Behind the Mirrors

us of its great and irresponsible power, we started to set up an equal or greater authority in Washington, we f

le, tangible, palpable. The President speaks and you read about him in the daily press; the President poses and you see him in the movies and feel assured, as in smaller realms under simpl

supply their moral equivalent. Of our little temporary king

ard to power, looking her most natural when in the frankness of early morning unpreparedness she ran in her apron across the street to gossip with the wife of a neighb

which is always repeating itself under no matter whatever form of government exists, is an autocracy. In national emergencies, in times of peril, peopl

tions of the race lead back toward despotism and it is easier to revert toward someth

on disposes of our hours, forces our inclinations, represses our individuality, and turns us out stamped with a uniform mark, the finished product of its

s who says to us "Do this or starve." He represents to us not only authority but wisdom. The organization out of which proceeds to us the benefi

that of the chieftain and his tribe. We read about democracy in the newspapers; once every two years or every f

All our direct experiences are of one man power. It is the only organization we actually know at first hand. We trust to it for

ial will, whatever that might come to be, than the government of business we had recourse to that one form of rule which i

ask, to re-make Congress, especially when no one knew definitely what purpose should animate the re-making. It was so much easier to find one man than to find many men. It is so much easier for a people which does no

tional purposes. Creating an autocracy is an act of faith

nse contribution to the art of government. We were repeating the race history of governments, as a child resumes in his life the race history of the human kind. We had got so far as to evolve that oldest of hum

rchies of Europe were obsolete because they preserved autocracy out of the darkness of the Middle Ages. Our g

judicial. The Fathers had builded wiser than they knew in writing an instrument by which the carefully distributed authority might be

les proving that the dominating executive was the inevitable unifyin

on of which they were a part, a government by the best and ablest men of the community, who should meet together and select the executive; who should equally through the state legislature choose the Senators. The role of job brokers was the last thing they imagined themselves to

control of the organization had been in other hands, in Hanna's or Quay's or Cameron's, or divided among a group

oncentration upon one man to represent the national will. We had simply done what other peoples had so often done in the history of mankind. When the English wished to weaken the rule of the great barons the

t. If his authority rested on that of his party then to be firm the authority of the party must be firm. For parties to endure and be strong there must be a certain quality of permanence about them. They must no

lt, the next year it was Taft and the distance between Roosevelt and Taft was the distance between East and West. A little later it even changed its name and voted in another column because Roos

nce of parties. Thus we substituted personal caprice for the permanency of parties and at the same time cut down the practical means of holding or

urther inconsistency was that we adopted another theory for strengthening one man power. This was that the President was the leader of the p

m. He might build up a personal following to such an extent that his party must have it in order to win. He might encourage the movement away from parties by attaching people to ideas and measures, policies that the p

a statement of what actually happened. Roosevelt broke up the Republican party nationally. He left it with its name covering an agglomeration

the hands of the little local banditti. Mr. La Follette, following the same methods as Governor of Wisconsin, left no

e represents the national point of view, that he alone speaks

nce he is elected in a nationwide balloting. But there is no reason why he should succ

the supposition that the Executive alone has the national point of view implies that a Senator has not that point of view. Mr. Harding is chosen Presi

ncern where a plodding kind of safeness is required of the executive. We shall do well, should our standards of public life remain what they are, if we have three Presidents

public experience before coming to Washington consisted of brief service in the Ohio State legislature and a term as Lieutenant-Governor of Ohio. His service in the Senate at Washi

tforms, on the stump, in the press. He accepted the accepted opinions. No magic wrought by election to the Presidency could make of him o

support of only two states when seeking re-election. Mr. Wilson after four years had so far failed that only the incredible stupidity of his opponen

dministration. Congress was not of Mr. Wilson's party, and was thus out of his control in the last two years of his administration. Mr. Taft lacked the will to rule. Mr. Harding is feebler than

able to prevail over Congress and effect a limited sort of on

Jackson, among our Presidents, was as picturesque as he, o

r extrusion of the business aristocracy, in favor of the masses from the preferred position they had gained in our political life. Like agitations of the political depths, finding expression in personaliti

o South America it was to discover a river and find animals that the eye of man never rested on before or since. He read more books than it was humanly possible t

en noting a weakness in one direction he was diverting you by an enormous exhibition of versatility in another. He had the capacity of seeming, and the semblance was never penetrated. He seemed

s the expression of that movement toward a government based on numbers rather than on wealth, which the Colonel had so imperfectly

, having few contacts with life, Mr. Wilson embraced the idea of putting business in its

, is well known. A year or two after the dispute was over, Huntington Wilson's son came up for examination to enter the Consular service. He passed at the top of the list. President Wilson heard of his suc

volution would have conducted a Terror, as indeed during the war he did conduct a sort of legal terror among pacifists and radicals. Roosevelt belonged to the other school in the conduct of affai

tablished. Unlike Cannon and Aldrich, of the Roosevelt day, they did not represent business in the national legislature. They had no

f the concentrated executive that we have yet had. But even his one man government was attacked from the outset. His personality proved repellent. An intelle

ich we have any experience in our daily lives, the only form in which the race has yet developed any lasting faith. From the time when war threatened, with the invasion of Belgium, till the tim

nces refused to give it, we are over-impressed by the phenomena of Roosevelt and Wilson and do not make sufficient allowances for the conditions which made their power inevitable. So impossible is it

sanity, but the same kind of paranoia which makes history amusing. If that is true, then we are in an era of perfect sanity at Washington. No one, no one, in

"A bunch of tall-hatted fat boys comes. The governmental nose is thrust out awaiting the guiding hand. The guiding hand is put unostentatiously behind the back." It is the same when the organ of

ination of the equal and co-ordinate branches of our government. Yet when things go badly in Congress, as they mostly do, the critics exclaim that the President should be firm and "assert his authority" on the hill.

to make the system work. We have the willessness of the blessed days in our National Heartbreak House, but we haven't the will somewhere else to act and direct. Not even seven million majority

r as there is any, ha

ter all, Congress chose Mr. Harding. The Senators picked him at Chicago. With party bosses gone, they are about all that remains of the p

g system called on for a great man every four years yields many feeble ones. There will be many Hardings to one Roosevelt or Wilson. Party government which might reinforce a feeble president

ernment by one man at Washington has also gone. The war made the autocratic executive in the person

its limits should be when it faces such vital problems as interferin