Evening Star Newspaper, February 16, 1930, Page 29

Speci al Articles EDITORIAL SECTION he Swundiy Star. Part 2—12 Pages WASHINGTON, D. C, SUNDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 16, 1930. NECESSITY GUIDES BRITAIN IN U. S. NAVY PARITY ISSUE/ Nation Seen Too Poor to Let Py Lead Her >stige | Into Arms Competition. BY FRANK H. SIMONDS. ONDON.—At the close of the fourth week of the London Con- ference it is now possible to speak with a certain definiteness about one aspect of the question in- volved, and that is the Anglo-American hase. During the month which I have cen in England it has been my good fortune to come in contact with almost every element of national opinion, ex- tending from the Tory to the very Left Labor. And from this experience I have drawn_certain - conculsions. In the first place it seems clear, be- yond any shadow of doubt, that the idea of parity with the United States in all departments of naval craft has been completely accepted, if one except the small fraction of the so-called Tory and admiralty opinion, which is not im- portant or influential—save in the ex- traordinary circumstances of the people who have as a whole not merely ac- cepted the idea of real parity, but have dismissed from their minds the notion of a session by the United States of a fleet 8o strong that, combined with that of any other naval power, it could domi- nate the seas. What now exists represents a very real change from the state of mind found here in the first days after the futile Geneva Conference. Then there was a scnse of exasperation and resentment and for a moment a vague, uneasy feel- ing that the American menace had in it something still familiar of the German danger of the pre-war period. Briitsh Feel No Concern. ‘The British people then have accepted the idea of American parity with prac- tical unanimity because they have come to the sound, solid conviction that Amer- ican naval strength is without menace or even concern for themselves. If there were a simple question of arranging the American and British fleets, I do not be- lieve 1 per cent of the British public would pay the smallest attention to any protests which might come from the ad- miralty alleging that there was a pre- ponderance of gun power, speed or armor in the American fleet. Unhappily no such situation exists. To take a simple illustration it will be Tecalled that at the Rapidan Hoover and Macdonald reached a tentative agreement which fixed at 15 the British number of large cruisers and left open the question whether we should have 18 | or 21. When, however, the American | delegation came to London it was met with the flat statement that Great Brit- ain could not accept a larger figure and must choose between breaking off the conference and coming down to 18. Our agreement to the British de- mand has been in many quarters rep- Tesented as a surrender to Great Brit- &in, as it was obviously a complete sur- fender of our Geneva position. But the alternative of breaking up the con- ference arose from the fact that if we had 21, Japan would either have 15, which she claimed, or 13, which she had obtained under the Washington ratio. And this number, amounting to gfl? y and strategic superiority over | ritain, would awaken such a protest | y menace themselves in the pos- | jand his Australasian dominions will not !let him forget the danger in the Pacific. I have been coming to England with great regularity for half a generation | which extends from the outbreak of the war to the opening of the London | Conference, and I have never found the British people in anything like as| friendly and unsuspicious a_ state of | mind as to America. Even the matter of debt, which bulked large in the British mind some years ago, has lost its_edge. | If you look below the surface of con- temporary British life you find the| whole people engaged in an all-absorb- | ing and, in certain aspects, desperate battle to restore the prosperity tempo- rarily compromised by war and post- | war disturbances. You find the absorb- | ing problem is how to bear the burden of debt which is literally crushing in- dustry. On all sides there is a common agree- ment _that only if taxation is reduced can the old conditions be restored. | Measure by Necessity. | Under these circumstances the idea | of any form of competition in naval | construction with the United States is | obviously absurd. It might be that if | Britain was as rich and prosperous ns} | America_the question of pride might | {1ead to an adventure in competition to preserve the old naval supremacy. But Britain is in no such state. and the British people, by an overwhelming ma- jority, have determined to measure their naval establlshme;,m nrnt by t}:e yard- | tick of prestige, but of necessity. i ‘The nguon that Stimson is engaged in a losing battle with the clever, re- | sourceful agents of that admiralty who supposedly exist just as a background for the Macdonald cabinet is, of course, pure moonshine. There is an honest difference of opinion as to what consti- | tutes the irreducible minimum of Brit- | ish naval necessity. The 50 ships that Macdonald fixed upon for America are, | in my judgment, this lowest point. If | he should now undertake to i!‘! below, I | think je might fall, and I afn sure hi.s} Fer would be repudiated by the | | surrer | they held on until 1935 when the next | conference must assemble. But this state of mind has no Ameri- can element. In my handful of Tories who were filled with the admiralty spirit and dominated their party by their ability and force, were responsible for British intran- sigence at Geneva. They did oppose | parity and they were satisfied that if | | they refused to grant it we would never | build to obtain it. But the last general election marked their overwhelming de- feat when the country voted for parity and good American relations. 1If the London Conference fails it will not fail because there is any difference between American and British opinion on the right of the United States to full parity. It will not fail because of any deep laid British plot, scheme or design. It will fail because the prob- lem of British security has become in- extricably entangled with the question of parity by reason of naval programs of France, Italy and Japan and their in Australia and New Zealand as to make impossible its acceptance by any British government. | In this situation Macdonald had no | choice, but the controlling eircum- | stance was not the opposition of the | British ‘admiralty to the American 21, | but the dominating Australian appre- hension of the Japanese 15. We did not surrender to Britain, but to Aus- tralia. But Britain herself could not surrender without arousing an imperial &torm at the precise moment when a | tremendous movement was on foot here to strengthen the bonds of empire. Against New Construction. The same situation obtains in the matter of the unlucky demand of an additional Rodney or Nelson to bal- ance the battle fieet. Despite the sus- picions of some of our naval authori- ties T do not believe the British public cares tuppence whether we have an extra capital ship of the newest design or not. But they do most emphati- cally oppose the reopening of a period of battleship construction which would certainly tempt Japan to new enter- prise of a similar nature. The real difficulty lies. of course, in the fact that the United States is thinking of parity in the simple rela- tion of British and American fleefs, and the Briton is thinking of it in terms of his own security in_the face of Japan, France and lialy. While the Briton does emphatically rule out all thought of an Anglo-American war, he has not been able to rid himself of a bhaunting fear of possible collision with France and Italy in the Mediterranean relation to British circumstances. British Most Practical. ‘The British cannot come out in the open in an international conference and say their fear of France or Japan or of their Mediterranean communicg- tions dominated by French and Italian | coasts automatically limit the reduction | they can make in their naval estab- | | lishment. But that is the thought that | lies behind their policy. | The British still are the most practi- cal people in the world. They have | recognized the fact that we mean to | | have parity if we can attain it, that | such parity carries no such menace for | them as they saw in the much weaker German naval establishment. Having accepted this fact they have dismissed it. "And they are almost disappoint- ingly unconcerned. But with talk about | French: submarines or airplanes or Japanese cruisers their whole tone | changes. | To sum up, in my judgment, after eight years of wrangling precipitated by the unlucky Washington Conference, Anglo-American naval disputes are over. The British have accepted our thesis, have adjusted themselves to the new fact and ask simply that we shape our parity to avoid collision with their in- escapable necessities in the matter of | imperial and domestic security. And | even if the conference should fail in | its larger horizons, it would seem that | it should be within the limits of Anglo- Américan statesmanship to profit by the opportunity which cotemporary | British opinion clearly discloses. | (Copyright. 1930.) Disappearance of Anti-Red Leader Puzzles French BY DR. LEONID STRAKHOVSKY. When on a Sunday morning Gen. Alexander Kutiepov, president of the Association of Russian Officers and Men of the Anti-Bolshevik Armies, left his home in Paris to go to the service in the Russian orthodox church three men and a woman were watching him at, the corner of the street near a powerful gray limousine. As soon as he came mear the automobile one of the men pressed a chloroform mask on his face and, aided by his companions, dragged | the ‘general into the motor car, which Jeft at high speed. It roared through the central streets of the French capi- tal, almost deserted on a Sunday morn- ing, and disappeared. The next day it was seen by an innkeeper 108 miles from Paris and then vanished com- pletely. Paris, the world’s most civilized city, became the scene of a kidnaping that reminds one of the tactics used in the dark middle ages by those professional murderers called “bravi.” Thus it seems that our most modern, most progressive, most civilized twentieth century is con- fronted with a situation that one could belleve to have been left forever in the remote past of history. g It is almost incredible that such things can happen in our days. But the news speaks for itself. is almost a certainty that the kid- naping of Gen. Kutiepov is the work of the Soviet secret police known as the Ge-Pe-Ou, the new name for the old Che-Ka, and that the "headquarters of these modern “bravi” are established in the Soviet embassy. We have, then, the picture of a diplomatic representa- tive, whose activity should be beyond any suspicion, but who protects by his | jmmunity men who under the pro- criminal code of any civilized state would be considered as visions of the rst-degree murderers. 