The Mirrors of Washington | Page 9

Marion would be over the public disregard of the Seventh Commandment by one of their number. His party became somehow for the payment of Colombia's Panama claims and Mr. Harding was for their payment.
A story tells just how Senator Kellogg went to the President to oppose the Colombia treaty. After hearing Mr. Kellogg Mr. Harding remarked, "Well, Frank, you have something on me. You've evidently read the treaty. I haven't."
A mind accepting authority favors certain general policies. It is not sufficiently inquiring to trouble itself with the details. Mr. Harding is for all sorts of things but is content to be merely for them. A curious illustration developed in Marion, during the visits of the best minds. He said to the newspaper men there one day, "I am for voluntary military training."
"What would you train, Mr. President," asked one of the journalists, "officers or men?"
The President hesitated. At last he said, "I haven't thought of that."
"But," said one of his interlocutors, "the colleges are training a lot of officers now."
This brought no response.
Another who had experience in the Great War remarked, "In the last war we were lacking in trained non-coms; it would be a good idea to train a lot of them."
"Yes," rejoined Mr. Harding eagerly, "That would be a good idea."
A more inquiring mind would have gone further than to be "for voluntary military training." A quicker, less cautious, if no more thorough mind would have answered the first question, "What would you train, officers or men?" by answering instantly "Both."
In that colloquy you have revealed all the mental habits of Mr. Harding. He was asked once, after he had had several conferences with Senator McCumber, Senator Smoot, Representative Fordney, and others who would be responsible for financial legislation, "Have you worked out the larger details of your taxation policy?"
"Naturally not!" was his reply. That "naturally" sprang I suppose from his habit of believing that somewhere there is authority. Somewhere there would be authority to determine what the larger details of the party's financial policy should be.
Now, this authority is not going to be any one man or any two men. The President, his friends tell us, is jealous of any assumption of power by any of his advisers. He is unwilling to have the public think that any other than himself is President. A man as handsome as Harding, as vain of his literary style as he is, has an ego that is not capable of total self-effacement. He will bow to impersonal authority like that of the party, or invoke the anonymous governance of "best minds," calling rather often on God as a well established authority, but he will not let authority be personal and be called Daugherty, or Lodge or Knox or whomever you will.
The President's attitude is rather like that of the average man during the campaign. If you said to a voter on a Pullman, "Mr. Harding is a man of small public experience, not known by any large political accomplishment," he would always answer optimistically, "Well, they will see to it that he makes good." Asked who "They" were he was always vague and elusive, gods on the mountain perhaps. There is an American religion, the average man's faith: it is "Them." "They" are the fountain of authority.
As Mr. Harding knew little competition in Marion so he has known little competition in public life which in this country is not genuinely competitive. Mr. Lloyd George is at the head of the British government because he is the greatest master of the House of Commons in a generation and he is chosen by the men who know him for what he is, his fellow members of the House of Commons. An American President is selected by the newspapers, which know little about him, by the politicians, who do not want a master but a slave, by the delegates to a national convention, tired, with hotel bills mounting, ready to name anybody in order to go home. The presidency, the one great prize in American public life, is attained by no known rules and under conditions which have nothing in them to make a man work hard or think hard, especially one endowed with a handsome face and figure, an ingratiating personality, and a literary style.
The small town man, unimaginative and of restricted mental horizon does not think in terms of masses of mankind. Masses vaguely appall him. They exist in the big cities on which he turned his back in his unaudacious youth. His contacts are with individuals. His democracy consists in smiling upon the village painter and calling him "Harry," in always nodding to the village cobbler and calling him "Bill," in stopping on the street corner with a group, which has not been invited to join the village club, putting his