Our appointment was for ten o'clock. We had got quite used, however, to waiting an hour or so for the gentlemen we sought to see. Several other callers were ahead of us here, and we sat down in the outer office when we had presented our cards to a very kind and attentive young man who appeared to be in charge.
Within a very few minutes, however, we were ushered round into a secluded inner office. "The General," the young man said, "will be in in a moment. He sees them in two different rooms at the same time." This large room was entirely bare of painting or other decorations.
Speaking of decorations reminds me of the striking handsomeness of the Cabinet officers we had so far been seeing. Beginning with the President himself (prize winner of the lot in this respect) the spectacle of this Administration had up to this moment been a regular beauty show.
The physiognomy of Mr. Hays, of course, strikes a somewhat different note in the picture. Though he is not, I should say, as funny looking as some of his pictures suggest.
He fairly leaped into the room. Spidery figure. Calls you by your last name without the prefix of Mister. Very, very earnest in effect. No questions necessary to get him started. He began at once to talk. Poured forth a steady stream of rapid utterance. Denounced the idea of labor as a "commodity." Said: "We have a big job here. Three hundred thousand employees. Millions of customers. I think we can do it all right, though. But our people in the department all over the country everywhere must be made to feel that a human spirit is behind them. It's in the heart that the battle's won. It's because of the spirit behind them whether our men throw a letter on the floor before a door or put it through the door." Made a gesture with his hands illustrating putting a letter through a door. Looked very hard at the very clean top of his desk much of the time as he talked. Now and then looked very straight indeed at us. Gave us a generous amount of his time. At length arose very briskly.
Routed us out around through some side way. Had a private elevator concealed somewhere in a dark corner. Turned us over to the colored man in charge of it with the request, "Won't you please take my friends down?"
As we were crossing the street we ran into our old friend from New York who edits a very flourishing women's magazine. Down here, he said, to get an article from Mrs. Harding. Had found her altogether willing to supply him with an article, but in so much of a flutter with her new activities that she didn't see her way to finding time soon to write it. What, we asked, was the article to be about? Well, Mrs. Harding's idea was to revive all the old traditions of the White House. And what were those traditions? Mrs. Harding hadn't said beyond the custom of Easter egg-rolling.
We were on our way over to see Assistant Secretary of the Navy Roosevelt. He is not in the State, Army and Navy building where Mr. Denby is, but some ten minutes' walk away, in the long, rather fragile looking Navy Department building constructed during the War.
Here numerous gold-braided officers continually come and go. The building is filled with very beautiful models of fighting ships. At one side of Roosevelt's door is a model of the San Diego, at the other side a "sample U. S. Navy Patrol Boat."
As we gave him our cards a young man asked us if we knew "the Colonel." An old Washington newspaper man had told us that morning, "He will go far under his own hat." Several very large men, also waiting, were smoking very large cigars while we waited. While all male visitors to public offices in Washington appear to smoke continually, those in government positions apparently do not smoke during office hours. And government business hours there seem to be queer. The Senate goes into session at just about lunch time. The President seems to be around in his business office throughout the whole of the middle of the day. And the office of the Secretary of State telephones you at six o'clock Saturday night.