2 1t is not surprising, therefore, that the French press, with the exception of the Communist paper, and the people of Paris are unanimous in allies and who did Moreover, there | demanding from the government a clarification of the mystery. At the same time Rus- sians all over t]he :m-ld. ml?iu w‘}:: ):‘n‘d fought yaliantly side by side w! e Thes not want to identify and Russians Alike | themselves with the shameful treaty of | E-est-Litovsk, rased their voice in pro- | test against this barbarous act. The | Prench police apparently made every ef- {fort to find the general and his kid- napers, but so far without much success All that is known at present about that Paris drama has been revealed by French journalists, those representatives | of the exterritorial power who had many |a time and in many a country helped | the police in finding the truth about strange happenings. The attitude of the French people is | easy to understand. They do not make it a matter of politics, but they firmly believe that such happenings should | not take place in their capital, notwith- | standing the fact, as one of the French newspapers puts it. whether ft is a | Russian general <« a simple French | cobbler. ~This incident gives ample materig® iur anti-Soviet propaganda, |and the Nationalist group in the French Parliament demands the rupture of diplomatic relations with a country which does not observe the elementary rules of hospitality and friendly rela- jtions and which moreover, does not {keep to its promise of not interfering |in the internal affairs of Prance. | It may be interesting to state here | that the general impression of the as- | sociation, directed formerly by the late Grand Duke Nicholas and the | | | Kutiepov, to be an organization of a definite monarchist tendency and with an aim of restoring the Romanov dynasty in Russia is far from being accurate. When the White armies went into exile after the collapse of their efforts to overthrow the bolshevik |regime their leaders found themselves facing a heavy problem. ‘The mass of emigrees comprised not only men educated and cultured, who naturally could adapt themselves to life and work in a foreign country, but also |a considerable number of soldiers. These men, mostly peasant sons or Cossacks, were .10t prepared for a struggle for life in new surroundings, among new people, without the knowl- edge of foreign languages and in the presence of the general economic crisis (Continued on Fourth Page.) %< l judgment, the | An Old Battle Is Refought .With Suffrage Won Ten Years Ago Equal Rights Fight Goes on in Regard to Jury Service. o8 ONE OF THE COMMONEST ARGUMENTS AGAINST WOMEN ON JURIES IS THAT THEY WOULD HAVE TO LISTEN TO UNPLEASANT FACTS. —Drawn for The Sunday Star by Austin Jewell. BY GLADYS HARRISON. N these days when judges complain of the difficulty of getting men to serve on juries and when the prized Anglo-Saxon _tradition of trial by a jury of one's peers is openly chal- lenged, large numbers of citizens are trying to be made eligible for service as Jjurors. These citizens are women. They ly every one of the 27 States where they |are still debarred from participating as {jurors in the administration of justice. Last Winter, when the snow lay deep 'on South Dakota fields and the mer- | cury crouched at the bottom of its tube, | one woman of 85 was among those cir- culating a petition asking the State Legislature to pass a bill to make wom- en liable for jury service. She was proud of the response—only three or (four women refused to sign. But the Legislature did not pass the bill, Believe in Service as Duty. Why do women want to serve on juries? The answer is, they don't—not any more than men do. Thoughtful women believe, however, that jury ser ice goes hand in hand with voting cit- | | izenship—if it is a duty they should do their share. and if it is a privilege they should not be denled it. Also thay rec- ognize a deep injustice in a trial sys- tem which bars from the jury box all | the members of one sex. | Why didn’t eligibility to jury service ollow quickly on the heels of enfran- | chisementeback in 1920, as many be- monly regarded as a corollary of suf- frage that in many States “qualified voters” or “electors” is the term used in statutes to describe jurors. In some |of these States—in Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania, for instance—the eligi- | bility of women was speedily acknowl- | edged, while in others court interpreta- tlons ' were unfavorable or are still awaited. In still other States old-fash- foned