The Mirrors of Washington Part 10

Moreover, his one chance lies that way. I have said that he is, by accident, radical. Let us imagine a great outburst of popular pa.s.sion for reaction. And suppose that Johnson was, when it arrived, a political blank, as he was when Heney was shot. Johnson would have raised his angry voice against radicalism, just as readily as for it.

The essential thing with him is popular pa.s.sion, not a political philosophy. He has no political philosophy. He has no real convictions. He does not reason or think deeply. His mentality is slight. He is the voice of many; instinctively he gives tongue to what the many feel; that is all.

Suppose the strong-lunged Californian were a political blank, just reaching the national consciousness, when the reaction against Wilson began and when the public swung to conservatism.

You know those vast tin amplifiers employed in big convention halls, or in out-door meetings, to carry the voice of the speaker to the remotest depths of the audience; Johnson is a vast tin amplifier of the voice of the ma.s.s. When the people had become "docile" he would have thundered "docility" to the uttermost bounds of the universe, if he had not by earlier utterances been definitely placed on the side opposed to docility.

But he had been definitely placed in the battle of Armageddon. A thousand ennuies located him for all political time. No convictions hold him where he is in case there be profit in changing sides; other men habitually conservative would have the preference over him on the other side. In this sense he is accidently radical, accidently because he happened to emerge in politics at a radical moment. That takes into account only the mental background of his political position. There is an element that was not chance. Public pa.s.sion is almost invariably radical, springing as it does from the resentment of inequality, and Johnson is the tongue of public pa.s.sion.

Is he dangerous? He is, only if public pa.s.sion becomes dangerous and only up to the point where the speakers of revolution pa.s.s from the stage and the doers of it rig up their chopping blocks. At present he furnishes the words, the ugly words, which men throw instead of stones at the objects of their hate. He is the safety valve of gathering pa.s.sion. Men listen to him and feel that they have done something to vindicate their rights. They applaud him to shake the roof, and vote for Mr. Harding.

It is customary to speak of his magnetism over crowds. He has no magnetism in personal contact. He walks toward you as if he were about to deliver a blow, an impression that is strengthened by his square menacing figure. His voice is unpleasant. His smile is wry.

He not unusually has a complaint to make against the public, against the press, against fate, against you personally. He is not interested in people, as Roosevelt was to so an amazing degree, and as magnetic persons usually are. He is cold, hard, and selfish. His quarrels are numerous, with the campaign managers of the Armageddon fight, with his own campaign manager of 1920, with the newspaper correspondents. He is habitually pessimistic, and pessimism and magnetism do not go together.

His complaint that the people were docile and would not recover their confidence and self-a.s.sertion in his time, was a bit of his inevitable gloom. His dark habit of thought hung over his campaign for the presidential nomination of 1920, preventing his making a real effort in many states, and lay in the way of his success. He has few friends, love having been left out of his make-up. I do not speak of family affection--but love in its larger implications.

Those who surround him--clerks and secretaries--have the air of repressed, starving personalities.

That which gathers the crowds and sets them shouting is not his magnetism but the perfect expression of their pa.s.sion. For them and for it he is a sounding board. His voice with its hard angry tone, its mechanical rise and fall, has the ring of a hundred guillotines in operation. Having little culture, unintellectual, he is primitive as the ma.s.s before him. He talks their language and an instinct all his own gives him an exact sense of their emotions.

And what he says leaves the impression of tremendous sincerity. His sincerity does not arise from reasoned convictions but from hatred; deep and abiding hatred.

Senator Borah once said, "The difference between Johnson and me is that I regard questions from the point of view of principles while he regards them from the point of view of personalities. When a man opposes me I do not become angry at him. On the next issue he may agree with me. When a man opposes Johnson he hates him. He feels that the opposition is directed personally against him, not against the policy that separates them."

Johnson's opponents are the elements of reaction, the malefactors of great wealth, the supporters of that social inequality which the crowd resents. They stood in his path in California. They made impossible his nomination at Chicago. When the bitter enders, during the treaty fight, planned to send him on a tour of the country, these monied men closed their pocketbooks, exclaiming to Senator Knox, "What do you mean to do? Advertise this man Johnson and make him the Republican candidate for President? Not with our money."

Only the raising of a fund by Senator McCormick and some of the old Progressives, gave him his chance to speak. He hates them and when he attacks them it is with all the force and sincerity of his soul.

It is no mere question of hatred, such as Roosevelt would employ to dramatize and make personal the issues he was representing to the people; it is bitter, revengeful detestation. It makes Johnson the most sincere man before the country to-day. And that pessimistic strain in his nature causes the darkness of his diatribe to seem all the more true.

But he swallows for expediency as other men swallow their convictions for it, and wrath is the bitterer dose. During the 1920 campaign he trafficked with Senator Penrose, the representative of hated wealth, for support at Chicago, offering, it has not been disclosed what considerations, for his aid.

He was ready at that time to take back his speech advocating the government ownership of railroads, a gesture against "the interests," made at the bidding of Hearst, at the beck of whose agents he is p.r.o.ne to bestir himself.

