Presidency; consequently, it was a matter of course that he would continue to look upon the Senate as the great power in Government, and while sitting in the White House would administer the Government as if he were still in the Senate. People who said this, and they were many, prominent public men and great newspaper editors among others, honest enough in their beliefs, no doubt, showed a peculiar ignorance of human nature. "No woman dresses below her station," said Lamb, and the same impulse that prevents a woman from cheapening herself restrains a man from disparaging his own dignity. Mr. Harding had been a senator and was now President; was it likely that instead of being the first he would voluntarily become a fraction of the ninety-six?

People still believe that Mr. Harding is a naïve person, in his simplicity almost unsophisticated. On December 6, 1920, then the President elect and still a senator, he went to the Senate to deliver his farewell address, that being the last time he was to appear in the chamber by right as one of its members. "I am conscious," he said, "of the great place which Congress holds under our Constitution, and particularly sensible to the obligations of the Senate. When my responsibilities begin in the executive capacity, I shall be as mindful of the Senate's responsibilities as I have been zealous of them as a member, but I mean, at the same time, to be just as insistent about the responsibilities of the executive."

Why should he consider it necessary to give this warning? Mr. Harding was not ignorant of the relation he was supposed to hold to the Senate, or

the assumption that the Presidency, to use the English expression, was "in commission," to be administered by half a dozen self-appointed senators as commissioners. He had served notice that the Senate was mistaken, and any senator who had his feelings hurt because he disregarded the warning and presumed upon his power would have only himself to blame.

In the spring of last year Mr. Harding again reminded the Senate that the line of demarcation was sharply drawn between the province of the legislature and the executive. Mr. Borah was pressing his resolution to authorize the President to invite Great Britain and Japan to discuss the limitation of naval armaments. Mr. Harding was not supposed to be in sympathy with the project, and there was a good deal of speculation as to the action he would take. One day at the White House he casually announced to the newspaper men (Mr. Harding has a habit of making important announcements almost casually) that he was taking “unofficial soundings." Was that in quence of the Borah resolution? he was asked, to which he replied that the President needed no authority from Congress to initiate negotiations, as the conduct of foreign relations, under the Constitution, was lodged exclusively in the hands of the President. It was a gentle hint to the Senate to remember its place, yet neither the hint itself nor the manner of conveying it was offensive.

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Mr. Harding does not like to be offensive. When the public summed him up as a man who would rather have a friend than make an enemy it hit by a sort of blind instinct upon one side of his character, which is his

weakest. The duty of a President, I believe, after having watched many Presidents in office, is to give less thought to the retention of friendships and more to the making of enemies when it is for the public good. A senator may have friends, and no one cares, but for a President to surround himself with the same intimates may be to his discredit. Nor should a President flinch from making enemies. Mr. Harding has shown a singular timidity in dealing with Congress.

It is impossible for a President, if his administration is to be a success, to content himself with playing the part of a moderator, for the President is the political head of his party, who must lead as well as direct. Distasteful as it may be to the American, who in some respects has a false conception of democracy, no President can escape what is forced upon him by the peculiarities of the political system which he administers. He must either be a dictator and the manager of his party, bending Congress to his own will and compelling obedience to his program, or he pronounces himself a failure. For in America there is only a single national figure. It is the President. It is the President to whom the country looks, it is the President whom the country holds responsible. The country may agree that Congress is incompetent, that it is inefficient, it may freely recognize its laches, but that does not exculpate the President. The failure of Congress to respond to the popular demand is always the failure of the President; the President is held to have failed in not having been determined enough or adroit enough to force Congress to enact the required legislation. Congress does not easily

yield to what is known as "Presidential dictation," but a great PresidentLincoln is a preeminent example-considers not the susceptibilities of Congress, but the welfare of the people.

Mr. Harding has not been the master of Congress; rather he has been its subject. He has condoned insubordination when to palter with discipline was to encourage resistance. Congress has trifled and dawdled; without leadership seemingly it has drifted with no settled policy, and has little to show in the way of legislative accomplishment. Unless Mr. Harding quickly takes a firmer control of Congress, the country will resent his administration.

