The Washington herald., 1912-04-26
A POLITICAL PR1MA DONNA.

From he New York Evening Post.
William Allen White Is known to the
whole country as a big. blum Westerner
with no fnicky nonsense about him,
His friend Theodore Roosevelt b known
to the entire universe as the chief IN
carnation of the rude and primeval mas
culine qualities. Yet White. i'd his ar
ticIe on Roosevelt and Taft. in the May
number of the American Magazine,
makes "the large-limbed Goth OF Oyster
Bay appear as plqued and pettish as
a nervous wreck Of q woman; Jealous
and resentful: imagining slIghts where
none exist: inordinately vain and of q
morbid sensitiveness-in a word. a sort
Of prima donna In politics.
Mr.. White Is. OF course, olissfuIly un-
conscious OF the immense disservfce ne
is doing his friend. His aim is simply
to set forth the Roosevelt "tempera-
ment," as differentiated from the Presi.
dents. And he speaks rrom frequent
and long communing with the subject
Of his description. He makes several
statements Of fact which could have
come from nobody but Mr.. Roosevelt
That some OF them are highly improba-
bic serves further to identity their
origin. But it is the revelation Of the
great mans state OF mInd IN the pages
of his admiring interpreter that Is the
amazing tnIng. Mr. wnIte writes man.
ly to explain and defend Mr.. Roosevelts
break with Taft. For that purpose he
unfolds to US Mr.. Roosevelt's feelings
about his former friend, as wen as the
demands which he made upon him and
the expectations which he cherished:
and II is not too much to say that the
whole Is q story OF arrogance mixed
with pettiness.
Take a sample. In June. 1910 Rooss-
Welt returned from Africa. The ovation
he received was tremendous. But one
thing was lacking. The President Of the
United States was not there TO pay his
humble respects. According TO Mr.
White, always rejecting Mr.. Roosevelt,
that was a time for ''Mr. Taft's friend
ship to have asserted itself" He might
have appeared at the reception" Of
course. Mr.. White knows perfectly that
II would not be proper for the President
to come to New York to greet even the
German Emperor. But q greater man
than he landed at the Battery on that
June day two years ago, and Mr.. White
(alias Roosevelt feels strongly that "a
sense OF dignity OF the Presidential once"
should not have prevented Taft from
kowtowing to the colonel on the dock.
His absence indicated that he was
standing upon official ceremony. and Il
was hardly Col Rooseveit's place to pro-
ceed unbidden 10 the White House.
He waited for an Invitation.
His counsel was at President Taft's COM
mand. When they came to-
gether a few months later they talked
OF most formal and uninteresttng mat
ters," though 1T was the Presidents
place TO take the initiative since IT
was Taft, not Roosevelt. who had put 'up
the official bar at the dock q" Is not all
this almost inconceivably small? II any
body but an intimate OF Roosevelt's had
given this picture Of him, one would
call It lIbelous. Thus to nourish fancied
sights. and to ind in every occurrence
a spretoe injuria formoe, is the sort of
thing we expect, not Of the man who
brags that he is a very bull moose in
politics. but a neurasthenic singer who
falls into a rage II her name is not in
the biggest capitals on the billboards.
The article abounds in the grievances
of this mustard-seed size which Mr..
Roosevelt has been cherishing. II was,
we have been told before, brutally incon-
siderate in Mr.. Taft to come to Washing
ton a week before he was inaugurated
EGOplt kOluh 10 see instead
of Roosevelt, and the latter's term ex-
pired, as 1t were, in eclipse. But Mr..
White now informs US that 1t was also
an offense for Mr.. Taft to go OF to
Georgia to Organize his administration,
as far away from Roosevelt as possible"
II is said that you can't have It both
ways, but a suspicion like Roosevelt's
evidently could. Taft was utterly wrong
to be in Washington. and he was also
callous in being out of
While he was in Georgia
President Roosevelt gave assurances"
TO Mr. Garfield and other members Of
his cabinet that they were to be re-
tained;" but "just how they were in
that they would not be needed
further, no one knows" So the amiable
Mr.. White rambles on. betraying at every
turn the insane egotism and the in
famed sensitiveness OF his close friend,
the Colonel From such a Boswell. de-
lightfully unaware of the deadly way in
which he is writing down his hero, Mr..
Roosevelt might well pray 10 be delivered
kansan innocence surely never had q
more engaging display than in some
Of Mr.. whites remarks about Roosevelt
He assures US that the colonel had an
Intense conviction that certain things
In the country were going wrong-nota-
bly, in the matter OF tariff legislation"
Think of it, The man who had been q
stand-pat President for seven years;
who. Indeed, once put into a Presfden- |
tial message an announcement that he |
was going to take up the tariff. but |