The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1910-07-11
-FOUR WASHINGTON LETTER ,"
An Impartial Review of Dongs at Our Seat of Government

1 installments, mixing statecraft with 1 tennis or gentleman farming.
 | At the State, War and Navy Build l ing for instance, only subordinates
 remain. Secretary of War Dickinson,
 is selling over the bounding pillows | does not expect to be back at the headquarters again before October. | Secretary of the Navy Meyer is in | Hamilton, Massachusetts. Secretary
 Knox has a farm at Valley Forge
 where he watches the hands make hay window. His chief method of exer- | else is playing billiards with his | family
 But 'tis a hot summer that brings | nobody any good. While the cabinet | members are away the seconds in | ing over the operations of the depart | ments. Those who did all the work during the legislative year without | getting any credit for it have a chance ] to sign their names to official docu-
 ments as acting secretaries and to 1 see their names in the public press in | the same capacity.
 The official summer begins at the
 State Department when Second Assis- | tant Secretary Adoo gets home from | his bicycle trip in France. For years | his going heralded the arrival of | | new order was to prevail in the De- l partment. Secretary Knox is legal and exact and when he speaks of for eign relations his statements have
 neither frills nor "atmosphere." His | interviews are unembelished and un- adorned and have no more literary feeling than an algebraic problem in Quadratic equations.
 With Adee it is different. The Sec
 ond Assistant loves joke, better than
 a diplomatic coup de grace. He has
 been in the Service several decades
 his jokes-have ripened during that
 time. When Acting Secretary Adee
 discusses a Central American embrog- Iio it becomes a thing of delight. It glows with color. It is no longer
 mere statement of casualities,-so
 and so much damage done-but a
 rounded story, pathetic and humor-
 ous, which suggests another story
 which in turn suggests another until
 one goes away with a charming un-
 written brochure in his mind on War
 and How She is Fought in Central
 America.
 From the perfunctory cable dis.
 patches he draws a picture of the
 American minister in Persia his sor-
 rows, which are many, and joys, which
 are few. One fOrgets the value of
 fact in the delight of fancy and the
 amusing game of diplomacy, as re- flected through his accounts, becomes
 less struggle for the prestige of na-
 tions than a game of cross purposes
 among men of different countries and
 different instincts, with very human
 failings and virtues, all of which have
 their bearing on the fearfully obtruse and lofty subject of foreign relations.
 Assistant Secretary Huntington Will
 son will preside for a time, at least,
 this summer. He, too, has his tat
 mosphere' which he drapes about
 himself with the studied care of a
 Buddihistic mahatma. His office is
 sealed and darkened to keep out the sunshine and heat. In one corner be-
 fore an electric fan is a chunk of ice which cools the draught. This is the
 only positive utilitarian thing in the room. The rest is negative. One whispers instinctively- in this hushed chamber for. fear he will dispel the air of nothingness which hovers there un- disturbed. It seems almost sacrilege that the ice is not frozen in a sub- dued shade of gray that it may blend better with the environment.
 Assistant Secretary Wilson's reflec- tion of activity in foreign affairs takes on the same tone. He discourses as rule, with Russian cigarette in his hand-small and dainty and giving the fafntest odor, as he accentuates-the term seems hard in this connection one point or another while talking in the most subdued voice. One gets the impression that far away somewhere something has happened or is happen ing-realized through an intangible poetic veil-soft murmurings that sift above the monotone of days. Upon leaving the office it seems that one has awakened from a dream and mar vels at the perfection of it. Nothing was overdone, no incident limned so strong that it stood out with suspi- | cion of harshness or dominated the | discourse After all the world is nothing, if our inner selves are at tuned to the music of life and love- In this light a real fact is maudlin | or indecent and real war is a bloody | and brutal thing that had best be hid | den from human gaze.
 Over on the War side, General | Oliver, assistant secretary, who, dur | ing the year, looks after departmental l problems people don't care to read | about, signs himself as acting" Sec | retary Dickinson, while he is on the | job, damns people sometimes and tells | funny stories about judges and law yers and politicians in the south. | General Oliver, on the contrary, is | given to no such frirolities. His state- ments are brief and to the point "yes," and mo-, or 'I have" or "I | have not. Here is expedition. preci- SfOn-nO lost motion no diversion rom the official channels. To damn any body would be useless. To tell a story would be a waste of time.
 While Secretary Meyer and Assist | ant Secretary Winthrop are away | from the Navy, the headship passes to Admiral Nicholson, as chief of the | bureau of navigation. Admiral or | Reggie is not the legitimate suc- cessor of Brownson and Pillsbury. The | Meyer system has shorn the bureau of | most of it's importance. But Reggie" is all an Admiral. He shorts when | he talks and his voice booms as if it | were trained to sound above the storm and strife. But, there isn't much l happening in the Navy Department | while Secretary Meyer is in Hamilton. It's afraid since Paymaster General | Rogers resigned under duress.