and more powerful than anything Cleve- land did to his enemies. In that same veto of the McNary- Haugen bill were such passages as: “This plague of petty ofcialdom would set up an intolerable tyranny over the lives and operations of farmers.” ‘“The bill runs counter to an economic l:: as well settled as the law of gravita- ton.” “The futile sophistries of such & sys- tem of wholesale commercial doles for special groups. “Delude the farmer with a fantastic promise of unwarrantable Government price-fixing.” And such epigrams as: “Fiat prices match the folly of flat money.” ‘That was the real Mr. Coolidge when he was in an argumentative mood. Even better have been the utterances that have come from Mr. Coolidge about the hilosophy of existence, the manage- ment of life. An outstanding example was the let- ter made public a few weeks ago in which Mr. Coolidge dealt with the need of a Summer White House. The letter was written in a mood that surprised the country. It was the mood of the real Coolidge. As Mr. Coolidge was writ- ing then, so can he write now, if he will deliberately regard himself as free. Among other passages he said: “Experience in public office made me know that whether I was to be over- burdened with work and broken down in health depended more on myself than on any act of Congress. And the following, which should be borne in mind both by Mr. Hoover and by those who will beseech Mr. Hoover for speeches: “If a President petmits himself to be engaged in all kinds of outside enter- prises, in furnishing entertainment and amusement to great numbers of public gatherings. undertaking to be the source of inspiration for every worthy public movement. for all of which he will be earnestly besought, with the inference that unless he responds civilization will break down and the sole responsibility will be on him, he will last in office about 90 days.” Another example of Mr. Coolidge at his literary best was the offhand talk which Bruce Barton took down in the Summer of 192 ‘I had always rather hoped that I might keep store when I grew up. . . . I have never been-able to think that fate was guiding my destiny. I have rather felt that 1 was obliged to look after it myself. I have found, howeve-, that when I was doing the right thing a great many unforeseen elements would come in and turn to my advantage. | Presidents are broken down by outside enterprises. that there . .. I try to remember is only one ex-President s that when Mr. Coolidge becomes a professional writer he will write as Calvin Coolidge the man—not jas Calvin Coolidge with a possible future political career in 1932 or 1936; not as Calvin Coolidge with a responsibility for the Republican party—and not as anvthing except a wise human being with sound processes of thought. (Copyright, 1929.) Idealism is necessarily vague, rather formless. In consequence, many of Wil- son's speeches have what seems today an elusive and baflling abstractness. Wilson loved “purple passages.” Mr. Coolidge would not know what that P means. Compared With Wilson. Compared to Wilson's speeches, Mr. Coolidge’s are hard granite. statement applies to the best of Mr. Coolidge's speeches only. He was not always at his best. Any President is 0 often called upon to make speeches, in addition to his normal duties, that it is impossible always for him to be his best self. It is impossible for him always to_write the whole of all his speeches. President Coolidge, like Presi- dent Harding and others, is called upon to make many speeches that must nec- essarily be perfunctory. He is asked to dedicate monuments, or otherwise is esked to say something about a local High-Speed Camera Records Explosions High-speed motion picture cameras, so fast as to photograph those things which take place during an explosion and to photograph the propagation of flame in a dust-laden atmosphere, are now ‘being used by the Bureau of Mines to study varlous explosive materials used in mining. The camera will record the pressure waves sent out by a detonating explosive and will indicate the effect of these waves in causing ignition of the inflammable mixtures found in coal mines. “It may be taken as an axiom, says the bureau report, “that no ex- plosives are wholly safe or ‘foolproof,’ but the Pittsburgh experiment statior of the Bureau of Mines continuall strives by testing and research crease the margin of safety f of explosives.”