Birthday Partings

At 11 a. m. on the morning of Feb. 18, Secretary of the Navy Edwin Denby emerged from a private entrance of the Navy Department, was met by a representative of the ubiquitous press. Said Mr. Denby:

"This is my birthday. I am 54 years old today. I am going home. I have absolutely nothing to say. I won't say I have resigned or that I haven't or that I intend to. I hope you let me alone on my birthday.

"If you see me at 4 o'clock I may have some statement to make."

That afternoon two letters were made public.

From the Secretary to the President:

"No one appreciates better than I how difficult your situation has become. I fear that my continuance in the Cabinet would increase your embarrassments. Therefore, I have the honor to tender my resignation. .

"I suggest that my resignation be accepted as of the date of March 10, 1924."

From the President to the Secretary:

"I am conscious that you have tendered it [the resignation] from a sense of public duty. It is with regret that I am to part with you."

One of the Washington correspondents whose specialty is pen-portraiture Clinton W. Gilbert, recently wrote of Mr. Denby: "His fate is not important, for . . . nobody will believe that he intentionally did anything wrong, and nobody will believe that he is an adequate Cabinet officer." Mr. Gilbert called him "the old grad type ... a guard on the University of Michigan football team when he was in college ... an honest, well-intentioned, good-natured, slow-witted man who has never grown up. . . . Mr. Denby has, I suspect, an almost irresistible impulse to give the college yell."

This has been criticized as a claver but patronizing estimate, but it indicates what is generally admitted to be Mr. Denby's outstanding quality, loyalty. The threads of loyalty and enthusiasm, intertwined, reappear continually in his history.

At 15 he went to China, where his father, Charles Denby, was then U. S. Minister. For a number of years he served in the International Customs Service of that country. But at 26 he was back in the U. S. and had his LL.B. from the University of Michigan. He was admitted to the bar, but within two years had cast law to the winds to serve as a third class gunner's mate on the U. S. S. Yosemite in the Spanish War. He returned to civilian life and entered the Michigan House of Representatives. From there he went to Congress for six years, 1905-1911, where he was a member of Uncle Joe Cannon's machine, stuck by it through the great fight of 1910, and went down to defeat on its account. Then came April, 1917, and another war. Denby was 47, and weighed better than 200 pounds. What could he do for his country? He promptly enlisted as a private in the Marine Corps, and rose, before his retirement to inactivity in the Reserve Corps (1920), to a Majority. In 1921 President Harding took him from his place as chief probation officer of the recorder's court of Detroit, and made him Secretary of the Navy.

His personal loyalty to President Harding was well known. He did not approve of many of the provisions of the Limitation of Armaments Treaty, which he felt tied the hands of this country. But he refused to let his opinions stand in the way of his chief's policy.

Then oil. Scandal and notoriety for one of his former Cabinet friends. Charges that he had enabled that friend to make over the Navy's oil resources to private interests for the sake of that friend's pocketbook. Denby met the attack without budging. He said that if he had it all to do over again, he would do precisely as he had done. He declared that the leases were in the best interests of the country. He announced that he would not resign. The Senate requested him to do so. President Coolidge declined to countenance the Senate's demand.

One week later Mr. Denby resigned. Democrats openly declared that his retention in the Cabinet would have hurt Republican chances in the next election. Party pressure was doubtless brought to bear. But Mr. Denby, there is small doubt, felt that he had done no wrong. He resigned. Loyalty again? Various members of the Administration group in Congress were agitating quietly for the resignation of Attorney General Daugherty and Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt.