National Affairs: And a Speech

On Armistice Day it is fitting that the President of the U. S. should make a speech. In order to find a place to speak, he often must travel; traveling implies newspaper correspondents on board the Presidential train.

The Trip. At 11 p.m. the President and Mrs. Coolidge, with Secretary of War Dwight Filley Davis and the usual White House retinue,* left Washington; retired early. They awoke to breakfast on country sausage, wheatcakes and Vermont maple syrup. At Pittsburgh the President grinned and Mrs. Coolidge smiled from the observation platform as railroad employes cheered them. At Blackrun, Ohio, they looked upon a front lawn sprinkled with statues of Presidents and animals. Owner Isaac Baughman, farmer-sculptor, is now working on a likeness of President Coolidge. At Columbus, Senator Frank B. Willis climbed aboard to greet the party. At Indianapolis, the President heard himself boomed for 1928. Two hundred sorority girls from Butler University sang for Mrs. Coolidge, sister in Pi Beta Phi. For dinner a director of the Pennsylvania Railroad had presented a canvasback duck. Then the cinema, with John Gilbert doing Fairbanksian leaps in Bardelys the Magnificent; then sleep; then Kansas City, Mo., where a salute of 21 guns from French 75’s announced the President’s arrival.*

The Correspondents noted this and that on the trip, according to their tastes.

Chicago Tribune, per Arthur Sears Henning:

“The President and Mrs. Coolidge eat their meals in the dining car with members of their party and the newspaper men. The only distinction is that Mr. Coolidge and his wife have one of the large tables to themselves and all of us rise when they enter the car and remain standing till they are seated.”

New York Herald Tribune, per Carter Field: “Up to date no one has been put off the President’s train.” (Correspondent Henning telegraphed this same quip.) New York Times: “He [The President] followed with a lively interest the Panorama spread before him, studying not only the visual aspects but statistical matter concerning them. Mrs. Coolidge also took a deep interest in the same subjects, reading with the President descriptions of the leading cities and towns and of their key industries.”

New York World: “. . . Mr. Coolidge attracted no attention as he sped westward, and sought none.”

The Monument. Kansas City is made beautiful by its hills. From the summit of one of them now juts the 217-foot limestone shaft of the $2,000,000 Liberty Memorial, which the city has built in memory of its World War dead.

Diverse opinions have been cast at Architect H. Van Buren Magonigle’s “altar high-erected in the skies, a pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day.”* Will (“Prairie Pantaloon”) Rogers called it a silo; Amelita Galli-Curci asked, “Whatis-it-you-call-it ? A salt shaker?” Sinclair Lewis suggested that pluming the shaft with steam would be the same as putting actively galloping legs under equestrian statues of George Washington. On the contrary, the Journal of the American Institute of Architects said: “. . . Mr. Magonigle has risen to the heights of genius. He has achieved in masterly handling a problem of which it might be said that there have been few to compare in modern architecture.”

The Speech. It was before this monument that President Coolidge doffed his hat, shed his overcoat; faced a biting wind, radio transmitters, 150,000 people; orated. His one pronouncement of policy was that the U. S. would not enter the World Court unless the Senate reservations were accepted in toto. He said in part:

“… I am of the firm conviction that there is more hope for the progress of true ideals in the modern world from a nation even newly rich than there is from a nation chronically poor. Honest poverty is one thing, but lack of industry and character is quite another. While we do not need to boast of our prosperity or vaunt our ability to accumulate wealth, I see no occasion to apologize for it. …

“While the nations involved [in the World Court] cannot yet be said to have made a final determination, and from most of them no answer has been received, many of them have indicated that they are unwilling to concur in the conditions adopted by the resolution of the Senate. While no final decision can be made by our Government until final answers are received, the situation has been sufficiently developed so that I feel warranted in saying that I do not intend to ask the Senate to modify its position. I do not believe the Senate would take favorable action on any such proposal, and unless the requirements of the Senate resolution are met by the other interested nations I can see no prospect of this country adhering to the Court. . . .

“These dead whom we here com memorate have placed their trust in us. Their living comrades have made their sacrifice in the belief that we would not fail. In the consciousness of that trust and that belief this memorial stands as our pledge to their faith, a holy testament that our country will continue to do its duty under the guidance of a Divine Providence.”

The President sat down, listened to speeches by Secretary of War Davis and American Legion Commander Howard P. Savage. He might have shivered but he did not because Secret Service Chief Jarvis wrapped an automobile blanket about him; also Mrs. Catherine Brew, War mother, sent her wool blanket to protect him. Said she:

“I was too much aroused to mind the cold and did not mind the weather. I am all right and I will doubly enjoy the blanket after it has been used by the President.”

The Reaction. President Coolidge’s speech took the way of political commonsense. He knew that the Senate, after its World Court broil last January, would have no more to do with international brotherhood, unless its five reservations were accepted verbatim. In September the Geneva Conference added counter-reservations (TIME, Sept. 13) and some friendly World Court Senators became hostile. So, now the situation has come to an impasse: Europe is little inclined to accept the Senate reservations; the Senate and the Administration will not listen to counter-reservations.

But the Democratic and European press pointed to President Coolidge’s speech as being more fainthearted than wise.

Said the New York World: “He will not appeal to the Senate; he will not argue with Europe. He will do nothing. . . . Mr. Coolidge will not take trouble if it is not politically profitable to him. He will fight no battle except his own. He is cautious, but about his own career. He is calculating—about his own future. … He is not insincere. He is fainthearted and fundamentally indifferent to things that do not directly concern him. A cause like the World Court is all right for him provided the powerful people around him are for it. He will then be for it too. But the idea of making sacrifices for an idea would seem to Mr. Coolidge imprudent and wasteful. . . . Thus he sidled his way from one office to another, and by that rule of cautious, calculating self-interest he conducts himself now.”

Said the London Times: “The speech must virtually destroy the expectations confidently held out a few months ago that the United States would adhere to the Court.”

Said the London Evening Standard: “The peace was very largely an American affair. It was on American inspiration that the European powers were tied up—if we may be allowed the figure—like a bag of snakes. That was done on the assumption that America would play the part of the snake charmer in chief. That part she has refused.”

* Everett Sanders, private secretary; Major James F. Coupal, physician; Col. S. A. Cheney, military aide; Capt. Wilson Brown, naval aide; Richard Jarvis, chief of the White House Secret Service.

* Five years ago a meek Vice President emerged from the upper berth of a compartment ; Frank W. Stearns, his Boston merchant-friend, emerged from the lower. Unboomed, uncheered, unsung, he had come to Kansas City to lay the corner stone of the Liberty Memorial which last week he came to dedicate.

* This effect is achieved by having steam issue from a vast urn atop the monument, colored by lights at night. The steam was supposed to rise as eternally as flames tended by the Vestal Virgins of Rome. Unfortunately, the Kansas City Memorial superintendent had not been told of the “eternal” item. So, on the day after the steam had been turned on, the “pillar of cloud” was allowed to die for several hours.