It must be an irksome livery, that of Hearst, for he hates all service and overshadowing. Equally irksome is his service to regularity under the rod of the Republican party. But he bows to it, and supports Harding whom he hates. He bobs up like a Jack-in-the-box and makes his laudatory speech whenever the name of Roosevelt comes up, though in his heart he must reverence none too deeply that overshadowing personality.

He has no roots except in the mob and no hope except in its aroused resentment against inequality. Not being interested in individuals he has not that personal organization possessed by Roosevelt, with his army of correspondents, friends and idolators, in every hamlet.

And of course he has little hope of ever controlling his party organization. He is curiously alone.

"There are only three men in the world whom I trust," he once said to a friend. There is no reason to regard this as an exaggeration.

His att.i.tude toward his a.s.sociates in the Senate is this: "If I were crossing a desert with any one of them and there was only one water bottle, I should insist upon carrying that bottle."

On such pessimism and distrust it is impossible to build political success. It can come only when his pessimism and distrust coincide with like pessimism and distrust in the ma.s.ses. He waits the day, but gloomily, without confidence.

PHILANDER CHASE KNOX

"I like Knox and I admire him tremendously, but I will not ask him to be my Secretary of State. He is too indifferent."

This characterization of the junior Senator from Pennsylvania, attributed to his late colleague President Harding, summarizes very aptly his strength and his weakness. One can very easily admire him and, when he drops the mask of dignity, which seems almost pompous in so diminutive a figure, one cannot help liking him. But in spite of his successes,--which his enemies attribute to luck, and he probably attributes to intellectual superiority,--he has never quite achieved greatness and will probably go down in history as one of the lesser luminaries in the political heavens.

Knox IS indifferent, especially to those who do not know him intimately. It is not because he has been without ambition. On the contrary he has longed to soar like the eagle but he has the wings of the sparrow and whatever exertion he has made has ended in a feeble and futile fluttering.

I doubt if any man in public life has had so many honors thrust upon him. He has held three great offices of the Republic without so much as raising a hand for any of them. Unlike most men he did not travel the mucky road of politics to reach Washington nor compromise with circ.u.mstance to gain distinction. Three Presidents invited him to sit at their cabinet tables. Three times the Republican machine in Pennsylvania invited him to sit in the Senate. With graceful dignity he accepted all of these invitations not, indeed, unconscious of the fact that the selection in each case was a very happy one.

I do not mean by this that he is conceited. He is merely conscious of the fact that intellectually he is somewhat superior to his colleagues, most of whom, strangely enough, quite agree with him.

They consult him and accept his counsel with almost childlike faith. To the mediocre politicians and provincial lawyers who const.i.tute the bulk of the Senate and House of Representatives, he is a figure apart, who looks upon their antics with a kindly, but never amused, tolerance.

"I know nothing of politics," he said to me a short time ago. "I have never been interested in politics as such."

This remark is rather enigmatical to the average member, who would, ordinarily, look upon the author as a dolt or pretender. They do not dare to do either in the case of Mr. Knox; therefore, the conclusion that he is indifferent. Never have the men a.s.sociated with Mr. Knox questioned his capacity.

Robert Lansing, when he was Secretary of State, said of him; "Senator Lodge will not understand the treaty but he will fight for it for political reasons. Senator Knox will understand it thoroughly."

The observation seems almost prophetic in the light of what has since been disclosed. Mr. Lansing's faith in Mr. Knox's judgment seems to have been fully justified. I know of no one who has held more steadfastly the respect of colleagues in the Senate or at the Cabinet table, nor who has been more easily successful up to a certain point or so singularly unsuccessful beyond it. He has done valiant service for his country but he has failed lamentably to reach the heights from which he could look upon broader horizons.

In the early days of his career no one strove more whole heartedly.

Destiny smiled upon him and the White House seemed to beckon. He was not unaware of the opportunity nor was there anyone more eager to grasp it. But he discovered that he could not stir the enthusiasm that begets political power. The secret, which enabled many other men, many of whom he despised, to succeed, was not his.

A temperamental dislike of the methods of politicians was followed by a strong animosity towards those who crossed his political path and some of those who went along beside it. He became hypercritical of those with whom he a.s.sociated and allowed a natural germ of cynicism to develop and flourish within him. Little by little he has withdrawn from the active combat, a philosopher in politics enamored of public life but unwilling to suffer the inconveniences it involves.

It is no wonder then that his colleagues in the Senate, especially the younger members, are somewhat in fear of the incisive tongue, for he wields it frequently and contemptuously. When after his election, Mr. Harding went South with Senator Frelinghuysen, Senator Davis Elkins, and Senator Hale, the older Senators, not, perhaps, without a tinge of disappointment at having been left out, marveled at the entourage the President had selected for himself, but Knox was cynically undisturbed.

"It is quite simple," he said, "I see nothing mysterious about it at all. The President wants relaxation--complete mental relaxation."

