"If they had our chance. . . ."
It is always plain that Europe and the United States are lacking in mutual understanding. . . . They appear to think that we are going to do exactly what they would do if they had our chance. . . . It is befitting that we should pursue our course . . . in accordance with the requirements of conscience and righteousness.
—CALVIN COOLIDGE Armistice Day Speech
Since most Englishmen honestly believe that collectively they are the true font of Conscience and Righteousness, the words spoken by President Calvin Coolidge, last fortnight, stirred a deep tidal wave of English indignation, which was still rising last week. Seldom before have so many hundreds and then thousands of letters poured in upon the Times—famed Safety Valve of Empire Passions. Finally with the appearance of England's characteristic "weekly reviews," the weighty and considered indignation of British best minds was hurled against Calvin Coolidge.
The New Statesman devoted to "the obsolescent President" a full page editorial headed Pecksniffian Guff, and savagely said: "After years of sonorous silence, only punctuated now and then by the utterance of some discreet inanity, he suddenly delivered a sort of dying kick with a viciousness of which few people on this side of the Atlantic would have supposed him capable. His Armistice Day speech was in effect a denunciation of Europe and all its works from the standpoint of a 100% New England backwoodsman."
The Saturday Review thought that "There is no probability that Mr. Hoover will be even as tolerant of European weaknesses as is the present occupant of the White House," and agreed with the Nation that President-Elect Herbert Hoover must have seen and approved an advance draft of the President's speech.
Even the Spectator lost its temper, and the Times required a full week to recover its equanimity. An early Times editorial declared that President Roosevelt once said, "We needed Panama and we took it," and argued that the meaning of President Coolidge's speech is: "When America needs territory she takes it, and when she wants warships she builds them."
Later the Times cooled down to the following well-bred remarks, the sleek irony of which will be lost on stupid people: "It is not easy for a European touching American shores to discern the pressure of a financial burden estimated by the President to exceed that of any other nation and to comprise 'half the entire wealth of the country at the time it entered the conflict.
"Still less does the visitor to that tranquil but busy continent suspect such imminent dangers threatening its long coast line and its growing overseas commerce as to demand a 'larger number of warships than any other nation. For such, in effect, is President Coolidge's claim."
Upon these points the President said:
It is probable that our final cost [incurred due to the War] will run well toward $100,000,000,000, or half the entire wealth of the country when we entered the conflict. . . . We should like to have our Government debts all settled, although it is probable that we could better afford to lose them than our debtors could afford not to pay them. . . .