Mr. McCormick's Speeches

Secretary of State Hughes, called upon by Lord Curzon, offered to let American financial experts "sit in" on the solution of Europe's reparations problem (TiME, Nov. 5). Premier Poincare grumbled "Yes"-- and added as an afterthought: " We have no liking for your suggestion." The result is that the whole proposal may come to naught. But meanwhile the question has been translated into terms of national politics by the group of League of Nations irreconcilables.

Senator Joseph Medill McCormick of Illinois was the first to voice his objections. Senator Hiram Johnson followed. Then Mr. McCormick came to the attack a second time. It is significant that Mr. McCormick's remarks followed his attendance at a breakfast given by Albert D. Lasker, former Chairman of the Shipping Board, and (before the nomination of Warren G. Harding in 1920), an ardent supporter of Hiram Johnson for the Presidency.

The McCormick remarks are not to be interpreted, however, entirely in the light of Hiram Johnson's candidacy. Senator McCormick is a son-in-law of the late Mark Hanna, the great Republican boss. He got into politics through journalism. Beginning as reporter, he advanced to publisher and principal owner of the Chicago Daily Tribune. He was sucked into politics by the Payne-Aldrich Tariff bill, joined with Roosevelt and the Progressives in the fight on Taft in 1912. Then his comrades-in-arms were Gifford Pinchot and Hiram Johnson. In 1916, however, he returned to the Republican fold, and two years later he was elected Senator from Illinois with the slogan: "He is in politics for what he can give, not for what he can get."

Emerging from the Progressive struggle, he plunged again into battle against Woodrow Wilson, the League of Nations, the Versailles Treaty. There again he was aligned with Hiram Johnson as well as with other irreconcilables, notably Senator William E. Borah, Progressive of Idaho, Senator Frank B. Brandegee, stern and rockbound Conservative from Connecticut, and the late Senator Knox of Pennsylvania.

Thus Medill McCormick is asso- ciated with the "progressives" in national politics and the extreme League of Nations irreconcilables, two groups who have caused no little trouble to the "regulars" in the Republican camp. In both respects he has a natural community of interest with Hiram Johnson, and his remarks are typical of the opposition that the Administration has to face from both groups.

In his first attack on the Hughes note, Senator McCormick referred to the "lotus-eaters" of the State Department and said (in effect) : " What a fine man is George M. Reynolds,* how much better than J. P. Morgan or another to settle the reparations question with due hostility to the League of Nations."

In his later statement the Senator from Illinois declared:

"What a spectacle have we be- held upon the European stage--as Shakespeare said in Hamlet--' then came each actor on his ass.' . It is not fair to mislead the American people. We must realize that at best, with the present obstacles to European economic regeneration, the establishment of European markets will be a long and difficult task. . . . "

I wish that we might develop the field of Pan-American investment and the Pan-American export market with half the intelligence and energy devoted to the consideration of the plight of Europe. I wish that we might devote half the energy and intelligence to checking the increase in local taxation that we do to the problem of taxation and indebtedness in Europe."

*George M. Reynolds, Chicago banker, is Chairman of the Board of the Continental and Commercial National Bank, Continental and Commercial Trust and Savings Bank, a Director of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He declined an appointment as Secretary of the Treasury under President Taft.