The Washington herald., 1921-02-21
No path of flowers leads to glory.
j. De La Fontaine.
After March 4.

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in this country today, each with foreeful and
= insistent leadership. They represent minori-
tics whose effectiveness lies, always with minori-
ties, IN the militant character of their vocal and
printed propaganda
One of, these represent pure idealism. Their
proposals altruistic They see visions of sort
of -Utopian state where brotherly love and all is
happiness and content The other rejoice and take
much satisfaction in being what they call the
wholly practical They esehew visions They deal
in the present. They no distant fields and no
obligations save the immediate, which concern only
themselves and this people.
This is not unwholesome situation. Both
these groups have their uses. In sense they bal
ance each other 1t is not necessary call the one
mere dreamers, Socialists, Communists, and wreck
ers of government, the other mere demagogues,
wholly selfish and sordid, nor to denounce either
wholesale. They have their values in the sum total
of public opinion.
They aid materially in solidifying, arousing and
making assured that great mass of the American
public, whose final judgments have always been sane
and right. When 100000 people are free to de-
eide public questions for themselves, it has been
Americas contribution to the world that they never
go far wrong.
The United States for two years has been going
through the throes of giving birth and strength
this body of final judgment. 1t is significant that
at the Chicago convention each one of the leading
candidates for the Presidential nomination was a
who blended in himself that portion of altru-
ism of world sympathy and vision, with the practi-
CAL of the distant with the present of the far away
with the immediate which fulfs in combination the
American policy of the past. '---..-
This of itself is assurance that there is there
always has been not only a very definite American
domestic policy. but equally definite nterna-
tional policy Mr.. Harding could not have been
nominated if he had not been believed to represent
this He could not have been elected by any
thing comparable to his actual majority if his cam
paign has not conformed to 1t.
q His campaign managers realized this. In spite
OF the result they at no time felt the confidence it
finally warranted. They, and Mr.. Harding himself,
held this American policy constantly in the fore
ground 1t is politicians business to rightly est-
mate the weight of public opinion and the Repub-
ican campaign shows conclusively that this for
what Theodore Roosevelt once expressed, as radi-
caism or idealism carried into effect by practical
There is every reason to believe that this will
be the guiding and settled policy Of the Harding ad
ministraton. No President-elect has showed a
desire to rightly and fully interpret the
composite wish Of she people None has listened
more patiently nor inquired more diligently.
The problems he faces become simpler they
a great majority sentiment for certain rules of
tional conduct. which expressed in world terms,
and which interpret national good in world obliga
tions. Gradually from the mass of contradictions,
American common is asserting itself.
Man cannot live to himself alone; more can
a nation A man cannot lift himself by his boot
straps; no more can people. This final session
Of Congress- fruitless as it has seemed in accom-
plishment and fortunate at least in that very fact
has helped clear the atmosphere. 'f.
1t is plain that Europe cannot pay its huge
debts to this government and its people. if it
not trade with US. 1t can pay only in products of
its sod and industry with that of its printing
presses stamped as money.
1t is equally plain or should be, that the United
States cannot permanently refuse association with
Europe in the settlement of problems which
mutual We cannot eat our cake and have it
We cannot be a nonresident nonrepresented master
of Europe's industry and economic life
The problems of the Harding administration Of
taxation, disarmament tariffs international rela
tions, and even the regulation of domestic industry
are IN fact bound up in those two propositions
.thich economically and politically simple. They
are based upon historic American policy. They
respond to the mass of American sentiment. They
express American common sense as blending of
a goodly portion of altruism balanced by practical
application.