Statesman's Statesman

Of him explosive Roosevelt I cried long ago: "He is the greatest man who has appeared in the public life of any country in my time." Last week he was 90 and to the U. S. democracy he was almost as remote as if he had died with his contemporaries. That he is a great man, few educated citizens would deny. But fewer still could tell why they believe him such, any more than they could justify the reputations which poets have given to Spenser, musicians to Bach, scientists to Einstein. At 90 Elihu Root remains the prime U. S. example of the statesman's statesman.

Now-silenced critics once called Elihu Root cold, legalistic, a man whose loyalties and sympathies and passions were solely of the mind. In New York City in the last three decades of the 19th Century he was midwife-in-chief to the infamous Trusts then coming to birth. He has declared that he was then absorbed in the legal aspects of his clients' problems, only later came to realize their social implications. But Root the Citizen took time from his $200,000-a-year practice to help draft an anti-corporation Constitution for New York State, to help Reformer Seth Low become Mayor of New York City on a platform attacking the street railway interests for which he himself was counsel.

Elihu Root was 54. at the top of his profession and the hero of such bright young Republicans as Nicholas Murray Butler. Henry Lewis Stimson, Robert Low Bacon, when in 1899 President McKinley let it be known that he wanted a first-rank lawyer for Secretary of War. Someone was needed who could plan and plead reorganization in the slipshod War Department, set up administrations for the colonies newly-won from Spain. Appointed, Lawyer Root did both jobs brilliantly. He stayed on with Theodore Roosevelt and, when John Hay died, he became one of the ablest Secretaries of State in U. S. history.

Lesser men than he were among the seven U. S. Presidents whom Elihu Root has counseled. In 1908 his own qualifications for the Presidency were unequalled. Teddy said he would crawl on hands & knees from the White House to the Capitol to make Root President. Then he chose Taft as his successor. He knew, as Republican managers did again in 1916, that Statesman Root was simply not "available." He was too brilliant. Politicians had long since learned that the U. S. electorate distrusts high intellect and imperturbable calm.

His single term (1909-15) in the U. S. Senate, Statesman Root found distasteful. "I am tired of it," said he, refusing renomination. "The Senate is doing such little things in such a little way." Already he was bent on reshaping the whole world to the cool and reasonable channels of minds like his. He sat on the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, became president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1912. In 1920 the League of Nations called him, as a private citizen, to father the World Court. U. S. adherence to the Court thereafter became his dearest wish.

Elihu Root spends the winter months in Manhattan, the rest in Clinton, N. Y. opposite his beloved Hamilton College where, as "Cube" Root, son of the mathematics professor, he was the youngest and smartest member of his class (1864). Alert, he reads widely, keeps abreast of current affairs. But what he thinks, he keeps almost wholly for those of his "young" intimates who are still alive.

A word from Elder Statesman Saionji, 85, steadies Nippon. To Elder Statesman Root, pleading once more for the World Court last fortnight, the Senate and nation turned deaf ears, paid heed instead to the vocabularies of William Randolph Hearst and Father Charles E. Coughlin.

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