THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW EDITED BY GEORGE HARVEY VOL. CCVIII Tros Tyriusque mihi nullo discrimine agetur IKARY NEW YORK 171 MADISON AVENUE 1918 Tros Tyriusque mihi nullo discrimine agetur IBRARY NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW JULY, 1918 IS POLITICS ADJOURNED? WILL NOT THE PRESIDENT MAKE IT SO? BY THE EDITOR 66 POLITICS," said the President to the Congress in a tone of conviction, "is adjourned." We wish it were; but is it? "The elections," continued the President, "will go to those who think least of it; to those who go to their constituencies without explanations or excuses, with a plain record of duty faithfully and disinterestedly performed." We hope so; but do the Representatives looking for return to Washington act as if they thought so? Why are they so loath, almost to the point of rebellion, to remain at their posts while a revenue bill is being drawn and considered? Why are they planning a recess for all except the perturbed members of the Ways and Means Committee? Why are so many absent from time to time even now? Can it be that they are less confident" than the President declares himself to be, "that the people will give a just verdict upon the service of the men who act for them, when the facts are such that no man can disguise or conceal them "? May it not be that they scent danger in the "intense and pitiless light" that beats upon them and that they feel a pressing need of making "explanation," if not indeed "excuses" to their constituents? 66 That politics should be adjourned in this hour of the Nation's peril we grant. While we do not claim to have originated the suggestion, we advanced it and have pleaded publicly and privately for its adoption and, as the readers of this REVIEW have been made aware possibly to the verge of Copyright, 1918, by NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW CORPORATTON. All Rights Reserved. VOL. CCVIII-NO. 752 1 boredom, have reiterated persistently the plain reasons why at this time as never before considerations of patriotism and unity should.transcend all others, even to the exclusion of all others, in the public mind. And we know from countless expressions of approval from all sections that the country coincides. The Boston Transcript speaks no less truly than appealingly and eloquently when it says of the President's declaration: Here we see and hear and are heartened by "the President at his best "-speaking straightforwardly the thought and feeling of the people to whom the war is coming closer home with every passing day. They have no time for politics, and professional politicians put them out of temper. With the people the winning of the war is the first thing that counts and the only thing that counts. No burden is too heavy for them to bear, no sacrifice too hard for them to make, no sorrow, no suffering, beyond their endurance, provided only that the burden and the sacrifice, the sorrow and the suffering will help to win the war, and soon the world will know that the least among these offerings for the great cause is that which has come and will continue to come out of the pockets of the rich and the poor, the naturalized and the native born. The loss of treasure in the final accounting will appear small in comparison with that other loss for which neither time nor treasure can compensate, but only the glory of a great grief greatly borne. And the spirit of party now bars in no small measure the realization of this noble aspiration,-that same "envenomed, relentless and unpatriotic spirit of party," which, as Gideon Welles wrote upon like occasion in 1862, "paralyzes and weakens the hand of the Government and the country." Why is this so? Where lies the blame? I. THE REPUBLICAN ATTITUDE If the Republicans were to be judged by the utterance of their venerable leader in the Senate, Mr. Gallinger, theirs would be a sorry showing. Speaking, for example, of the proposal to eliminate partisanship, so far as possible, from the forthcoming Congressional election, he remarked in his most finely satirical vein: There are other arrangements which we would be pleased to make. If the Democrats will present no candidate for the Senate in Illinois, we will refrain from a contest in Mississippi; if they will keep out of the contest in New Hampshire, we will abstain from conflict in Texas; if they will observe a political truce in New Jersey, we will observe one in Georgia. We are wholly willing and even desirous of showing our patriotism and the absence of partisanship from our minds in exactly the same measure and in the same manner as that which the Democrats have displayed. I hope we may soon be able to take up the pour parlers to this end. By all means "Let us Have Peace." Flippancy of this kind may be excused, perhaps, as becoming sufficiently well a Bourbon who long ago reached the age of indiscretion, but light remarks of similar nature so frequently tossed off by Senator Penrose, who is at the height of his mental powers, are less easily pardoned. It is but fair, however, to record that the irritating attitude of these two incorrigibles differs radically from that of any other of their Republican colleagues. As might have been expected of a true statesman, however strongly partisan in ordinary times, Senator Lodge, the real leader of the Senate, ran true from the beginning,-so clearly true, indeed, that both of the bodies comprising the General Court of Massachusetts, Democrats and Republicans alike, gave to him a vote of confidence with substantial unanimity. Sub "It was not only what you said, but the way you said it,' he gratefully acknowledged to the House later. "There were no party lines in it. This is no time for party lines. Since the beginning of the war I have cast no party vote and do not intend to do so while the war continues." sequently, speaking as a member of the Naval Affairs Committee, he paid a handsome and well-deserved tribute to Secretary Daniels, whose meddlesome flounderings previous to the war had not won the full approbation of himself or of some others who need not now be mentioned. Senator Weeks spoke in like strain and was so well received that we hear in a roundabout way that Governor McCall is not likely to interpose his candidacy in the Republican primaries. True, both Senators pledged their best efforts to root out "mismanagement and inefficiency wherever found," but it would ill become us to object to that. It is worthy of remark, too, that the minority leader of the House shines by comparison with Senator Gallinger. Administration organs made so much of fragmentary reports of his speech to the Republican Club in New York that we read it in completed form and feel bound to testify to the rightfulness of its spirit and its fairness in all respects. After saying at the outset that he had tried, and he believed |