legislators, not. foreseeing the day | when women would wield bailots, had long ago written into statutes the stipu- lation that jurors should be “male” citizens. Almost Like Suffrage Campaign. Getting the word “male” out of jury statutes s requiring something very like a second suffrage campaign—Ia- | borious, costly and exasperating. Ex- asperating because to this da has advanced an argument in opposi- tion which Isn't exactly like the kind of | argument used to defeat suffrage for 80 long years. | The question which women are ask- |ing now is: Why should the fruits of | victory be denied when victory itself | | Tories when they came to power if |are working, and working hard, in near- |lieved it would? Jury service is so com- | was so decisive? New York women got | | the vote from the men of New York by | a brilliantly waged referendum eam- paign in 1916, but they haven't been | able to get even so much as a report lon a jury bill from that conservative citadel, the Assembly judiciary com- mittee, although they have worked for |such a measure year after year since 1921. Massachusetts has a similar his- | tory, and there the situation is aggra- vated by the fact that the statute re- lating to jurors provides that “any per- | son qualified to vote for representative to the General Court shall be liable to Jury service.” such representatives, one would think that let them in for jury service. The State Supreme Court, however, has rea- soned its way to a different interpreta- ! tion, and so women in that State, as in Since women do vote for | | South Dakota, are driven to the hum- y no one | ble method of petition after repeated | legislative rebuff. Court Decisions Unpredictable. The decisions of courts are unpre- dictable on such points. To the Su- preme Court of Iowa “all qualified electors” include women, even when the phrase is used to describe jurors. “Per- sons” means women, too, in the State | | of Indiana, |of ‘Michiga status of whereas the Supreme Court n in a case involving the women on the jury went so far as to hold that “man embraces woman.” * And who shall say that it |lacked authority? Nevertheless, in Il- | linois the Supreme Court has read the | mind of legislators who enacted a jury [sum!e prior to the ratification of the nineteenth amendment gnd has de- \Ikrmlned that by the word “electors” 1“male persons only” were intended. Who ever heard of a popular referen- |dum for men on the question of their lability to serve on juries? And who would expect it to be “popular,” if one | were held? Yet the women of Alaska | (Continued on Fourth Page.) Our First Polish Ambassador Appointment Is One of First Steps in Making His Nation One of the World’s Great Powers. BY ARTHUR RUHL. 'HEN Mr. Titus Filipowicz drives up to the White House —as he is expected to do | shortly after his return from | the flying visit he 15 now | making to Mexico—and presents to the President his credentials as the first Polish Ambassador at Washington, a number of things will be happening which nobody could have foretold a few weeks before that world-shaking shot was fired at Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. | ‘Who could have guessed then, or even in 1915, when the Russian frontier fort- | resses were going down before the Ger- mans and Austrians, that there would be any Polish Minister at all in Wash- ington in 1930! And who could have been sure, even as late as 1920, when the Bolsheviks had advanced to the very | gates of Warsaw, not only that there | would be an independent Poland 10 ' years later but that the new power would have reached a weight and sta- bility where it would be deemed appro- | priate to raise the rank of its diplo- matic representative from that of min- ister to ambassador? | Had Adventurous Career. When the great war broke, his excel- | lency, the Polish Ambassador-to-be, | was, legally speaking, a Russian subject, | an emigre, like lots of other restless and | dissatisfied subjects of the Czar, making | propaganda in London, as a member of the Polish Socialist party, for a united | and independent Poland. He already | had been in prison, had been sent to | Siberia, had helped publish and smug- ‘ gle a contraband newspaper into Po- | land, had done all sorts of things and | had all sorts of adventures which would have made him anything but a diplo- matic persona grata in Washington had | the eastern European dynasties not all | gone down in smoke and flame. And yet here he is, in spite of all that, a | suave and charming gentleman, who | speaks languages, rides or tramps cross | country, dances expertly and does all | the things expected of diplomats, in- | cluding the more serious tasks not men- | tioned here. Nothing but the great war and the revolutions that followed it | could have turned things about like that! It is & transformation characteristic | of post-war Europe, and especially of the new nations formed out of terri- | tories and peoples which used to be part | of imperfal Russia. - In Finland, Esto- nia, Latvia, Lithuania, many, if not most, of the present-day leaders were, in the nature of things, in the pre-war days more or less active revolutionists. When Pinland was a Russian grand