29 JUNE 1929, Page 5

The Tasks of a President

THE activities of the new and most welCome Ambasiador of the United States during his first week in this country were recorded last week -in our chronicle of the news: Though they might seem tenopestuous to the stolid Briton brought up on ideas of " slow and sure '' and festina lente, we could see' nothing in them but what gave us good hope for the future, both for Anglo-American relations generally and for the particular prospects of agreed limitation, and even reduction, of naval forces. To judge by its Press, the world has read the events and the speechei with the same result. The United States seem satisfied and hopeful. The British Dominions overseas look on with an interested caution, and trust in the Mother Country. Japan expresses opinions that are, as eVer, correct, and raise no 'doubts that she will be as helpful as 'she tried to be at the abortive Geneva Conference, where she so acted- as to earn our lasting respect 'and -gratitude. Germany's -feelings are naturally mixed' and- detached.. Italy smiles 'sardonically, with a Sidellance • at her Latin neighbours. France has not Spoken officiallY; and is probably balancing the value of a spontaneous movement against the possible advantage of waiting to see what others may ask her to do. Our own country is hopeful, because we feel that we shall deal with a President at Washington who knows the difficulties of Europe better than has any of his prede- cessors. Flis contact with our Government is close, even if our Prime Minister cannot find time to visit Washington this year. The lessons about civil Govern- inents and professional experts and their relationships, which General Dawes expounded so clearly, have been learnt. The chief actors are not likely to forget, when immersed in details, that, behind them all, stands the Treaty' for the Renunciation of War, conceived in the United States, and accepted readily and thankfully here by our Unionist Government on behalf of the British Nation. We can reasonably hope for conferences in which good will and 'underStanding will produce fruitful resultS, that will in time lead to a second Washington Conference in 1981, where the right spirit will successfully prevail as it' did In' the first. . _ While, then, We are content for the • moment with this International outlook across the Atlantic, we should like to offer our sympathy to Mr. Hoover in his difficulties at home. His resistance to the campaign of the agri- culturists for State-aid in their troubles is not our concern, except so far as it is entangled with the high protection Which is arrogantly demanded by the industrial interests. There, of course, our interests may be affected, and there can be no doubt in what direction our hopes point, though it is not for us to press for advantages for ourselves. But there is another struggle in which Mr. Hoover is engaged on a bigger field altogether, the struggle against the contempt of Law throughout the United States. There he is fighting not only in the cause of Anglo-Saxon ideals, but of civilization too. He may well stake high upon success. Law and Order are taking the place due to them among Christian civilized nations, as they have 'among persons, villages, shires, provinces and the old kingdoms of Great Britain as our race developed through the centuries. The United States yielded to none in enthroning British Law as it was in the eighteenth century, or encou- raging its advance through the nineteenth. To those of us who meet here cultivated men and women from America—Bishops, diplomats, lawyers, scholars and her best writers—their civilization seems at least equal to our own. We do not see much here of the negro problem,' and indeed it is not the coloured race which in this respect causes the greatest anxiety to those in authority, but they are conscious of the stream that has, through recent decades, flowed to her shores from the least advanced peoples of Europe, peoples naturally backward, peoples brutally restricted from moral and political advance by the stupidity or jealousy of rulers of different blood by whom they have been oppressed. These are the men and women who have not learnt respect for Law, for often enough they have had cause to hate and despise it. The burden upon the United States is to teach them, and Mr. Hoover is prepared to shoulder that burden with courage.

He has spoken frankly and wisely on this theme, and his first action has been to appoint a " National Law Enforcement Commission," composed mainly of distin- guished lawyers, whose duty will be to find out how and why the machinery for the administration of the Law fails in so many serious respects. The traffic in prohibited liquor will, no doubt, offer the most conspicuous range of inquiry, but by no means the only one. We are not Prohibitionists ; we can see some force in Archbishop Magee's old saying that he would rather see England free than sober. We are quite certain that moderate drinking, and we suspect that " moderate " drunkenness, threatens a country's civilization less dangerously than contempt for Law. America blundered in impoOng legislation that had nothing like universal consent and forbade acts that do not seem to many to be immoral or hurtful to Others. Let us say here that we do not for a moment excuse any fellow-subject of the King who for filthy lucre asserts his legal right to try to aid Americans to evade their laws. Hebrew " bootlegging" companies, and, we fear, Englishmen too, haSe brought a moral stain to the British flag by _their use of it Americans, further, are bitterly conscious that Prohibition has induced a contempt for Law among their officerS; who ought to be upholding its majesty. The temptations to corruption, alternating with violence' in execution, have apparently been irresistible. The disease is growing worse, and the Commission need's to lose not a moment in finding means to check it. Side by side with the evils due to these unintended effects of the VoLstead Act, there is a growth of rObbery with violence, and even Murder, in the big cities, and a failure to punish criminals, or protect their victims, which alarm Americans. The tendency, apart from motives of robbery, to crime in order to settle differences between man and man without recourse to the Law, is partly due to disbelief in the justice of the Law and in the efficiency of its administra- tion. If respect for Law is not 'to decline still further, a remedy should be quickly found for this disbelief.

" When Discords and Quarrels and Factions are carried openly and audaciously, it is a sign that Reverence of GoVernmeiit is lOst." AmeriCans do not need to read their Bacon to realize that truth ; nor that when the " Pillars of Government are mainly shaken or weakened, Men had need to pray for fair Weather." Now that Mr. Hoover is at the helm, and takes the measure of the foulness of the weather, we do not doubt that the ship will ride out the storm ; which means that Law will again be enthroned as the supreme human invention for the advancement of civilization. He and his Commission have the earnest wishes of the British race that the wind may now sit fair for their course.