The Behinder

NEW BOOK

BEHIND THE SCENES IN POLITICS -Anonymous -Button ($2.50). It is always pleasing to meet a man who is a vivid personality. When that personality has something to say not only interesting, but frequently penetrating in judgment, he is a real treat. Such a man is Anonymous.

Anonymous is too often cheated of his laurels. He writes a good book on politics and in a short time Edward G. Lowry or Clinton W. Gilbert conies forward to claim it.

Anonymous is not an "Insider." He is a "Behinder."

Of the "Insiders" he says: "I detest those who advertise themselves as insiders. The crop of them on the Roosevelt and Wilson soil was tremendous. The sense of importance is tempting. The best of men succumb to it. I remember Colonel House sending for me one day and how I speeded my taxi to hear the fate of the world. He said to me: 'Here is something between you and me and the angels. I have given you confidences, but never one like this.'

"I said: 'I know. I have just been in Wall Street lunching at the Midday Club. They told me there. I have stopped at the Union Club on my way uptown. They told me there. There is a good chance of an armistice being signed soon and you are sailing tomorrow very secretly for Europe.'"

Of President Makers: "I have always found it more difficult to find one hundred per cent partisans of a candidate before he is selected than it is after the nomination. Harding knew this as well as any man. To a stranger who had explained to him that he had been against his nomination Harding exclaimed: 'I am glad to see you! I always knew that some day I would find the man who had nothing to do with making me President.'"

Of Independents: "One of the greatest exhibitions of an instinct to be good divorced completely from the obligation to be intelligent lies in the tendency of those unripe in American politics to worship mere independence. I confess that I have found that independence is a bad way to get joint action of any kind in real motion. Usually when two independents rally around the banner of independence it results in two banners of independence and then four and then eight. No man or woman in the world is so independent as an independent. As political workers they are usually fanatically unselfish for six months and then as temperamental as prima donnas forever after."

Of Mud Slinging: "Cleveland was the object of much underground accusation. Roosevelt, without any cause, was called a drunkard. Wilson, as much as any man, suffered from stories grotesquely fabricated and of peculiarly unrestrained venom. Harding went through these filthy attacks before election. To the best of my knowledge, for every vote lost because of a whispering campaign directed against him, the candidate gained a little more than one vote.

"It is an extraordinary fact that the silk-stocking element is often the greatest offender in whispering campaigns. It is the woman with the low-necked dress and with orchids, and it is the young broker seeking to justify his political prejudices, who lend themselves to being carriers of these scandal stories.

"I remember a famous occasion when the proof of a so-called divorce scandal, which afterward became the subject of a whole nation's political whispering, was first brought into my office. We had an advisory committee during that campaign and I called them together and presented the alleged copies of certain love letters. I said I believed it was unreal, untrue and unsavory, and that I would not use it.

"A discussion ensued lasting through lunch, coffee and cigars. On the committee was one man who tipped back his chair against the wall of the private dining room, chewed his cigar, but otherwise appeared to be in a trance. He was an Irishman, old, affluent, and warm and ripe with experience.

" 'General,' I finally said, 'we haven't had a word from you.'

"Down came his chair, out came the butt of his cigar.

" 'Well, I'd keep the matter very dark,' he said. 'I'd burn the evidence. It's the most human thing I ever heard av the man!' "

Of Heckling: "The heckler usually furnishes a bright man with a glorious opportunity and inspires a stupid speaker to become hot and brilliant. The heckler, though the opposition may not know it, is usually the opposition's involuntary votive offering to the success of the meeting.

"I remember once that a certain candidate for President . . . had tried to make thirty thousand hear two of his opening paragraphs. A hundred feet away a man with a ministerial beard, an Adam's apple of prominence, a dyspeptic face, dressed in black, six feet four tall, with a voice which indicated a smug and irreproachable life and which in its elocutionary power could not be equaled, spoke accusingly.

" 'What about the Panama Canal scandal?'

"The candidate probably never saw the man. He never directed a glance toward him.

"Without an instant of hesitation he thrust a finger at this sanctified giant and answered, 'You go home to your poor wife, you drunken beast!'"

"When the Progressive Convention assembled in Chicago in 1912, there was only one jarring note. It came from a Prohibitionist. . . .

" 'What abaout the liquor ques-s-s-tion ?'

"All the speakers had pretended to pay no attention to this heckler, until Henry Allen, since then Governor of Kansas, came down from his hotel, and appeared, as I remember it, to second the nomination of Roosevelt. He, therefore, had no forewarning when this melancholy heckler with the peevish mortuary voice whined out:

" 'What abaout the liquor ques-s-s-tion?'

"Allen answered him without a moment's hesitation and silenced his battery for good. He replied: 'If you're dry, don't complain here. Meet me in the Congress bar.'"

"If I am not mistaken it was an Attorney General of the United States who was speaking in Boston, when a heckler came down the aisle and bawled out: 'Why haven't you prosecuted the trust octopuses?'

"The answer sent the heckler staggering back up the aisle.

" 'Be careful of your plurals when you're in Boston. It's octopi, my friend. Remember you're in the pie belt.'"

Of Presidents: "Among the last five Presidents of the United States (Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge), seen at close range, there was one who lacked education and was extremely intelligent; one who was both highly intelligent and educated; one who was highly educated and cracked by lack of intelligence; one who so combined such intelligence as he had with such education as he had as to make a memorable performance; and one who had no distinguished education or keen intelligence when he took office. See if you can name each of them."