"Revelations"

POLITICAL NOTES

The U. S. public has acquired very distinct and damning impressions of the Harding administration from a novel and play, both called Revelry. Perhaps Revelations would be a good title for the retort to Revelry which Col. Charles R. Forbes, Director of the Veterans' Bureau during the Harding regime, last week published in newspapers. Col. Forbes had just been released from Leavenworth penitentiary after serving a sentence for fraud in connection with a hospital built by the Veterans' Bureau in President Coolidge's home town (Northampton, Mass.).

Col. Forbes' main purpose in life now is, he says, to clear the good name of his dear friend, President Harding, "the most unhappy man I have ever known."

Excerpts and statements-of-fact from the Revelations of Col. Forbes:

P: "I recall that as we sat at the rim of a crater,* looking down into the seething mass of molten lava, he [Mr. Harding] said: 'This is God's work and He alone can quiet the flame.' He was truly spiritual."

P: "He spoke feelingly of a man's responsibilities to his home and he believed implicitly in the sanctity of one's own castle."

P: "He was truly a Senator of all America."

P: "It is claimed that Harry Daugherty was responsible for Harding's candidacy for the presidency. This is incorrect. The real sponsor and advocate was Florence Kling Harding, his strongminded and ambitious wife. . . . His candidacy was dis- cussed at a conference with Theodore Roosevelt in the office of the Outlook in New York City [as early as] in 1915."

P: To the late Dr. Charles E. Sawyer, President Harding's personal physician, was turned over a five thousand dollar campaign contribution. Dr, Sawyer bought five thousand dollars worth of whiskey with it, which was stored and served at the Harding residence in Marion, Ohio. This was in 1920.

P: "Dr. Sawyer . . . whom the President made a Brigadier General, sought to dominate the Bureau-- and its employees and to destroy my policies. He carried falsehoods to the President and sought to locate hospitals in a way that would be advantageous to his own interests. A homeopath himself, he sought to have homeopaths replace allopaths. He established a stoolpigeon system within the Bureau and in other departments of the government as well. He was a vain, strutting little creature and fancied that he had a great attraction for women. He held himself out to be the personal representative of the President and he spoke with a great show of authority when asserting his position."

P: Bold President Harding attended a showing of the Dempsey-Carpentier fight film at the home of Publisher Edward B. ("Ned") McLean of the Washington Post. "Of course, we all knew that the law had been broken in the transportation of the film to Washington. It was amusing to see how every one who was there joined the purity squad when the news leaked shown." out that the film had been shown."

P: Oilman Harry Ford Sinclair was often a caller and overnight guest at the White House before the Teapot Dome oil lease was consummated. President Harding said: "Well, I guess there will be hell to pay but these fellows seem to know what they are doing."

P: "On Christmas Day in 1921, I had a telephone call from Mrs. Carolyn Votaw, the President's sister, who was at the White House: 'Come on over,' she said, 'Wernie wants to talk to you.' She always called the Pres ident 'Wernie.' I went over and found the President sitting all alone in his office and evidently very depressed. He said, 'Merry Christmas,' reached into a right-hand drawer of his desk, pulled out a plug of Piper Heidsieck and took a chew. He got up and looked out on the White House garden and said: 'Help yourself to a cigaret.'

"I took a cigaret, lit it, and went over and stood beside him. He said: 'This is a hell of a Christmas.' I asked him what was the matter and he replied: 'Everything is the matter.' I gathered from his mutterings that things were not all right with him in his domestic life. In this same conversation the President told me that there were things going on in the public business that he didn't approve but that he was helpless to stop them.

"Later that day I met old Sawyer, who was there every morning to feel the President's pulse and advise a new brand of pills. Sawyer laughed and said: 'God, they had a hell of a row this morning.' He meant the President and his wife.

"One night I went out with the President to the rear lawn of the White House, and he cried. . . . "Let's take a walk,' he said, and we walked down to about the centre of the grounds and sat on a bench, and he told me how unhappy he was and how empty his life had been. . . ."

*In Hawaii, when Col. Forbes was Commissioner of Public Works there and Senator-elect Harding was touring.

*The Veterans' Bureau (war risk insurance).