NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW MARCH, 1928 CHARLES GATES DAWES BY X "THERE are," said the attorney, "seven good reasons why my client cannot appear in court today. In the first place, he is dead." "Never mind the other six reasons," said the Judge. Though in no sense his attorney, it would be easy for me to give more than seven reasons why Charles Gates Dawes should be nominated for the Presidency by the Republican party and elected by the people of the United States; and I might give as the ▾ first and all-sufficient one simply that he is Dawes. It will, however, be worth while to proceed with further specifications. We may say, then, at the beginning, that he conspicuously meets the requirements of the traditional "Three C's", to wit, Character, Capacity and Courage. Upon the first it would be not only superfluous but also invidious to dwell. The time of mud-slinging is past. There will be no more "329" and "tattooed man" campaigns. The American nation assumes that every Presidential candidate put forward by a responsible party is a man of unimpeachable moral character, and would visit consuming wrath equally upon any exception to that rule and upon any attempt to make it falsely appear that an exception had been made. Character has become a matter of course. But even were it not so, we could confidently say of Mr. Dawes that Copyright, 1928, by North American Review Corporation. All rights reserved. VOL. CCXXV.-No. 841 Whatever record leap to light, He never shall be shamed. Neither need we dwell upon his capacity. The range of his activities has been unusually wide and varied, in peace and in war, in public service and in private enterprise. Engineer, lawyer, industrialist, financier, political leader, practical philanthropist, Comptroller of the Currency, chief of the General Purchasing Board for the A. E. F. in the World War, first Director of the Budget, part author and whole sponsor of the only practicable plan yet devised for dealing with the German Reparations problem, writer of outstandingly authoritative works on banking and finance, Vice-President of the United States, he has in every instance shown himself a highly capable man of affairs. Nor is there occasion to defend the courage of a man who thought no more of lecturing the United States Senate for its delinquencies than a pedagogue would of chiding his pupils for tardiness or inattention. Character, capacity and courage find an apt synonym in the name of Dawes. Are there those who look for American traditions and the American spirit in an American President? Let them consider, then, the great-grandson of the man who led the midnight ride of Paul Revere to Lexington and Concord; and think of the son of the commanding General of the Wisconsin Iron Brigade. Experience is an essential qualification; and it is abundantly predicated of him in the varied and important catalogue of his activities which we have already rehearsed; of which it is to be observed that it comprises some of the things most essential for a Chief Magistrate to know and to do. Come we now to the only point on which there is to be any suggestion of comparison or contrast with other candidates, and that in only a general and impersonal way. Two generations ago a United States Senator won applause by scornfully demanding "What do we care for 'Abroad'?" But none would dare to repeat those words today. We do, and we should, care for "Abroad", having what Jefferson attributed to us more than a century and a half ago, "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind"; wherefore it is highly to be desired that an American President shall be known and well esteemed by other important nations. It is scarcely to be questioned that Mr. Dawes is conspicuous among the three or four American statesmen whose names are best known and who personally have most prestige throughout the world. I am not concerned with the precise fractional percentage of his share in the authorship of the Dawes Plan. What is indisputable is that he had so large a share in it that his colleagues deemed it fitting that it should be called by his name; as also that he, probably above all others, had so much faith in its righteousness and practicality that he did not hesitate to accept full sponsorship for it. Neither am I concerned with questions as to the permanent efficiency of that Plan, or its possible modification or abrogation at some future date. The facts, writ large upon the history of the world, are that the Dawes Plan was accepted and acclaimed as the means of rehabilitating and stabilizing the finances of Germany, and of causing a successful refunctioning of the processes or reparations which before it had fallen into apparently hopeless chaos and desuetude. The man whose name is inseparably identified with that achievement will as President have a world-wide prestige and command a world-wide confidence such as only a minority of his predecessors have possessed, and such-with all possible respect-as scarcely any other present aspirant to the Presidency could reasonably hope to enjoy. The logic of the Constitution of the United States is another pertinent and forceful reason for