duchy, the Pinns, of whom foreigners were likely to have heard—such a fem- inist and active politician as Miss Annie Furuhelm, for instance—were oftener than not Swedish Finns; members, that is to say, of the conservative Swedish minority, who owned the landed estates end comprised what are generally spoken of as people of consequence. They spoke Swedish. and were inclined to think of Sweden as their cultural homeland. The “Finn” Finns, although they had produced writers and musi- cians and artists and largely outnum- bered the Swedish Finns, were generally people of modest means and modest social station, just struggling up, both against Russia itself and their own Swedish upper class, to nationalistic self-expression. Free But Short Time. The same was even more true of the Baltic states, just across the gulf. The Esthonians and Letts, who now, control affairs in the new republics of Esthonia and Latvia, were peasants or the sons or grandsons of peasants. The German nobility, the Balt barons, who owned AMBASSADOR FILL) FREEDOM. the landed estates, “ran things” locally, although, politically speaking, they were Russian subjects. The Esthonians and | Letts had been their serfs, and had re- celved their freedom only a few decades before serfdom was abolished in Russia itself. The Lithuanians, similarly, were more or less subject .to their Polish land- lords, although both they and their landlords were politically subject to Russia. When Lithuania declared her independence every Lithuanian who could speak languages and had had some experience in the world of politics and affairs was needed to fill the newly- created public offices. When the writer was traveling up and down the Baltic states in 1919 and 1920, the little city of Kovno, Lithuania's capital, was, cu- riously enough, a place where an Amer- ican felt surprisingly at home, for the simple reason that the men he was likely to see most of in the foreign office were emigrants returned from the United States—Lithuanians who had been teachers in some of our State uni- versities or newspaper editors in Chi- cago or Boston, for instance, and “spoke our language” in more senses than one. Poland, with its vastly greater terri- ’OWICZ-HE HELPED ACHIEVE POLAND'S —From an Unpublished Portrait by Leanebel Jacobs. tory, larger cities and 30,000,000 of peo- ple, ‘is naturally a more complex story. The new Poland,-as the giving to its diplomatic representatives of ampassa- dorial rank implies, is by way of being | or becoming a great power.” And yet the human experience of its. present leaders fs, in pattern, essentially very similar to that of those who have come to the top in the smaller countries which were once part of Russia.. Tha great Pilsudski himself, for instance, is regarded by the hotly nationalistic Lithuanians as a ‘renegade,” for the reason that he comes from a part of Poland where Lithuanian is or was largely spoken, and which the Lithu- anians look on as “theirs.” In talking with the writer once about this attitude of the Lithuanians, Marshal Pilsudski admitted that while, politically speak- ing, he was a devoted Polish patriot, ke nevertheless cherished a sentimental af- fection for the Lithuanian countryside from which he came. “C'est ma fai- blesse!” he said, with a wave of the hand and one of his attractive smiles. However, this is not the place to start gossiping about Polish-Lithuanian rela- tions. The only point I wish to make here is that men like the new Polish | Ambassador, who have come to the top | during a period when new nationalisms were taking shape out of the chaos left | by the war and the revolutions which followed it, have necessarily had careers vastly more adventurous than anything which comes to our own routine poli- ticlans and diplomats, career men or | otherwise. To find the American equiv~ alent of Mr. Filipowicz, for instance, | one would have to go back, I suppose, to some of the first diplomatic repre- sentatives which the newly united Colo- nies sent abroad after our own War of Independence. | Mr. Filipowicz knew Pilsudski in his | early youth, and his family, members of | the small country gentry, lived in Northeastern Poland, although he him- | self was born, I believe, in Warsaw. He | was educated as a mining engineer, and for a time practiced that professior, | both in the Polish coal country and | Russia itself. But he soon became ab- | sorbed in the movement for an inde- | pendent, Poland, and after studying at the School of Economics and Political clence at the University of London nd learning the English which he now. | speaks so fluently, he went during the | Russo-Japanese War to Japan with Pil- sudski in the interests of the cause to which both were devoted. The two | crossed the United States on that trip and got a smattering of the American people and scene. During the political turmoil, both in | Russia proper and in its outlying prov- |inces, which accompanied the abortive | revolution of 1905, Filipowicz_was ar- rested, tried and deported to Northern Siberia. But as was characteristic of that curious, pre-war, sprawling Rus- sian Empire, in which a man might be proscribed in one neighborhood and yet in another, there were many ways