Mr. Roosevelt advises abandonment of the idea of combining New Mexico and Arizona into one State, and suggests that they each be given independent Statehood.
He averred that the nation’s foreign policy is “based on the theory that right must be done between nations as between individuals.” This is a specimen of “speaking softly.” The “Big Stick” follows almost immediately in the almost frantic state of mind he seems to be in concerning the needs for a great army and navy. Even the small boys ought to be trained in rifle practice! If he had added the hope that small girls would be taught to mould bullets and scrape lint, he would have been patriotically sublime!
That portion of his message which demands that members of legislative branch of the government be prosecuted as are those in the executive, and his sneer at Congress as being afraid of the Secret Service has created intense excitement in both houses and the language used in the message may be totally expunged from the records. Both Democrats and Republicans concur in the disposition to ignore matters of party and act in this matter, casting a stigma upon them all, as a whole.
Mr. Roosevelt’s bold assertion that the Panama Canal is a model for all work of that kind will meet many challengers. Philippe Bunau-Varilla, formerly Panama minister to the United States, has just issued a statement declaring that the Canal will cost $280,000,000 and that the plan now being carried out, owing to the dangers from the Gatun Dam, (which has already shown itself unreliable) “will result almost surely in the greatest disaster in the history of public undertakings.”
The President’s message, altogether, is like the President himself: commendable in some respects, partisan to a degree and strong in language rather than logic.
Someone has said that every twentieth Englishman is a genius and the balance dolts, or something of that tenor. The Special committee of the House of Lords, in its report recommending a radical change in that body, seems actuated by a desire to retain as many of the twentieth type as possible and eliminate the rest.
At present, this august body contains 618 members, consisting of the royal princes, the Archbishops of York and Canterbury, two dozen minor bishops, the English peers and those Scotch and Irish peers who have been elected by their fellows to represent the nobility of these respective countries.