choosing Mr. Dawes as our next President. The original intent was that there should be no discrimination between President and Vice-President in voting for those officers, but that practically all votes should be cast for candidates for the Presidency; the candidate getting the largest number becoming President, and the one getting the next largest number becoming Vice-President. We have changed that, it is true, so as to vote for the two separately; but we have retained unaltered the requirement that the Vice-President shall possess precisely the same qualifications as the President. The obvious and inescapable inference is, therefore, that while we choose him whom we regard as our best man for the Presidential nomination, we choose the next best man for the so-called second place on the ticket; wherefore, after the former has served his term, the latter stands as the best man to succeed him. On three noteworthy occasions in our history, Vice-Presidents have been directly promoted to the Presidency. Five times, five tragic times, have Vice-Presidents become Acting-Presidents to fill out terms interrupted by death. Thus has been impressed upon the nation the need of selecting for the Vice-Presidency men whom it would be pleased to have in the Presidency, and whom therefore it might well-perhaps should-in consistency elect in due turn to the latter office. I hesitate to add that much perverted term, Availability, as yet another reason for nominating Mr. Dawes; and yet in its better and legitimate sense it is not unworthy of such mention, and in "practical politics" it doubtless needs to be considered. And in that respect, surely he stands second to no other possible candidate. Always a loyal party man, even an "organization" man, he is free from factional affiliation or odium, but is an impartial representative of the whole Republican party. An American of Americans, he is singularly free from the taint of sectionalism, but belongs to the entire nation. Of New England ancestry, he belongs directly to the Middle West; while his record as a business man and national financier commends him to the East, and his sympathetic interest in agricultural welfare makes him equally acceptable to the Far West. Free, also, is he from those issues of "wet" or "dry", of creed, and of Klan, which are potentially vexatious to some other candidates. So we come back to the original proposition, that the foremost reason for making him President is that he is the man he is-that he is Dawes. Personality, after all, is supreme; and if there is in this Republic a more vivid, vital, clean cut, commanding personality than his, no mention of it has been made in the canvass of Presidential candidates. The man who could smash the icons of fond tradition and lecture the Senate in its own Chamber, and who also could write of his own dead son a message that is an imperishable classic in the literature of the heart; the man who could direct "big business" and national finance, and then devote his own fortune to building homes for the aged poor; the man who could conduct slashing and victorious political campaigns, and then compose music in which masters and virtuosos delight— that man is a man after America's own heart. WHAT'S WRONG WITH MEXICO? BY CHESTER T. CROWELL THE government of Porfirio Diaz fell in 1911, and immediately the Mexican problem which had been dormant for a quarter of a century awoke and snarled. It has been growing worse ever since. At present there is little prospect of its solution. Fortunately, however, it is the sort of witches' cauldron that can smoke and sizzle almost indefinitely without causing war. It has been doing that ever since Venustiano Carranza assumed power (which was in 1916) although he has been dead several years. At first the re-awakened Mexican problem was little more than a matter of protection of lives and property, but year after year since then it has expanded in area, as well as grown deeper in principle. Merely to catalogue the issues pending today would present a sizable pamphlet. The very first issue, namely protection of life and property, which served as herald for the procession to follow, is still pending, and so are all the others that have arisen since Diaz fell. Not one has been settled. Recently the Supreme Court of Mexico handed down a decision in the test case brought by the Mexican Petroleum Company of California. This case offered an opportunity to clear up the tangled oil rights problems and because the decision was, on its face, favorable to the American Company it was hailed as of the greatest importance. But in fact the big issues were not decided; decision was awarded on a point of less than secondary importance. The way is still open to decisions that would blast the hopes of American investors in Mexican oil lands. Nevertheless President Calles took prompt steps to amend the oil laws to conform with the decision on the minor point in question and this may be a good omen. Time will tell far better than any forecast made today. Little harm can result from taking an optimistic view. The cynical view, which is just as well supported by the facts, may be stated briefly as follows: Mexico |