to “arrange” things. The Polish prisoner didn’t stay long in Siberia. He found means after two months there of pass- ing the guards, and made his way again | to England. A Former Journalist. Ja the days before the war, during which Mr. Filipowicz worked as a jour- land, and in 1911-12 lectured on history at the ' Cracow School of Political Science, he published in Polish several Autonomy,” “Is a Constitutional As- | sembly Necessary in Warsaw?” “Politi- |cal Dreams” and “Problems of Prog- ress,” and in English “The Confidential Documents of the British Government Concerning the Insurrection in Poland in 1863." At-the outbreak of the World War he enlisted in Pilsudski's Polish Legion; was arrested in Warsaw in 1916 and expelled from the occupled territory by the German authorities, and in 1917, when the beginnings of an independent Polish government were made in War- saw, Pilipowicz was sent to Vienna as the representative of the provisional Polish state department. In 1918, as soon as the German forces in Warsaw had been disarmed, he became acting minister of foreign affairs, and ther with Marshal Pilsudski signed the cir- cular note to the powers announcing the formation of an independent, united Poland. The next year he went on a special mission to Paris and London, and in 1920 Headed a Polish mission to South- ern Caucasus. This was in the thick of the civil and foreign wars which fol- lowed the Bolshevik revolution. When it was in Baku the Polish mission fell into the hands of the Bolsheviks, and Mr. Filipowicz spent several months as a prisoner, part of the time in the fa- mous Butirki Prison in Moscow, where 50 many thousands of political prison " (Continued on Fourth Page) live quite comfortably and unmolested | nalist and Polish propagandist in Eng- | | books and ‘pamphlets—"Poland and Her | TAFT’S PERSONALITY SEEN CONTRIBUTION TO CAREER Roosevelt Recognized Good Nature of Only American to Be Both-Presi- dent and Chief Justice. BY MARK SULLIVAN. | HE writer of this article happens to have lived for some 10 years | just across the street from the home of Chief Justice Taft. On | the recent morning when the | Chief Justice returned to his home from: | his vain journey for recuperation ic | Asheville, N. C., the writer was return- | ing from an early expedition to another part of the city and saw at the Taf: door the group of newspaper photogra- | phers who were shortly to give the | Fublk: those photographs of Taft, trag- | | lcally feeble, in the wheeled chair that | was the mark of his saddening in- | validism. | “The troup of memories and reflec- tions that rushed into the writer's mind | included, of course, recent memories of | the Taft of only a few months or a | year or so ago—when the strolls he took | | on our street caused every child at play | to stop and run to him for the friendly | word and laugh that was the unfailing kexpresnlon of his sweetness of nature. | Almost, one felt, even the dogs hurried | to stand upon their hind legs that their | heads might receive the pat of Taft's | | big and friendly hand. | In that period, during the last half | | dozen years or so, while Taft’s frame | | and figure were still big and majestic, | | his cheeks had drooped a little, through | his years and the regimen that doctors | held him to, and for the same reason | his stroll was slow—the slowness being to such a man as Taft merely added opportunity for the more leisurely ema- nation of even a greater benignity. There came, however, to the writer on that recent morning another headlong rush of another group of memories— memories of the period, anywhere from 15 to 25 years ago, when Taft was in his prime. And such a prime! No man ever walked upon the earth, and certainly none within this writer's ac- quaintance, who so greatly radiated the sense of physical well being; radiated it so strongly and vividly that it became | & stimulus toward well being and the | good nature that goes with well being | to those who came within his aura. Bigness Well Carried. At that time, anywhere from about | 1903 onward for several years, when he | was in President Roosevelt's cabinet, | Taft’s bigness was well rounded, but he | had the frame that carries weight wih | an effect of majesty, of the sort that primitive men and "even modern men on the average like to see in their kings and leaders. People thought of Taft's tonnage as they think of the Leviathan, something that makes‘ for substance and dependability and does not inter- fere with efficiency. Confidence and affection attended him everywhere. As he liked to travel and as his tasks took him to every corner of the country, he was seen in the flesh by probably as many people as even Roosevelt himself. He had a natural liking for people and a human understanding of democracy—in a sense different from political understanding— which Taft did not have at all. By preference he did his traveling in an ordinary lower berth, reading his news- paper in the smoking compartment and Joining in conversations with his fel- low passengers—in all respects he liked to share the common lot. Entering the dining car of a morning his face had the rosiness of the dawn itself and his bearing the heartiness