13 JANUARY 1923, Page 13

TILE POLITICAL SITUATION IN AMERICA. [To the Editor of the

SPECTATOR.]

SIR,—I think the following passages, from a letter which has reached me from an able and distinguished American observer of the conditions prevailing in his country, may interest you :-

" As I suppose you have seen, we have had a political upset almost equal to what has taken place in Great Britain. It can be ascribed to many causes, which I think can be correctly summarized as follows ;

1. The general feeling of disappointment on account of business depression ; 2. The low prices which the farmers—particularly in the West —have been getting for their crops, and the high cost of trans- portation, together with the high rate of exchange, all of which have prevented their goods being sold abroad at remunerative prices ; 3. Objection of certain people to the tariff as being framed in the interest of capitalists • 4. A feeling that the Republican majority in Congress has been talking too much and doing too little—particularly in respect to the railroad and coal strikes ; 5. Opposition to Prohibition on the one hand, and on the other hand the feeling of the Prohibitionists that the Administration has been inefficient in enforcing the law ; and 6. Failure to enact a bonus to the soldiers.

Some of these actuated one section and some another, but the result is that the new Congress will be Republican by a very small majority and, moreover, a certain number of radical Republicans, whose votes are necessary to constitute a majority, arc going to be very troublesome to the Administration."

The remarks in the same letter, on the Irish question, are worthy of note.

." The Irish question here is dead. The opinion is practically

universal—except among a few Irish fanatics—that Great Britain has done everything she could be expected to have done and that the conflict the extremists are carrying on in Ireland demonstrates that the charges of Great Britain's oppression of the Irish which have been talked of here for generations bad no reasonable founda- tion. The practical result of what Great Britain has done and what the Irish are doing is to make the United States more friendly to the former than it has ever been before."

—I am, Sir, &c., Z.