No less biting was his comment on Robert Lansing when that gentleman started on the high road of public service as Counselor of the State Department. The bandy-legged messenger who guards the door of the Secretary of State is the negro, Eddie Savoy. Eddie, in his way, is a personage. For forty years he has ushered diplomatists in and out of the Secretary's office; his short bent figure gives the only air of permanence to an inst.i.tution which seems to be in a constant state of flux. When the Lansing appointment was announced Mr. Knox observed: "I would as soon ask Eddie Savoy an opinion on foreign affairs as Robert Lansing."

The roots of Mr. Knox's superciliousness dip down deep into the relationships begun a score of years ago. To understand him as he is it is necessary to understand him as he was when his career was before him. William McKinley asked him to become Attorney General in his Cabinet. He was then forty-two years old, a political n.o.body. What reputation he had was confined to Pittsburg and a selected few of the steel millionaires in Wall Street, but among the selected few were names to be conjured with, such as Andrew Carnegie and Henry C. Frick. Whether President McKinley's interest in Knox was spontaneous or prompted by Mr. Frick I do not know. Mr.

Knox likes to believe that Mr. Frick did not enter into the equation. Mr. Knox declined, saying that he could not sacrifice his lucrative practice but that in four years he would accept the invitation if the President cared to renew it.

It was renewed. At the age of forty-six, Mr. Knox quit the bar for politics, or, as he would say, statecraft. His appointment evoked a storm of protest from such immaculate journals as the New York World. They dubbed him, "Frick's man," and predicted that the Department of Justice would be turned into a Wall Street anteroom for the convenience of the capitalistic combinations then flouting the Sherman anti-trust law. The charges, of course, were as wide of the mark as most of the ebullitions of the yellow journals.

Mr. Knox began his public career by attacking the Northern Securities merger, against the judgment of some of the highest-paid lawyers of the country. The Supreme Court sustained him. It was the greatest victory the government ever won under the Sherman law.

Thereafter Mr. Knox, who had been labeled a corporation lawyer, was proclaimed a trust buster. By the time he was fifty he had become the greatest Attorney General in a half century. Certainly the mark he set has never been reached by any of his successors.

When Mr. Roosevelt came into the White House Mr. Knox was at the pinnacle of his career and was as much admired by his new chief as by his martyred predecessor. In ability Mr. Roosevelt considered him next to Elihu Root, for which Mr. Root was never quite forgiven. It is generally known that President Roosevelt believed that Mr. Root was the best qualified man in the country to succeed him, but at the same time, being an astute politician, he knew that he could not be elected. His att.i.tude to his Secretary of State was the same as Senator Lodge's toward himself, when he said in 1920: "I know that I would make an excellent President, but I realize that I would make a poor candidate."

Root being out of it because of this obvious defect, President Roosevelt proceeded to groom Mr. Knox for the nomination. Mr. Knox at the President's suggestion, prepared and delivered several speeches in the hope that he would awaken popular enthusiasm. The attempt failed dismally.

There was not a responsive throb, not even a vague echo. Mr. Knox knew that he possessed not the merest shred of the leadership necessary to a presidential candidate.

He went back to the Senate, where he had succeeded Matthew Quay upon his resignation from the Cabinet, sadder if wiser, while William H. Taft draped upon his broad shoulders the mantle of Roosevelt.

Mr. Knox has never quite recovered from that disappointment, but he did not altogether abandon hope. He accepted a place in the Taft Cabinet as Secretary of State, more for the opportunities it offered than for the pleasure of the a.s.sociations, for Mr. Knox's att.i.tude toward President Taft was never more than pa.s.sive tolerance tinged with contempt. This new venture was no more successful than the old. He made it quite evident that a new regime was to be established in the State Department. The policies originated by John Hay and developed with singular brilliancy by Mr. Root were shunted into the background and a new era was proclaimed. It is unnecessary to comment on the dismal essay at "dollar diplomacy" and the Mexican policy of that period. The simple fact is that Mr. Knox's name is not a.s.sociated with a single successful foreign policy. Some might have succeeded but unfortunately the energy displayed at the outset of his career in this new field was soon dissipated. Mr. Knox disliked the methods of diplomacy. He lacked both the patience and the finesse. He went to the Department, over which he was supposed to preside, but rarely. For weeks at a time Washington saw nothing of him. The administration of the Department was left largely to Huntington Wilson, whose inept.i.tude was colossal.

Fortunately for Mr. Knox the extent of his failure was somewhat screened from public view by the dust and clatter of the collapse of the Taft Administration, but it left its mark on him. He had failed dismally to eclipse his predecessor, Elihu Root. He had eliminated himself from all consideration as one of the very great statesmen of his period. He was a bitterly disappointed man. Not only his a.s.sociates but the members of the diplomatic corps were made to feel the sting of his resentment against overwhelming circ.u.mstances. Such references as that directed at the French Amba.s.sador, M. Jules Jusserand, now dean of the diplomatic corps, whom he called "the magpie," cost him many friends.