A VOICE OF THE PEOPLE

Congress having settled its petty equabbles and fallen in line like a set of good children, President Coolidge has at last been able to deliver his message. Radios and newspaper scareheads have broadcast his words from one end of the country to the other, editorials and enthusiastic tax-payers have lauded it to the skies. If there is anything left to be said, it must be by way of general comment. The country has waited so long and so expectantly for President Coolidge to break his silence that it has doubtless devoured the message whole as soon as it appeared.

There are three things which "stick flery off" in the most casual perusal of the message: its clarity and straight forwardness, its lack of any very new or striking suggestion, and the difference of its tone in regard to domestic and to foreign policy. In the first two respects the President's message is remarkably in accord with the general public's estimate of the man. President Coolidge has been considered stable, carefully conservative, practical in a business way, in fact a good representative of the Grand Old Party; and his message bears this out. He is following President Harding's policies, as he promised; he is a true Republican in his endorsement of high tariff and his reserved attitude toward the farmers of the radical west. And in his denouncement of the bonus and his backing of the Mellon tax reduction plan, he has the true Republican eye for the country's business prosperity. While these points are, on the whole, solidly commendable, the really noteworthy part of the message is its unequivocal stand on these measures and the clarity with which they are outlined. Even though they be well-know issues for the most part, their form of statement makes plain that President Coolidge believes in them with the greatest sincerity.

All this holds true of the domestic policy--and the domestic policy is evidently the President's surest ground. The statement of our foreign policy is comparatively relegated to the background and treated in terms not so clear. For instance the World Court question is mixed up with the Hague Court, which has not had success enough to recommend it very highly; and it is recommended with "the proposed reservations," reservations never very clearly understood. As for the League of Nations, all the high-sounding phrases at the close regarding our responsibility in giving the world a more practical use of "our moral power" do not dispel the questionableness of once more calling the League "a dead issue." Perhaps at present it is a dead issue to the public. But opinion may change. The uncertainty of the present state of public opinion, plus the President's unwillingness to create doubtful issues, have permeated the foreign policy of the message.

There is one more fairly clear point. While obviously far from playing politics, President Coolidge has made so strong an appeal to the heart of the public, especially in his tax, bonus, child labor, and mimimum-wage-for-women recommendations, that he who reckons without the President at the Republican convention is likely to receive a severe jolt. Though Johnsons may blow their trumpets from the steeps". President Coolidge has made a simple, direct appeal to the heart.