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Show ... 4 THE CITIZEN to, said that he was a Liberal, thus using a party designation unknown in this country but familiar in England. It seemed almost as if he had forgotten the names employed in the United States to designate the political parties.. This political Rip Van Winkle awakes from his twenty-fiv- e years slumber and finds everything about him changed and strange. When he went away there was a Populist party and perhaps his Iowa father belonged to it, but Herbert was too canny to inquire whether the Populist party was still alive. It was almost moribund the year he left for Australia and when lie revisited his native land, twenty years later, he probably suspected that it had been properly buried in the cute little cemetery where rest in peace the Greenback party, the Whig party, the Knownothing party and others of our dear departed parties. One must give Herbert credit for considerable political acumen despite the fact that he has had only British training and never voted in this country. He has issued a clever statement in which, while declaring that he is not a candidate for the presidential nomination, he publishes a platform disguised as merely the modest pronouncement of an observant private citizen. In this wise he permits the political managers to know on what terms they may have him as a candidate if they think they must have him. With the keen eye of a candidate he sees that it would be foolish to take sides on the League of Nations issue, the principal issue before the nation, and so he lapses into a pleasant and platitudinous obscurity. He is for reservations, and yet he is not. He will vote for the party that stands for the league, he declares, and as neither party has declared against the league his statement is almost cosy in its security. He seems to hurl a challenge, but it turns out to be a dud. And what kind of reservations will Hoover of Unitania accept? Such reservations as are necessary to clarify the worlds mind that there can be no infringement of the safeguards provided by our and our nation-ol- d traditions, if you know what he means. That may signify interpretive reservations of the worthless variety advocated by the President or stringent modifications such as are provided for in the Lodge reservations. One who desires to remain a mere private citizen would not be so meticulously obscure in his statement. A private citizen would speak out boldly and tell just where he took his stand on the treaty. One seeking a presidential nomination, especially one seeking a nomination by any party desiring to adopt a war orphan from abroad, would probably be as acrobatic as Herbert Hoover is straddling the issue. The rest of his platform is sound enough because it voices the almost universal condemnation of socialism and expresses the general between extreme capitalism and laborism. desire for a middle-groun- d He states these commonplaces with such unction that one is reminded of the quip with which a wit twitted Theodore Roosevelt when he said that the colonel had just discovered the ten commandments. high-explosi- ve con-tituti- on THE FAME OF LODGE the peace treaty is ratified with the Lodge reservations or if it is IFrejected Senator Henry Cabot Lodge will have written his name indelibly on one of the most notable pages of American history. of New England culture will have This admirable Anglo-Saxo- n done more than some of his ancestors to foil the ambitions of a German king of England. Without inquiry, we are presuming that the Cabots and the Lodges figured in the revolution and helped to frustrate the plans of George III, whom the British are now fond of calling the German King of England. Though George V be removed by more than a century from his Teutonic ancestor yet he, too, is of that. Hanoverian line which the English chose to be subject to back in the days when they could not be satisfied with royalty of their own or Scotch blood. Henry Cabot Lodge is still unknown to the American people despite his public life of many years, for he has never worn his heart upon his sleeve. Leading a detached, contemplative literary life before and after his entry into politics,, he was looked upon as an im mensely able New England scholar. Few of his countrymen became interested in his life because he did not seem to be interested in their life except in a scholarly and literary way. While they sought. almost hungrily for stories of his friend Roosevelt, who respected him greatly, they found few points of sympathetic contact between themselves and the apparently aristocratic Bostonian. New England culture, of which Henry Cabot Lodge is a. fine flower, was never noted for warmth or color. Sometimes there was the exception, as in the case of Hawthorne or Longfellow, to prove the rule. About the scholarly New Englander there always was something of the reticence of the Englishman and an even more pronounced detachment from the ways of common men. No one could question their Americanism, for they were ultra American as a general rule. Nor was their detachment, their coldness the result of a belief in aristocratic institutions. It is true, they worshiped aristocracy, but it was the aristocracy of the intellect. And often they liked to trace their relationship to the English of Magna Carta and the Cromwellian revolution. They were reserved and austere and they set too high a store by their trancendental culture. We can imagine, however, that Senator Lodge, seventy years old in the classic scholarship of New England, was just such a man as would impress with his points of view a British statesman of the scholarly type of Sir Edward Grey. The meeting of these two men at dinner in Washington for so gossip has it is apt to exert a definite influence on the worlds history. President Wilson is said to complain bitterly that Grey, whom he could not receive on account of his illness, had allowed himself to be d swayed by Senator Lodges presentment of the treaty impasse. It is more than likely indeed, Sir Edwards letter seems to prove that it was simply a cool, logical statement of the dominant American viewpoint that won the assent of the British envoy. Undoubtedly Senator Lodge bulks larger than ever before, and yet he has occupied a considerable place both as a writer and politician for many years. For twenty-seve- n years he has been a United States senator and before he donned the toga he served in three Congresses as a representative. Born in Boston on May 12, 1850, he was graduated from Harvard College in 1871 ; studied law at Harvard Law School and received the degree of L. L. B. in 1875. He was admitted to the Suffolk bar in -- . one-side- 1876. The character of his mind in those days may be gleaned from the subject of the thesis which gained for him the degree of Ph. D., The Land Law of the Anglo-Saxon- s. His bent for literature was so compelling that he abandoned the legal and adopted the literary profession in 1877 when his first book, Life and Letters of George Cabot, appeared. Thereafter his pen was prolific. Works of history, biography and politics quickly succeeded one another. And he wrote only of his own country and countrymen, of Washington, Hamilton and Webster. In 1895 he joined Roosevelt in writing Hero Tales from American History. He was then in the Senate and Roosevelt was a police commissioner of New York City. A mere list of his serious literary works explains why he did not court popularity. One who must spend eager days and weary nights V of research in libraries and archives of state cannot spare the time to become a popular politician. That he succeeded in politics, almost in spite of himself, was due to the esteem in which his Massachusetts constituents hold literary scholarship. The German Republic Safe, nothing in the safe. says a headline. Yes, but there is . After all, we have come to believe that Berger faithfully resents his constituency. rep- Has Austria produced a new Wagner? asks a musical critic. Now that Austria is down and out she can be accused of the worst. Only the I. W. W. can paint the town red nowadays. , |