8 4

Man is always the grain of sand in the wheels of chance. He carefully plans his future, and he is confounded by the sport of chance. Mr. Harding was nominated because he was a safe man; "a typical American" his supporters said, who would would concern himself little with the affairs of Europe or the rest of the world, but whose chief charge would be America. I recall a remark made to me at the San Francisco convention immediately after the nomination of Cox.

"Harding will be elected," said an acute observer of politics, "because the country wants a sedative. It is tired of Europe and the war, Bolshevism, upper Silesia, and boundarylines. It did its bit in the war, but it never promised to clean up the mess; that 's for Europe to attend to. The people would rather have as President a man who knows the name of the sheriff of his county than the names of the presidents of the newly created republics. That 's Harding."

The administration that was to make domestic policies its solicitude and leave international politics severely alone has, ironically enough, originated no great constructive legislation during the first year of its existence, but has been the center of the world's attention through its foreign policy. Mr. Harding marks a new era in American history. He has dared to disregard a tradition more than a century old. That for which his party condemned Mr. Wilson Mr. Harding boldly and courageously has made his own. A policy of "Americanism," which meant isolation, has been transformed into a policy of internationalism and participation in the affairs of the world as they affect American interests.

The time has not yet come to write the story of the conference on the limitation of armament. It is too soon. To-day it is possible only to comment on the early phases of the conference.

Originally, Mr. Harding was not a "little navy" man. His associations and affiliations were with the men who believed that the American Navy should be second to none. He showed He showed on more than one occasion that he had no sympathy with the sentiment that was sweeping the country in favor of naval reduction. On December 3, 1920, at Norfolk, on his return from Panama, the President elect said: "I want to acclaim the day when America is the most eminent of the maritime nations. A big navy and a big merchant marine are necessary to the future of the country." Later on the same day, addressing the naval recruits, he said he wanted a nation "everlastingly determined to defend its commerce and its rights." The

following April, after reviewing the Atlantic Fleet at Norfolk, he addressed its officers. "The United States," the President declared, "does not want anything on earth not rightfully our own, no territories, no payment of tribute; but we do want that which is righteously our own, and, by the eternal, we mean to have that." Some persons read into this speech a covert warning to one of the European nations. If the President had an ulterior purpose, he left it to conjecture.

Nor so far as the public could know did Mr. Harding favor the termination of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance through an arrangement which should transform the dual alliance into an agreement adhered to by the United States. On this subject he had not placed himself on record until the Washington conference had been in session for more than three weeks, when the signing of the Four Power Treaty was public announcement of his attitude. That treaty would seem to be in flat contradiction to the position he took when as a senator he opposed the Treaty of Versailles and during the campaign denounced the Covenant of the League of Nations.

indictment that has been framed against every statesman ancient or modern. Used as a term of reproach, it conveys the implication that a man has no fixed principles, that deep in his soul he has no beliefs; like Peter he would deny if it would save him, and like Paul he would be all things to all men if it would help him. To be uncompromising is magnificent as a theoretical virtue, but it is seldom that the business of statesmanship requires that a man shall become a martyr; rather it is his duty to bring about results. No honest man can surrender principles because there can be no flexibility about principles; but the man who is inflexible in his policy, who refuses to modify his plans because circumstances have changed, shows his narrowness and not his wisdom. Opportunism is merely the recognition of existing conditions and their acceptance. A military commander who would alter his plan of campaign in the midst of battle, and thereby win a great victory, would not be reviled for having an unstable mind, but, on the contrary, would be applauded as a genius quick enough to see his opportunity and seize it. That is opportunism, but it is only the civil commander who may not be an opportunist.

