Who will be President ?
MR. Mmomm's short critical biographies of the PreSidential candidates, in the United States are opportune. No doubt the book has been •produced as quickly as possible and it could hardly have been more up-to-date ; but even'so it must be remembered that the prospects of Presidential Candidates are always subject to lightning changes. Mr. Hoover's posi- tion, for instance, has become - much stronger since Mr. Midgley wrote. And even if one could pick out 'a strong favourite and prove that on his merits his chances of winning the race were about `, four to • one on," it still would not follow that he would really have anything like.that chance of winning. Merit is not by any means certain of its reward. The Presidential contest is like a Papal election in this respect —that the successful candidate may be a man who least divides his supporters. His abilities may place him only in the second class of statesmanship ; he is preferred because he is
either safe or unobjectionable. . _ - Mr. Midgley includes Mr. Coolidge as a - candidate, but there- is less justification for thinking of hini as a candidate than there was a few week -ago. -Mr. Coolidge has asked-to
have his name removed from the, primaries. However, it is still possible that he may be," drafted " by the Republican Convention in the event of the Convention being unable to agree upon any other, candidate. In those circumstances his " I do not choose to run " would probably not be found to mean that he was unaccommodating. As Mr. Midgley flings his net wide enough to include Mr. Coolidge we should have expected him to include more than nine candidates. Mr. C. E. Hughes and Senator Thomas J. Walsh of Montana, for example, are excluded. True, these two are not probables, but they are at least possibles. Mr. Walsh is already on the lists.
Mr. Midgley evidently does not like Mr. Coolidge. He represents him as the ungenial and inscrutable representative of the business world. He says that everything is known about Mr. Coolidge but nothing is understood. He does not tell us anything really damaging about Mr. Coolidge, who is of course known to be a man of honour, but he finds him unimaginatively materialistic. "The business of the United States," Mr. Coolidge ha.s said, " is business." If that is so, the strong suit of the Republican Party at the election will be proof that the United States is as prosperous as ever. But is she ? It has been reported lately that there are at least Ilia
million unemployed in the country. If the Democrats can show that there is depression and that the Republicans are responsible for it they will introduce a startling issue into the election which is at present without one. The outsider, indeed, is puzzled to know what the election is all about, except that it is time for a new President to enter the White House. The dividing line between the two great parties has almost disappeared. Not even Prohibition can restore it, for on this subject all the candidates are evasive. If the Democrats think there is no chance of bringing home to the Republicans responsibility for industrial depression they ' might try the oil scandals.
The candidates whom Mr. Midgley dissects besides Mr.
• eoolidge are Mr. Hoover, Mr. Al Smith, General Dawes, Mr. Frank 0. Lowden, Senator Borah, Senator Curtis, Senator Reed and Mr. Henry Ford. Apparently he has come to the conclusion that the Republicans could not do better than nominate Mr. Hoover. Mr.' Hoover is certainly a man of demonic force. At the age of twenty-four he had made his mark as a mining engineer and was called out to New South Wales and China for consultations. During the War his name became familiar in England, as he was Chairman of the Commission for Belgiah Relief and he became still better known when he was appointed Food Administrator in the United States. He is a poor public speaker, but he evidently has the power of using words very 'persuasively in private colloquy. Mr. Midgley says in one of the illuminating epigrams with which the book is plentifully- sprinkled that a speech by Mr. Hoover is " chartered accountancy turned into words." Business interests as a whole rally to Mr. Hoover, but the farmers do not like him, and the financiers of Wall Street have a grudge against him because he has persistently condemned foreign loans.
Mr. Midgley writes with more warmth of Mr. Al Smith than of any other candidate. Here is a real " character," an irre- sistible personality who may be rough in his manners but who nevertheless reminds you that Lincoln himself was rough. Mr. Smith has performed the prodigious feat of turning Tam- many into an efficient administration. He is a great civic patriot.. His anti-Prohibitionisrn might or might not tell against him, but the facts that he is a Roman Catholic and that the evil Tammany tradition still marches on in spite of his reforms are against him.
General Dawes, the nominal though (as he himself admits) not the real author of the Dawes Scheme for German repara-
tions, may be a dark horse. If you are to believe him he is not a candidate. - He says that he supporft Mr. Lowden. But some of the most knowing people in the United States will explain that in the end Mr. Lowden will fade away and that General Dawes will take his place. • Finally we must mention Senator Borah, that eminent Re- publican moralist and free-lance. His foreign _policy at least takes the direction in which the State Department is heading at present. He is fond of preaching that there is no such thing as isolation : _ America must co-operate with other _nations, but she must co-operate as emergency requires and not commit herself to an immutable plan.
The best remembered contact between American and French life was, of course, at the time of the War of Inde- pendence, when Lafayette put his sword at the disposal of the Colonies. For more than a hundred years the gratitude of the United States went on growing .although nobody undertook the task of examining historically the many other contacts between the two nations. Now for the first time Professor Howard Mumford Jones estimates in his scholarly volume the whole nature of the American cultural debt to France in the years 1750 to 1848.
An English reviewer may be forgiven for suggesting that to look a little further back would be to discover tremendous events that modified and almost determined French influence. If Marlborough had not fought his brilliant wars there would be infinitely more to tell about French influence in America. Even as it is, however, there is much to record in the fields of religion, politics, manners, the arts, philosophy,. amusements and even eating and drinking. The publishers a little over- state the scope of the volume in their notice on the dust cover. They say that Professor Jones deals with all the aspects of the relationship, but he himself in his preface modestly acknowledges that he has left out science and commerce. He thinks that the clash between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism has been one of the chief impedi- ments to French influence. The American people have been inclined to regard France as fickle and immoral. On the other hand, the social prestige of France, particularly as an arbiter of fashion, has been immense. He rejects the popular idea that Rousseau's political philosophy helped to form the American Constitution. He traces in the Constitution rather the thought of Montesquieu—which is only another way of saying that the influence was English passed through Montesquieu's brain.
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