ARTHUR BALFOUR
The results of the Washington conference were substantial. They put off war where none was threatening. Perhaps in the longer future they will be seen to be no more than a prolongation of the intent of the Versailles treaty, confirming the dichotomy of powers which that instrument created. Germany, Russia, and China were treated as outsiders in both conferences.
But the great a + b = c of last winter left peace where there is war still unwritten. The problem which "humanity" posed to Mr. Hughes is as yet unattempted. It is as exigent as ever. Immensely plausible as he is, events have a way of overtaking him. Remembering what happened on election night in 1916, I think one cannot sum him up better than by saying that he has the habit of always being elected in the early returns. As in the case of the lightning calculator, after you have recovered from your first surprise at his mental exhibition you are inclined to ask, "But what is the good of it all?"
The two most important advisers to the President in the existing Cabinet are Mr. Hughes and Mr. Hoover. The limitations of the Secretary of State are the limitations of a legalistic mind. The limitations of Mr. Hoover are the limitations of a scientific mind. Men, considered politically, do not behave like mathematical factors nor like chemical elements.
Someone asked Mr. Hoover recently why he sent corn to Russia instead of wheat. "Because," replied the Secretary of Commerce without a moment's hesitation, "for one dollar I can buy so many calories"—carrying it out to the third decimal place—"in corn, and only so many"—again to the third decimal place—"in wheat. I get about twice as many in corn as in wheat."
Mr. Hoover is at his best in feeding a famished population. He then has men where he wants them—I say this without meaning to reflect upon Mr. Hoover's humanitarian impulses; perhaps I should better say he then has men where for the free operation of his scientific mind he requires to have them. For in a famine men become mere chemical retorts. You pour into them a certain number of calories. Oxidization produces a certain energy. And the exact energy necessary to sustain life is calculable.
In a famine men cease to be individuals. They can not say, "I never ate corn. I do not know how to cook corn. I do not like corn." They behave in perfectly calculable ways. So many calories, oxidization; so much energy.
Conceive a society in which results were always calculable: so many men, so much fuel, so much consequent horsepower, and Mr. Hoover would make for it an admirable benevolent dictator; for he is benevolent. If Bolshevism at its most complete exemplification had been a success and become the order of the world, Mr. Hoover might have made a great head of a state; with labor conscripted and food conscripted, all you would have to do would be to apply the food, counted in calories, to the labor, and production in a readily estimable quantity would ensue. I am not trying to suggest that this represents Mr. Hoover's ideal of society; it surely does not. I am only saying that this is the kind of society in which Mr. Hoover would develop his fullest utility.
Science inevitably reduces man to the calculable automaton, otherwise it can deduce no laws about him;—such as, for example, the legal man, a fiction that haunts Mr. Hughes's brain; the chemical retort man, of Mr. Hoover's mind; the economic man, another convenient fiction; the scientific socialism man, another pure fiction, derived from the economic man and forming the basis for Bolshevism at its fullest development.
Now if Chemistry should somehow acquire eccentricity, so that two elements combined in a retort would sometimes produce one result and sometimes another totally different, the chemist would be no more unsure in his mind than is Mr. Hoover, operating for the first time in a society of free, self-governing men. Or perhaps it would be a better analogy to say that if the chemist when he put an agent into a retort could not be sure what other elements were already in it, and could not tell whether the result would be an explosion or a pleasant and useful recombination, he would be somewhat in the position of Mr. Hoover.
You will observe that I am trying to dissociate the real Hoover from the myth Hoover, always a difficult process, which may require years for its accomplishment. I do not pretend that this is the final dissociation. All we know with certainty of the real Hoover is that when he has society at the starvation line and can say "so many calories, so much energy," he works with extraordinary sureness.
When he operates in a normal society he takes his chemical agent in hand and consults Mr. Harding, Mr. Daugherty, or Mr. Weeks as to what agents there are in the political retort, and whether the placing of his agent in with them will produce an explosion or a profitable recombination.
So you see the practical utility of his mind is conditioned upon the minds of Mr. Harding, Mr. Weeks, and Mr. Daugherty. It is a fertile mind, which invents, however, only minor chemical reactions, neither he nor Mr. Harding being sure enough about the dirty and incalculable vessel of politics to know when an explosion may result, and neither of them being bold enough to take chances.
Mr. Hughes, Mr. Hoover, and Mr. Daugherty are the only outstanding figures in the Cabinet. The Attorney General lives in an unreal world of his own, which at the moment of this writing threatens to come tumbling down about his head.
