After the nomination, the preliminary notification followed at Sea Girt a few days later. Here again was an opportunity to study human nature. Most of the defeated competitors for the nomination came and tendered their hearty congratulations. But Clark came like one who was attending the funeral of his hopes. He could not master his disappointment, nor conceal it. His depression lay upon the gathering like a cloud. It was so palpable that Tumulty saw that something must be done to lift it, else the proper spirit of the occasion would be destroyed. Tumulty then came to me, and suggested that Clark be taken for a ride. I approached Clark, and invited him to use my car. He accepted and asked if he might go anywhere he wished, and, of course, my reply was, “Certainly.” He then explained that his daughter was visiting in the neighbourhood, and he would like to see her. Filling the car with his friends, they drove away, with my son, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., at the wheel.

When my son came back, he had a broad smile on his countenance. “Where do you suppose,” he exclaimed, “Clark asked me to take him? His daughter is staying with George Harvey’s daughter!”

The “George Harvey” to whom my son referred was, of course, Mr. Wilson’s former supporter with whom he had recently had a much-advertised disagreement, and who is now Mr. Harding’s much-discussed Ambassador in London.

Here was a dilemma! I had already told Governor Wilson that Clark had gone to visit his daughter, and that she was staying with friends in the neighbourhood, and he had said: “I shall see that my daughters call on her.” Now, I had to tell him who “the friends in the neighbourhood” were. When I did so, he only smiled, and said: “That’s rather awkward, isn’t it?”

CHAPTER IX
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1912

WILSON’S nomination in 1912 was equivalent to an election. The split in the Republican Party made this a foregone conclusion. They forgot the interests of the country in a bitter internal struggle for the control of their party machinery. Roosevelt, furiously ambitious to regain his power, was pitted against the old organization bosses, who were determined to retain possession of the party. Led by Penrose they were lost in an implacable rage against the “rebel” who had once unhorsed them in the party councils. To them the election of a president became a secondary matter. The supremely important issue was the control of their party machinery. Penrose and his fellow bosses felt that their future—their very existence as political leaders—was at stake. If Roosevelt made good his position, that the Independents ought to continue to control the mechanism of the party (as they had controlled it during his tenure of office), what did it profit Penrose and his kind to build up their state machines, only to be balked of the supreme prize of national ascendancy? They would, like Othello, find their occupation gone. With the fury of men blinded by hatred and ambition, they preferred to wreck the party’s chances for the next four years if, by so doing, they could destroy the Roosevelt rebellion against their domination.

I really felt that my own connection with the campaign was at an end. With the Presidency thus secure by reason of the Republicans’ internecine quarrel, we Democrats were in the position of a plaintiff who had simply to go through the formality of entering judgment by default and take possession of the Government on behalf of the people.

I had never participated in the active work of a national campaign, and it did not appeal to me to do so. The offer made me by McCombs to become chairman of the Finance Committee I had promptly declined, as I thought that if I had anything to do with the finances of the National Democratic Committee, I should be treasurer. So I prepared to spend the summer in the Adirondacks. But the day that I was to take my family to the mountains I motored down to Sea Girt to bid Governor Wilson good-bye. The Governor had not yet come down to breakfast, and, as I had to take an early train to make my connection for the mountains, I was about to leave when word came down from him requesting me to wait a few minutes longer, as he was anxious to see me. Shortly afterward he came down the steps, as sprightly and active as a man of thirty, full of energy and determination. When I told him I had come to say good-bye to him, he was surprised and concerned.

“This is a great disappointment to me,” said Governor Wilson. “I had hoped that you would accept the position of chairman of the Finance Committee. This is a new position which I have asked the National Committee to create especially for you, and I had relied upon your willingness to accept it and render me a great service.”

I told the Governor that I was disinclined to be merely a money collector, and unless I was appointed treasurer, or a member of the Campaign Committee, I should not care to participate in the campaign. The Governor answered: