The Coolidge Special

Equipped with satin-covered furniture, shower baths, phonograph, radio, cinema, telephones; loaded with clerks, valets, maids, detectives, railroad police, extra train crew and personages; guarded at bridgeheads by riflemen; awaited along the line by panting engines and peering populace, a Presidential train started for Key West.

It was Friday, Jan. 13. After the last two Presidents left the U. S. there came, soon after their returns, defeat to one, Death to the other. Superstition, however, was not a passenger on the Coolidge Special.

Southbound. Leaving Washington, President Coolidge smoked a long cigar. Then he took his after-lunch nap. Passing through Virginia, he discoursed on the Civil War. Entering North Carolina towards dusk, he looked out of the car window at farmers' brush fires. He dined early, on steak (medium), carrots, tea, Roquefort cheese. He smiled at Pullman-waiter T. C. Radcliffe, thanked him, retired to the club car to see Will Rogers in a cinema called A Texas Steer (comedy). Cuban travel scenes and "shots" of Havana were also shown.

Knots of villagers watched late into the night on small station platforms through South Carolina, but President Coolidge slumbered efficiently. He woke up in Florida, breakfasted below Jacksonville, got off after lunch at Miami. There it was all top hats, shiny motors, swaying palms, "Hail to the Chief." Zooming airplanes, booming realty, bright blue water, a schooner wrecked by last year's hurricane, fluttering handkerchiefs, baskets of fruit, "Goodbye, Mayor Sewell"--and the Coolidge Special rolled on.

Rolling out over the Florida Keys was mysteriously restful. At Key West, the sun had long gone down. The train went on a siding and, after more cinema, all except a few detectives and night-owlish newsgatherers, slept soundly.

Another day dawned and there lay the cruiser Memphis, smart as a yacht. The Texas, massive manofwar, waited respectfully far offshore. The embarkation ceremonies were stiff but sun-warmed. The Texas poured out a torrent of black smoke and clove the deep blue Gulf for gay Havana.

Nearing shore in the midafternoon, a seaplane, like a dove of peace, was loosed from the Texas. Cuban planes swept out to meet it. All ships in the harbor tied their whistles open. In steamed the Texas and dropped anchor near to where the Maine was blown up in 1898.

President Machado of Cuba was waiting at the dock to shake the hands of President Coolidge and party. After much bugling, saluting, blowing and picture-taking, the procession started, via O'Reilly street and Teodoro Roosevelt street through a blizzard of rosebuds, under balconies, past cathedrals, to the presidential palace. "A-a-a-h!!" said thousands of appreciative Cubans when the two Presidents appeared on a balcony.

That night, there was a quiet dinner, the Coolidge's, the Machado's, the Kellogg's, the Hughes's and a few more. Next morning came the great event. President Coolidge went before the Pan-American Congress and to it addressed the following cautious, calculated sentiments:

Christopher Columbus. ". . . The Great Discoverer brought with him the seed of more republics, the promise of greater human freedom, than ever crossed the seas on any other voyage. With him sailed immortal Declarations of Independence and Great Charters of self-government. . . . Unless we together redeem the promise which his voyage held for humanity, it must remain forever void. This is the destiny which Pan-America has been chosen to fulfill."

Progress. ". . . Progress does not go forward in a straight line. It is a succession of waves. We can not always ride on their crest,* but among our republics the main tide of human advancement has been steadily rising."

Justice, Blessings. ". . . The spirit of liberty is universal. An attitude of peace and good will prevails among our nations. A determination to adjust differences among ourselves, not by a resort to force, but by the application of the principles of justice and equity, is one of our strongest characteristics. The sovereignty of small nations is respected. It is for the purpose of giving stronger guarantees to these principles, of increasing the amount and extending the breadth of these blessings, that this conference has been assembled.''

Bow to Cuba. ". . . Our fair hostess has raised herself to a high and honorable position among the nations of the earth . . . what Cuba has done, others have done and are doing. . . ."

Responsibilities. ". . . Our most sacred trust has been, and is, the establishment and expansion of the spirit of democracy. . . . Next . . . the policy of peace. . . Nowhere among these republics have great military establishments ever been maintained for the purpose of overawing or subjugating other nations. . . . We have been slow to anger and plenteous in mercy.*. . .