The clue to Mr. Daugherty's world is found in a sentence of Thomas Felder's letter apropos of the failure to collect the $25,000 fee for securing the release of Charles W. Morse from prison, in which he tells how he associated with himself Mr. Daugherty, "who stood as close to the President as any other lawyer or citizen of the United States." "Standing close," men may laugh at the gods, may "take the cash and let the credit go." It is a world of little things without any tomorrow. Long views and large views do not matter. Forces? Principles? Perhaps, but the main thing is all men should "stand close." It is an immensely human world, where men if they are not masters of their own destiny may at least cheat fate for a little brief hour, if only they remain true to each other no matter what befalls.
Mr. Harding, one side of him belongs to that world of Mr. Daugherty's, while another side belongs to that larger political world where morals, wrapped in vague sentimental words, hold sway. It is because he belongs to that world that Mr. Daugherty is Attorney General. Mr. Daugherty "stood close" to Mr. Harding all his life. "Standing close" creates an obligation. Mr. Harding, as President, must in return "stand close" to Mr. Daugherty.
He does so. To the caller who visited him when the Morse-Felder letters were coming out daily, and who was apprehensive of the consequences, the President said, "You don't know Harry Daugherty. He is as clean and honorable a man as there is in this country." In such a world as this, your friend can do no wrong. Goldstein, who received the $2,500 from Lowden's campaign manager, belongs to it. Therefore, he can do no wrong. Therefore, his name goes from the White House to the Senate for confirmation as Collector of Internal Revenue at St. Louis.
To go back to the time before he became Attorney General, Daugherty practiced law in Columbus, Ohio. His cases came to him, largely as the Morse retainer did, because he "stood close" to somebody, to the President, to Senators, to Governors of Ohio, or Legislatures of Ohio. His was not a highly lucrative practice, for Mr. Daugherty is one of the few relatively poor men in the present Cabinet. You may deduce from this circumstance a conclusion as favorable as that which the President, who knows him so well, does. I am concerned only in presenting the facts. At least Mr. Daugherty did not grow rich out of "standing close."
Nor did he accumulate a reputation. When men "stand close" those who are outside the circle invariably regard them with a certain suspicion. Your professional politician, for that is what Daugherty was, always is an object of doubt. And for this reason he always seeks what is technically known as a "vindication." Conscious of his own rectitude, as he measures it, he may come out of office cleared in the world's eyes, and with a fine title, to boot, ready for life upon a new level. And this "vindication" sometimes does take place.
I have no doubt that Mr. Daugherty entered office with the most excellent intentions. He had everything to gain personally from "making a record" in the Attorney Generalship, a title and a higher standing at the bar. Moreover, he was the loyal friend of the President and desired the success of the administration.
But it is not so easy. You cannot one moment by "standing close" laugh at the gods and the next range yourself easily and commodiously on the side of the gods. The gods may be unkind even to those who mean to be with them from the outset, establishing their feet firmly upon logic or upon calories; how much more so may they be with those who would suddenly change sides?
At least it is a matter that admits of no compromise. What is he going to do in office with those who "stood close" to him as he "stood close" to President Taft? All the "close standers" turn up in Washington. For example, Mr. Felder, who "stood close" in the Morse case and who perhaps for that reason appears as counsel in the Bosch-Magneto case, where the prosecution moves slowly, and who moreover permits himself some indiscretions. There is a whole army of "close standers." There are the prosecutions that move slowly. Neither circumstance is necessarily significant. There are always the "close standers." Prosecutions always move slowly. But the two circumstances together!
I present all this merely to show what kind of adviser the Attorney General is, his limited conception of life on this little world, and life's, perhaps temporary, revenge upon him. No one at this writing can pass judgment, so I give, along with the facts and the appearances, the best testimonial that a man can have, that quoted above from the President.
In physique the Attorney General is burly, thick-necked, his eyes are unsteady, his face alternately jovial and minatory,—I should say he bluffed effectively,—rough in personality, a physical law requiring that bodies easily cemented together, and thus "standing close," should not have too smooth an exterior. His view of the world being highly personal, his instinctive idea of office is that it, too, is personal, something to be used, always within the law, to aid friends and punish enemies. He wrote once to a newspaper, which was opposing his appointment, in substance that he would be Attorney General in spite of it and that he had a long memory.
Secretary of War Weeks is the only other general adviser of Mr. Harding in the Cabinet. He is politically minded. Like Mr. Harding he is half of the persuasion of Mr. Daugherty about organization, and half of the other persuasion about the sway of moral forces. All in all he is nearer akin mentally to the President than any other member of the Cabinet, but with more industry and more capacity for details than his chief. He is of the clean desk tradition; Mr. Harding is not.