of a giant re- freshed. The cheeriness of his greeting to the conductor and the waiter and to the friend or acquaintance that any average dining car gathering was sure to contain, all had the effect of infecting the whole car with good cheer and a sense of well-being, a ieeling that all was well with the world. The people associated him with his chief, President Roosevelt, and felt that with two such ;t the helm the country was well cared or. Told Jokes on Self. The country loved Taft. They made infinite jests about his mtnessayand no one heard or repeated the jokes with greater savor than Taft himself. Mak- ing a speech he would pause with an effect of suspense just long enough to intensify the audience’s attention, then throughout the immense torso and up into the broad features would run little tremors and heavings, rising to a climax in & rumbling chuckle so infectious as only a fat man could achieve, and Taft would tell a story in which the point was, as he would say in an engaging falsetto, “on me.” While he was in the Philippines, disturbing reports about his health caused Secretary of War Root to send a cabled inquiry. Taft cabled back that he was perfectly all right— he had just finished a 20-mile horse- back ride and was feeling fine. Root read that, smiled, and sent off another cable of solicitude: “How is the horse?” All the jokes that have been made about fat men since Shakespeare in- vented Falstaff were brought from their uncllentt closets ):nd stretched to fit Taft's ample form. New ones emanated from TSR himself. A lady calling on him in the interest of her son’s career in the Army had received the assurance she wished and departing said, as the high- est feminine conception of showing ap- preciation: “Mr. Taft, you're really not near so fat as they say vou are.” ‘Was Prodigious Worker. Roosevelt had introduced Taft to the direct acquaintance of the people b | bringing him back from the ghmp- pines to make him Secretary of War, But Taft was more than Secretary of | War. Wherever a tension needed the | solvent of good-will or friction the oil of benevolence: wherever suspicion |needed the antidote of frankness, or | wounded pride the disinfectant of a hearty laugh—there Taft was sent. He was g prodigious worker and the greater the pressure that Roosevelt put upon him the more effectively he worked. It is difficult to phrase with exact- ness just what Taft was to the Roose- velt administration and to the country. It occurs to one to borrow a term from business and say Taft was America's “trouble shooter”—but that implies high-pressure explosiveness and also ruthlessness sometimes, and Taft was neither explosive nor ruthless. It was velt who was under high pressure always and explosive often; Taft was his jovial, never excited, considerate, smiling associate, partly subordinate, partly partner. When Cuba's groping first steps in self-government faltered, Taft was sent to repeat what he had done in the Philippines, his success causing Roose- velt to write in a private letter: “Taft - ol s handled the situation mar- velously. When construction of the Panama Canal was almost halted through the ineptitude of an engineer in charge who forehandedly took a cof- fin to the isthmus with him—with ob- vious results to the morale of the work- ers—Taft, explosive for once, just “bawled him out,” took hold himself and reorga the work. When trouble arose over the title to land holdings in the Philippines by friars of the Catholic Church—a delicate matter fraught with possibilities of religious rancor—Taft | try’s 'and serenity. Catholics alike, It was fortunate that Taft's 350 pounds of jovial flesh failed to inters fere with a natural enjoyment of travel, for his journeys to run down his coun- troubles carried him literally’ around the world. At Tokio he calmed the waters troubled by California’s pro- scripton of Japanese from the public schools and from owning land. At Ma- nila he assisted in opening the first Filipino legislative assembly. In China, by negotiations with the government, he got rid of the boycott then in effect against American All of which inspired a tribute in verse, widely copied and quoted, by a newspaper para- grapher: “Pattern for all beneath the sun, To Taft award the palm and bun! They told him what they wanted done. He done it!" Even as the people loved Taft, so did Roosevelt. Whenever Roosevelt men- tioned Taft’s name it was with an ex- pression of pleasure on his own coun- tenance—a pleasure that was more than a mere smile of affection. Roosevelt had high regard for Taft's judgment In cabinet meetings or at gatherings of friends, to say, “Isn't that so, Will?” or “Don’t you think so, Will?” was Roosevelt's way of getting what he regarded as the most convinc- ing buttressing of his own opinions—an attitude never modified by the fact that at evening gatherings in the White House study the question would some- times wake Taft from a nap. Nor was Roosevelt ever disturbed when occasion- ally in the midst of one of his eager disquisitions to a group about Irish sagas or the coloration of zebras there came from the easy chair in which Taft rested an audible sign of pre- occupation with restoration from the