, 1921-08-19
THE GROWTH OF HARDING.

William Allen White has studied the president and
delivered the result of his observations, and most
Americans will agree with the estimate Mr.. White has
SO gracefully put into language. 1t comes with con-
siderable satisfaction to those who all along had faith
in the president, for Mr.. White was a disciple and
friend of Theodore Roosevelt and of that school of
Republican politics that in the beginning had but lit
tie confidence in Mr.. Harding and believed him tainted
with reaction. Republicans of the radical or Progress
i've type and those of the Ultra conservative type in
their devotion to their ideals had forgotten the orig
inal type from which both were ofshoots and not rep
resentative-just Republican type, the Ohio type, the
Mckinley type, the Harding type. The type schooled
by such masters as James Garfield, John Sherman,
William Mckinley, Mark Hanna, Joseph B. Foraker,
Charles Henry Grosvenor and others of that great
galaxy of Republican party schoolmasters at whose
feet Hardingis generation sat and studied. 1t could
not be otherwise than, after the war of the extremists
in 1912 the great mass of people holding Republican
principles would settle back upon the true model of
Republican faith under which the nations most glor-
ious history had been written, and Harding as the best
representative of it.
What Mr.. White says will be read with pleasure and
approval not only by Republicans but by everybody
who helped place Mr.. Harding in the presidency by a Z
million majority. But let Mr.. White say it:
give months of it today, Mr.. President, and every
day you have grown stronger. 1t is a fearful ordeal to
stand before 100000 people every day for five
months-their spokesman, their example, their ideal
of Americanism. No king has such power as you; nor
has the Pope, the head of all Christendom, such a glare
of publicity upon him. No human being on earth ex-
cept the president of the United States is forever in
the public eye, with no privacy, no hours to himself,
no lights that the republic is bound to respect. Ours
is the only great ruler in the earth whose status is
servant and whose powers are almost absolute. And
you have had five months of it, the whitening nerve
~wrecking, heart-breaking glare and wear and wrack
and jar of it, and you have kept fit and sweet and fine.
more than that, you have grown in power and
grace. Not that in growing in power you have as
sumed new functions; but you have gained during
every hour of the time more and more confidence of
the American people. That is the only source of power
in the presidential office. And in grace you have hus
banded your gains and banked them with tact, and
sense and kindly Yankee shrewdness. Early in the
- - 4 +ofr j. r.t-. f~Ap,
those who thought they were going to syndicate you
end keep you in trust, and you took responsibility
gently, firmly, quietly, but with unmistakable de-
cision.
''Then having party leadership well in hand, you
took national leadership, somewhat larger than party
leadership. The nation began to trust you as an Amer
ican-not a personal, rampant, militant, you of your
ownself; but the wise counsel that gathered about
you, that clearly governed you and still let you LEAD
them. There you stood among the rulers of the world
a simple, kind-hearted, clear-eyed most modest gen
tleman, not quite sure of yoursel1-indeed, never
sure enough to make an enemy of a wen-intentioned
man or cause.
"The things you have done, Mr.. President, in these
five months is not spectacular, but still it remains
unique thing in history. You have gathered about
you a tremendous stock of confidence, of good will
of high aspiration of many men-indeed, many mer
of different and sometimes opposing minds; but al
ways men who have the deep abiding faith that Amer
lea is the keeper of the ark of the covenant in these
dreadful days; differing men who have gripping faitf
that some way wisdom will come to America to be
worthy of her great trust. What you have said ha,
not been ringing full of clarion notes; what you have
done has not been heroic in its dash and clatter. Move
ment has not always been direct, but it has been oper
and frank; and while cautious it has never beer
devious.
$50 now you have attained that world Leadership
which must come to any man who has the confidence
Of the American people. It is a terrible position. W.
have erected here in this office we call the presidency
in America an awful thing-too big for any man, YET
not big enough for more than one personality. It is
a man killer, because it requires every ounce of grit
every grain of patience, every drachm of faith and al
the wisdom that God can put into one heart to do the
days work. And you are standing there in the Cruel
ing lonesomenesst that must be the rulers place, a sim.
pie kindly decent man before the people of the earth
trying with what talents fate has given you to play
your art-America part in the great drama crowd
ing into the stage eagerly, restlessly, tragically from
withouti'
ARE WE GETTING ANYWHERE7
Whether we are to have actual prohibition in this