624 



The Review of Reviews. 



confusion of his anti-democratic diatribes, 

 Plato's ideal is pretty well attained by 

 the hugest democracy in the Western 

 World. The President-elect of the 

 United States, if not exactly a philo- 

 sopher in the abstract sense of Plato, 

 is yet essentially a professor. He is the 

 student, the scholar, the reflective his- 

 torian, the political philosopher. His 

 will is happily as strong as his mind is 

 great. And because of these qualities 

 he has been chosen by the common 



p-'' 



Le Rire.] 



Dr. Woodrow Wilson. 



" Well, gentlemen— all right ! " 



[Paris. 



people in their millions to be chief 

 ruler, and- invested with a personal 

 power greater than that of Tsar or 

 Kaiser. Despite all that dyspeptic de- 

 cadents may say, the return of this 

 pronounced professor makes us feel that 

 democracy is looking up. So — to leap 

 from one of the mightiest to one of the 

 tiniest of republics — is the peaceful 

 election of the Cuban President a happy 

 augury, as the first of the kind since 

 the United States troops ceased to be 

 responsible for order in the island. 



Advocates of arbitra- 

 tion all the world over 



Philip Sobering. t £ ' c 



may be forgiven for see- 

 ing in President Taft's 

 pitiable defeat a grim but just Nemesis. 



His championship of unreserved arbitra- 

 tion between his own country and ours 

 raised high the hopes of mankind, and 

 even moved Sir Edward Grey to a rare 

 enthusiasm. From this height he fell, 

 like Lucifer, son of the morning, into 

 repudiation of treaties and defiance of 

 arbitration over the Panama Canal. 

 That great apostasy of his was hailed 

 everywhere by the friends of war with 

 transports of delight. It was acclaimed 

 as the conclusive refutation of trust in 

 treaties and of faith in international 

 courts of justice. Verily, he has re- 

 ceived his reward. He has been 

 repudiated by his fellow-countrymen 

 with an overwhelming repudiation. And 

 signs are appearing that his Panama 

 policy will share a similar fate. We 

 predicted that when the paroxysm of 

 national self-consciousness which always 

 marks a Presidential election had passed, 

 and the Republic again became con- 

 scious of other nations and of other 

 claims than its own, the Panama ques- 

 tion would be seen in another and in a 

 truer light. The transition from Philip 

 drunk to Philip sober is proceeding 

 apace. Already Mr. Taft's own expert 

 on the question, Professor Emery John- 

 son, has published a report dead against 

 discriminatory tolls and entirely in 

 favour of equality of treatment for all 

 nations. And Mr. Root, late Secretary 

 of State, and a thoroughly representative 

 American to boot, has said that if the 

 Washington Government refused to 

 accept arbitration on the protest of 

 Great Britain, then : 



We should stand in the light of our multitude of 

 declarations for arbitration and peace as discredited and 

 dishonoured hypocrites, with the fair name of America 

 blackened, with our self-respect gone, with the influence 

 of America for advancement along the pathway of pro- 

 gress annulled, dishonoured, and degraded I 