day's more serious labors. Roosevelt would only beam the more, like a mother pleased to see a child at peace. One felt that that gargantuan me, because of the labor it performed, was entitled to take rest where it could. To contemplate the giant relaxed was a pleasure that gave one the feeling that everything must be all right. Restrained Each Other. The very ease that Taft had in Roosevelt's presence, his immunity from infection by the latter's eager energy, helped to increase Roosevelt's estimate of the soundness and sure-footedness of his judgment. Far from resenting Taft's placid, good-humored immunity to some of Roosevelt’s more recondite enthusiasms, Roosevelt valued him the more for {t. Instinctively Roosevelt seemed to sense that Taft's imperturba- bility was a needed and valuable eor- rective to his own impetuosity. Taft privately thought of himself as hold- ing on to Roosevelt’s coattails to pre- vent him from going too fast, but pub- licly always said that whatéver Roose- velt did was heaven's law. Conversely, Roosevelt. publicly accepted Taft's bene~ diction as proof that he was right, but privately told friends that somet he had to restrain Taft from letting his loyalty carry him too far—from the furtherance of Roosevelt's policies more Roosevelt. than Roosevelt himself. Roosevelt loved him and admired him extravagantly—admired him to a degree that almost reached a kind of generous envy. “You_kno Roosevelt once said to Archie Butt, “I think Taft has the most lovable personality I have ever come in contact with. I almost envy possessing a personality like People are pre by it. One loves him at first sight. He has nothing to overcome when he meets people. I realize that I have ll'llg got to over- come a little something before I get to the heart of people.” = And Roosevelt, with a characteristic screwing up of his features that always preceded some- thing humorous, added: "“No one could accuse me of having a charming per- sonality.” and American Protestantc Taft on the Lid. In scores of such private conversa- tions and public sentiments Roosevelt expressed his pleasure about Taft with his habitual “corking” and “bully.” Not only his affection but the regard he had for Taft’s ability and his gratitude for Taft’s services. Leaving Washington for a long trip to a Rough Rider reunion at San Antonio, Tex. and then a swing around the circle, Roosevelt told the newspaper correspondents: “Oh, things will be all right: I have left Taft sitting on the lid"—a Wwhich, consider- ing Taft'’s weight, was one of the most fruitful of the many opportunities that Roosevelt'’s pungent phrases presented to cartoonists. Once in a letter to Henry Cabot Lodge Roosevclt recited his current troubles—riots in Chicago, discrimina- tion against the Japanese in California, the hard job of making peace between Japan and Russia, trouble with England over Newfoundland fisheries, the diffi- culty of getting a railroad rate bill through Congress—but concluded, as if with a sigh that implied confidence to face all his troubles: “Taft has been the greatest comfort to me.” In an- other letter to Lodge, Roosevelt told of picking a successor to John Hay as Secretary of State, and of hesitating be- tween Elihu Root and Taft—"for Taft, as you know, is very close to me.” De- ciding upon Root (because thus he would have both Root and Taft around him), he sald: “Taft is a big fellow; he urged me to bring Root into the cabinet.” In public and formal testimonials Roosevelt combed the dictionary for superlatives—"in courage,” “capacity,” “inflexible uprightness,” “disinterested- ness,” “wide acquaintance with all gov- ernmental problems and identification of himself with the urgent needs of the social and governmental work of the day,” “Taft stands pre-eminent.” In an article in the Outlook Roasevelt quoted a friend as saying and on his own account indorsed the statement that there was only one man in the United States who combined all the Qualities that would make a first-rate President_with all those which would make a first-class Chief Justice, “and that man is William H. Taft.” Wanted Chief Justiceship, Taft became both, the only man in American history who did. Taft's own preference, his lifelong ambition from almost his childhood, was to go on the Supreme bench. His brothers and some others close to him persuaded him to {forego that ambition in favor of a chance at the presidency. Then Roose- velt made him President. While Taft was President and not very happy in it. a vacancy occurred the of Chief Justice, and Taft filled it, saying to a bystander as he signed Chief Jus- tice White's commission almost with tears in his eyes: “That was the office I always wanted, and now I'll never have it.” More than 10 years later White died and Harding appointed Taft. The Supreme Court was where Taft belonged. The presidency under the conditions of that time did not it him nor the presidency. Taft's was a static temperament, and his presidency fell in a dynamic day—an extraordinar- went to Rome and negotiated a settle- ment which left evervbody satisfied— Vatican, friars and Filipinos, American 4 ily dynamic day. preme Court Taft had _But for the Si (Continued on Fourth Page.)