to be tolerated by the American people"; it was equally severe in disapproving the "ill concealed Republican alliance with England"; it "viewed with indignation the purpose of England to overwhelm with force the South African republics"; and, heartily opposing "militarism", avowed "this Republic has no place for a vast military service and conscription"; an interesting political reminiscence in view of a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress writing a conscription act on the statute books. In the Republican convention of that year were fewer fire-eaters than in the opposing camp, although the Republicans were equally zealous in proclaiming their undying faith in the Monroe Doctrine; they declared their belief in the principle of civis Romanus sum by asserting it was the duty of the American Government to protect its citizens wherever they were placed in peril; the foreign policy of the Administration in Samoa and Hawaii was approved, and hope expressed for a speedy termination of the Boer War. Further quotations are unnecessary, nor is it necessary minutely to inquire whether these platform references to foreign affairs were animated by principle or expediency. The purpose has been to show, and to prove, that in the past the relations of America with the rest of the world influenced political thought and action and had to be reckoned with by the leaders of both political parties.

The Republican platform of 1912 was not dissimilar to that of the Democrats in emphasizing "civil liberty

and the rights of men" and in pledging the party "to go forward with the solution of these new questions which social, economic and political development have brought into the forefront of the nation's interest"; but the Republicans give even less space than their opponents to foreign affairs. That international disputes may be settled by peaceful means and the adjudication of an international court of justice is a pious hope; approval is given to the action of Congress in terminating the Russian treaty, and there is a meaningless reference to the Philippines.

It was as a protest that the short-lived Progressive party came into existence that year, and its platform is that protest voiced: a "covenant with the people" to "forge a new instrument of government." Taking, as a matter of course, more advanced ground in social legislation than either of the older parties, the platform in a few lines dealt with only four international questions: the immediate repeal of the Canadian Reciprocity Act; freedom of the Panama Canal to American ships in the coastwise trade; an international agreement for the limitation of naval forces; the protection of the rights of American citizens.

It will thus be seen that foreign affairs were not in the American picture in the year 1912, and that domestic matters monopolized attention exclusively. It may be added here that in the campaign that followed there was scarcely a reference either by the candidates themselves, the other party chiefs or in the press to

foreign policies, with the sole exception of "dollar diplomacy", a term coined by the Democrats to show their reprobation of the support given by the Republican Administration to American commerce and finance in foreign countries, but especially in China and Latin America. "Dollar diplomacy", however, was never in any sense an issue of the campaign and was too remote to the masses either to interest them or to arouse their passion; it was used by the Democrats to throw odium on the Republicans and to strengthen the Democratic belief that the Republican party was a party of monopoly which used the government for its own benefit. In a word, "dollar diplomacy" was only another variant of tariff robbery and trust extortion.

2

Mr. Wilson was nominated in July, and on the seventh of August, in accordance with custom, he was notified of his nomination and delivered his speech of acceptance. This speech, some ten thousand words in length, is a reaffirmation, enlargement and interpretation of the platform. A platform, it has already been said, has no legal existence and is simply a moral obligation voluntarily assumed by the party, and by the candidate as a member of the party. The candidate's speech of acceptance is not only a vow of fealty to his party and the cause of which he has been constituted the leader, but a solemn affirmation that he accepts and considers himself morally bound to adhere to the

principles of his party as formulated in its platform.

Without reservation Mr. Wilson accepted the platform and showed the belief that was in him and his duty as he should execute it if elected. As was to have been expected, in the light of the platform, international concerns do not press upon him for discussion, seemingly they are not in his mind, and his whole attention is given to those questions of domestic policy which, to use his own words, make this plainly a new age. It was, as he saw it, a new age, an age with new thoughts, with men possessed of new beliefs and impatient of the old tricks and cunning which had so often cheated them. It was in that spirit he said: "We stand in the presence of an awakened Nation . . . a Nation that has awakened to a sense of neglected ideals and neglected duties; to the consciousness that the rank and file of her people find life very hard to sustain." What, he asked, did the platform mean? It meant "to show that we know what the Nation is thinking about, what it is most concerned about, what it wishes corrected, and what it desires to see attempted that is new and constructive and intended for its long future." He discussed at length the tasks ahead: the tariff and the trusts, laws to prevent financial confederacies, laws to improve labor conditions, the development of the American merchant mar ne; but of the relations that ought to mark the intercourse of America with her neighbors on this continent and the peoples of Europe or Asia

not one word, because the things of the moment were those interwoven into the social fabric of his own people.

A President no more than a Prime Minister or the President of the Council in France is given a free hand in the formation of his Cabinet. Political and geographical considerations - it was Lincoln who said that if the twelve Apostles had again to be chosen the principle of locality would determine their selection

motives of expediency or motives of policy, various reasons, sometimes important and sometimes trivial, bring one man into the Cabinet and cause the rejection of another, yet, in the main, the composition of the Cabinet, in America as in England and in France, is a fairly good index not only of the character of the President but also of the policy the Administration will follow. It is curious that long after the last sentence was written I should chance to run across Mr. Wilson's own language which I unconsciously paraphrased. In "Constitutional Government" he writes:

"Self-reliant men will regard their Cabinets as executive councils; men less self-reliant or more prudent will regard them as also political councils, and will wish to call into them men who have earned the confidence of their party. The character of the Cabinet may be made a nice index of the theory of the presidential office, as well as of the President's theory of party government.'

When Mr. Wilson formed his Cabinet the public imagined that the same considerations that influenced his predecessors governed him; that the Cabinet rep