That Mr. Harding has modified his views cannot be questioned. It would be interesting to know whether the Harding foreign policy owes its authorship to the President himself or if it was suggested to him and he accepted it. For complete and authentic knowledge we must wait. My own opinion, based on something more authoritative than mere surmise, is that, as usually happens in all such matters, the Harding foreign policy is

a composite; that it has been a growth rather than an inspiration; that in a measure it was forced upon Mr. Harding by circumstances over which he had no control; that his natural inclination was in the direction he has taken, and that he found ready and sympathetic support from the men on whose advice he chiefly relies.

The White House is a spiritual alembic. To one alembic. To one man the White House is satisfied ambition, to another it is the exercise of power, to still another it may be merely the gratification of inordinate vanity; but it is to be doubted if any man can go into the White House and, after he has been there a few weeks, not have a feeling of awe. feeling of awe. It is much the same sensation, I think, most of us have when we are in the middle of the Atlantic. The immensity of space, the wide reach of waters, the trackless path, the night canopied in black with not even a star to give friendly encouragement, make man feel his littleness and bring home to him how puny his strength against the titanic forces of nature. That feeling of helplessness, that knowledge that he is such an insignificant atom in the hand of fate, no President, no matter how resolute or self-reliant, can escape.

In this connection an interesting observation was made by a senator who had been Mr. Harding's colleague. It was curious to note, he remarked, the religious strain that had developed in the President. This was early in the summer of last year. "It might have been there before, but if so, I never noticed it until after his election, and it appears to have become stronger since his inauguration." Was it the burden of the White House that made him turn to a higher power?

Mr. Harding's mind is not philosophic. He is not, I believe, a deep student of history. But whatever his preconceived ideas or prejudices, the White House held him in its thrall. Facts dispelled his illusions. The world was in turmoil; more than half the world was in despair, and from despair to desperation is but a short step. The United States could not, even if it wished, turn its back on the world and remain a selfish and indifferent spectator of events. That which would have been possible ten years ago was now no longer possible. Not altruism, but necessity, was the force to motivate policies.

Mr. Harding, or the men about him, took a large and generous view. Palliatives had been tried and brought no cure; the remedy, it was obvious, must be more drastic. Similar to the physician who has a desperate case, who knows the danger of using a powerful drug, but is courageous enough to risk it, Mr. Harding took the chance. The country had asked for relief from taxation; the people had said they were sick of war and wanted the dangers of war removed. Mr. Harding took them at their word. He had given proofs of his sincerity; now let the country show that it was equally sincere. When Mr. Hughes on the twelfth of last November announced the American naval program it was one of the dramatic moments in history. Only a man with great imagination could have conceived a coup so startling and yet so politically wise. The American Government disarmed itself at the outset. It kept nothing back. It held nothing in reserve with which to bargain. There was no opportunity for intrigue. Having given a pledge of good faith,

the United States put all the other participating powers upon their honor. Either they must accept the American proposals or suffer the moral obloquy of being false to their professions of peace.

With the same directness, the same simplicity almost, Mr. Harding approached the problem of friction in the Pacific. America, mistakenly, I think, regarded the Anglo-Japanese Alliance as a menace. Whether or not it endangered American interests, it undoubtedly clouded the relations between the United States and Japan and put a strain upon Anglo-American intercourse. For reasons known to every one Great Britain could not abruptly terminate her alliance with Japan, but both nations were willing to transform the alliance into an understanding that should embrace the United States. A treaty involved risks; it would have to run the gantlet of public opinion and meet the reproaches of a certain element in the Senate, yet nothing less than a treaty would be sufficient. Mr. Harding did not hesitate. A big thing was to be done, and he did it generously. This is the lovable side of Mr. Harding. His heart is great, but I have repeatedly asked myself, Is his heart stout? That we shall know before long; we may know it even before this article is read. His test will come when he sends to the Senate the treaties ending the work of the conference. If he stands firm; if, should the necessity arise, he will forget party and his own future in defense of his principles, he will have written an imperishable name in history and be numbered among the few, the very few, great American Presidents, who, seeing largely, dared to do wisely.