The New Republic: A Journal of Opinion (June 23, 1920)

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‘Ohe . a ae a re atte ii 3 ee ee een eee, ee eee ‘ + _-» pe rite « "— S gy m - °— " a = bo Fe aise a ‘ex a ae a ~~ re ds ; a i) z = pr > ee aie ee ge ee OE Nerina ey ae eR ge enc ee . ae os ad Se er Tee, a hie gh ae ee oe oe ae or re a : sah ae? = Paes: 6 ee ae Ca oe = oe et in oo a q “Vouume XXIII. Contents J TROT IPO ESOT Ob Re ea ape fee Va I Hay es a 06 Editorials Harding The Pesoh ious Platform. . paar ge oA The Republicans and the League. BM iat bea On National Egotism vs. International Relief. . General Articles CMCHIY TIO. leche tie wg caine Walter Lippmann Full Circle (Verse) PAG Maxwell Anderson Why Mail Service is Poor.. Edward G. Lowry Our State Department........ Birrell Leftwich America Aids the Polish Drive. . wee ib Wanoudecla a aca. bie PEE REA ots Lincoln ‘Colcord Putting Fiume on the Rhine..Sanford Griffith - Robert Edmond Jones, Artist of the Theatre. . sMacmstulis le aie eem hath’ ccraaih a eoeate Oliver M. Sayler Park Guemnes (Verse) . Elizabeth J. Coatsworth The Passing of the West. .John Gould Fletcher _ Correspondence Books and Things...... ck bia oo ERM ONE eae 1 ay Fe Reviews of Books Why There Is No Peace................ yea The Sickness of an Acquisitive Society. . PSG: EME bid SURO GH UME Vn wha Dickinson §S. Miller RRIVETER POOL lise oielawelaeciahint Lola Ridge The Week INE weeks before the Chicago Convention i this was the prediction of Warren G. Hard- ing’s campaign manager: ‘At the proper time after Bihe Republican National Convention meets, some “fifteen men, bleary-eyed with loss of sleep and per- ‘spiring profusely with the excessive heat, will sit ‘down in seclusion around a big table. I will be with ‘them and will present the name of Senator Harding to them, eau before we get through they will put him over. Harding’s manager was not sitting at the big table. He lost out, as a delegate, when Harding barely carried his own state. But his Prophecy called the turn. From some fifteen men, itting in seclusion around a big table, Harding won his nomination. Because neither in this campaign ni lor at any other time in his life has he’ done any- hing positive enough to cause offense, Harding as picked from the discard by the men who know how to run conventions. The moral seems to be that the man who does worst in the primaries is onsidered safest for the nomination. >a y NEw York, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 23, 1920 New REPUBLIC. A Journal of Opinion © NUMBER 290 FAIRNESS requires that critics of the Republican candidate bring to the front two issues in which Senator Harding has differed from the majority opinion of his Republican colleagues—and, in our judgment, differed wisely. In the first place he was quick to disapprove of the methods by which five Socialist members were ousted from the New York assembly, He was, in ‘fact, the first prominent Republican Presidential candidate to take such a stand. In the second‘place, he has expressed certain views about Russia wiser than those held by most of his colleagues. Interviewed by Bruce Bliven, of the New York Globe, on March 6th, Mr. Harding said: “It is no business of ours what form of gOov- ernment the Russian people choose. They have a | perfect right to indulge in any folly they see fit, and the mistake of the Allies in invading that unhappy country is one of the most serious, blunders the present generation of statesmen ever made.”’ That is a clear statement. But it is only one paragraph in an interview. Mr. Harding has never taken the lead toward such a policy, in the Senate. We doubt whether he would, in the White House, if he thought ‘the regulars” disapproved. F ROM our own point of view we discuss, on other pages of this issue, the course the Republicans have marked out for themselves in respect to domestic issues and the League of Nations. There is one plank not included in those discussions, and that is the plank which deals with Mexico. It is a much more gentle declaration than the sort which has lately come from the Mexican specialists of the Republican ‘party. Senator Fall, no doubt, carried to Chicago the program adopted by a Republican sub-committee in the Senate, a few weeks before | the convention met: a threat to the Mexicans to revise their constitution so as to satisfy American oil interests, or else pay the penalty of an American invasion. He came away with nothing more bel- ligerent than a warning that our policy would be “consistent, firm and effective’’—with recognition