Equality. "All nations here represented stand on an exact footing of equality. The smallest and the weakest speaks here with the same authority as the largest and the most powerful. . . . You are continuing to strike a new note in international gatherings by maintaining a forum in which not the selfish interest of a few, but the general welfare of all, will be considered./- . . . A Divine Providence has made us a neighborhood of republics. . . .

"The existence of this Conference, held for the consideration of measures of purely American concern, involves no antagonism toward any other section of the world or any other organization.** . . ."

Past Accomplishments. ". . . Obstacles to closer economic relations have been removed, thus clearing the pathways of commercial intercourse. . . .

"Of scarcely less importance . . . the International Commission of Jurists, the Pan-American Highway Conferences, the Child Welfare Conferences, the Sanitary Conferences, the Conference on Consular Procedure, the Scientific Congresses, the Financial Conferences, the Red Cross Conferences, and the highly important and significant Congress of Journalists have all served to strengthen that spirit of Pan-American solidarity. . . ."

"It has been most gratifying to witness the increasing interchange of university professors and the constantly growing stream of student migration from one country to another. . . . It is not desirable that we should attempt to be all alike. . . . We should all be intent on maintaining our own institutions and customs, preserving the purity of our own language and literature, fostering the ideals of our own culture and society. In a territory reaching from the north temperate zone/-/- through the tropics to the South Pole, there is room enough for every worthy activity which is profitable and every ideal which is good. . . ."

The Press. "In this great work of furthering inter-American understanding, a large responsibility rests upon the press of all countries. . . . By misinterpreting facts, or by carelessness in presenting them in their true light, much damage can be done./= What happens in this hemisphere is of more vital interest to all of us than what happens across any of the oceans."

Communication. ". . . Railway lines have been extended so that it will soon be possible to travel with practically no interruption from the northern border of the United States to the southern border of El Salvador, and in South America from Peru to Patagonia. . . . On the wall of my office hangs a map showing proposed highways connecting the principal points of our two Continents.

"I am asking the United States Congress to authorize sending engineering advisers, the same as we send military and naval advisers, when requested by other countries, to assist in road building. These gratifying changes are about to be supplemented by the establishment of aviation routes, primarily for the transportation of mails."

Business. ". . . In both agricultural and industrial production the countries of America are now complementing one another to an unusual degree, resulting in an increasing exchange of commodities. Furthermore, recent years have witnessed a most gratifying rise in the standards of living of the wage earners throughout the Americas. They enjoy a greater productive and earning capacity, with a consequent increase in their purchasing power which has been reflected in the growing volume of inter-American commerce. . . ."

Bow to Mexico. ". . . Because of ill-defined boundaries of the sparsely settled political subdivisions of the old Spanish colonial empire, the independent states of America carved out of it, fell heir to a large number of territorial disputes which, in many cases, were of an exceedingly delicate and difficult nature. It is a tribute . . . that most of these disputes have been settled by the orderly process of negotiation, mediation, and arbitration."

Bow to Nicaragua? ". . . We can make no advance . . . until human affairs are brought within the orderly rule of law. The surest refuge of the weak and the oppressed is in the law. It is pre-eminently the shield of small nations."

Spirit of the Law. ". . . 'The letter killeth but the spirit giveth life.' . . . Oftentimes in our international relationship we shall have to look to the spirit rather than to the letter of the law. We shall have to realize that the highest law is consideration, cooperation, friendship, and charity. . . . These are the attributes that raise human relationships out of the realm of the mechanical, above the realm of animal existence, into the loftier sphere that borders on the Divine . . . the Golden Rule."

Peroration. "The light which Columbus followed has not failed. The courage that carried him on still lives. . . . The heritage of the people of Bolivar and of Washington. We must lay our voyage of exploration toward complete understanding and friendship . . . anchor at last in the harbor of justice and truth. . . ."

* President Coolidge has found this figure useful before. In his Message to Congress last month, he said: ". . . The fact is that economic progress never marches forward in straight lines. It goes in waves. One part goes ahead while another halts and another recedes."

* "Plenteous in mercy" was a phrase in the President's Christmas greeting to the U. S. (The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy--Psalm 103, verse 8.)

/- League-of-Nations men wondered why President Coolidge called this note "new."

** There had been grumbling by League nations that Latin-American members of the League should attend a "rival" gathering.

/- /- Canada is not Pan-American, and President Coolidge evidently thought of Alaska not as one of the United States but as the U. S. Territory, which it is.

/= A scarcely disguised rebuke to the suspicion-fomenting, lie-circulating Hearst press.