The Brattleboro daily reformer. (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1913-1955, 1921-01-22
BY DAVID LAWRENCE.
Especial Despatch to The Reformer.)
Copyright 1921.

Copyright 1921.
WASHINGTON, Jan. -. - About
the last thing most people imagined last
autumn on election day was that War
rem Harding and Woodrow Wilson had
anything in common but some of the
correspondents who will not accompany
Mr.. Harding on his trip to Florida re-
veal the interesting information that
the two men are behaving exactly alike
toward newspaper men. This may or
may not be characteristic of the presi-
dent-elect and it may or may not be the
result of sudden turn from private life
to the burdens of public life, but it's
the usual struggle of a president-elect
the scribes who insist that the public
has a right to know what man elected
to the presidency of the United States
does from day to day.
Mr.. Harding told the correspondents
that he didn't want them to follow when
he boards the houseboat He will return
To port every few days and confer with
the newspaper men, but he warned them
that they would incur mountains of
disPleasure" if they trailed along. The
Cleveland. he asked the correspondents
to say nothing about it. He wanted to
shop in privacy. So they agreed not to
announce it III advance provided two or
three, correspondents could go along to
report on any possible emergency
Mr.. Harding isn't a bit different from
woodrow Wilson in all this. Core
spondcntS who remember what happened
just after the election in 1912 are au-
thorlty for the statement that when Mr.
Wilson decided to go to Bermuda for a
rest, he was very much disturbed when
the newspaper men told him that. of
course, they would have to accompany
him. He insisted that there would be
no news-just as Mr.. Harding says there
viii be nothing doing but rest, on his
southern trip. But the correspondents
said it didn't matter. They must ac-
company him and Mr.. Wilson was 50 up
set by il, that he threatened to travel
| on ship that wasn't equipped with
wireless, but he finally relented.
Mr.. Harding started out during the
campaign with intimate talks with the
correspondents. but since election he has
become taciturn and communicative.
| Mr.. Wilson was the most friendly and
chummy individual in the world with
the correspondents aboard his train in
the campaign of 1912. but when he got
| to the White House he changed Most
| people do not know the extremes to
which the president went to shut him
self off from direct contact with the
| press. Twice he ordered secret service
men to keep newspaper men away from
him on summer vacations. In the first
two years he gave occasional audiences
TO the entire corps of correspondents but
these were discontinued about the time
the war broke out, and were never re-
sumed
Mr.. Wilson rarely. if ever. gave any
l.
probably no eXaggeratiOn to say that
Mr.. Wilson never spent a total of more
than SIX or seven hours in private audi
| ences with correspondents in the eight
years he has been at the White House
And it is also a fact that only one or
two correspondents ever saw him more
than three or four times in the entire
eight years
Both Mr.. Roosevelt and Mr.. Taft sell
dom let week go by without a private
conference with at least one or two cor
respondents or writer's. Mr.. Wilson
never would have been able to manage
the business of contact with the public
| at all were it not for the shrcwdness
and uncanny news instinct of his pri-
vate secretary Joseph T. Tumulty. who
probably will always be remembered as
one of the best friends the Washington
correspondents ever had.
Mr.. Harding may be counting on do
ing the same thing-namely. talking to
the country Indirectly, but both Mr..
Roosevelt and Mr.. Taft found it more
effective to talk directly to the press
| themselves. Much of the misunder-
standing about the policies of Mr.. VIII
son can be traced to a naughty or indif-
ferent attitude toward the press and
such defense as was given the Wilson
administration by correspondents from
time to time. was hardly ever due to any
inspiration from the White House. but
largely to the voluntary effort and enter
prise of writer's, both inside and outside
of Washington, who either believed sin
cerely IN the cause they were defending
| editorially irrespective of the persons or
party involved or who believed they
were discharging their journalistic duty
of telling the truth as they saw it.
There may be a change when Mr..
Harding gets to Washington, but the
verdict of most of the correspondents
thus far is that the new president-elect
is starting off as did his predecessor.