The Birmingham age-herald., 1922-07-16
The Senate as the Author of
 Mirrors of Washington" Sees It in His NeU Book

1 come Into your head because you have l often heard them on the stump and in the Senate, and read them in coun- 'ry editorials, words that have long lost their precise meaning but evoke the old pictures In the minds of an emotional and minimizing electorate. of speech which is not addressed to | the mind Watson has no equal.
 In the mere mastery of this kind of English Mir. Harding may equal Wat son, but as an orator the Indianlan has what the President never had; the unctuous quality in him which makes i him embrace readily, lets him pour out his soul freely. He has thunders in his voice, he losses his head with It's fuzzy hair magniflcsntly, he has gnsto. He has imagination. He is a big. lovable If not wholly admirable, boy playing at oratory, playing at statesmanship, playing above all at politics. Nothing is very real to him, not even money; he put all he had into an irrigation project and left it l there. Just now he irrigates with the tears Tn his voice the arid places in the Republican party where loyalty should grow.
 A Typical Senator
 | "A SyptCNi StHdlOT IS MT. FT6llnR- huysen of New Jersey. one of the | smaller business men being drawn l into public life. Son of a country minister, he started as an insurance agent Nature equipped him with
 unusual energy and aggressiveness and those two qualities brought suo- cess in writing insurance. Nothing in his early training inhibited his robust temperament. Buddy and l vigorous he Is not sicklied OCT with f any pale cast whatever. Plainly he | has a zest for life. that easily ao-
 cessible American life where good
 mixers abound.
 Not a highbrow, he yet recognizes that literature has its place, on all four walls of a large room, and
 bought in sets.
 Having the American horror of loneliness, whether social or moral,
 you find him always going along with his party. When his set divides he balances between the two fac-
 tions as long as possible and elects l to go with the more numerous. 1 Simple, likable, honest, safe so long as majorities are safe, and that Is the theory we are working on, he is the average man in everything but s No, he also rises above the aver age in possessing such a name as l Frelinghuysen. You enter his library 1 and you see a banner of the cam ] palgn of Clay and Frelinghuysen. He i will recite to you campaign songs l of those unsuccessful candidates for i President and vice president. An 1 other Frelinghuysen was a Cabinet
 member. Another Frelinghuysen, of | the weslthier branch of the family. has an assured social position.
 l Frelinghuysen's Challenge 1 None of these famous Frelinghuy- sen is an ancestor. Each of them I is challenge. If he could have found an ancestori If an insurance 1 company were a high place from
 which to survey the world at ones feet But, mol Ancestors, power, pub licity, social prestige, all lie beyond 1 the reach of small business success. Not every senator has escaped so 1 nearly from the failures which at l tend success as has Frelinghuysen. i Nor Is his ecape complete. A sense l of unreality haunts him. Aggres-
 siveness in his case covers It, as 1t 1 so often does a feeling of weak
 ness. After he has clustered through l
 you and ask, Did make a damn | fool of myself? Now. the point | was trying to make was, etc. Did 1 I get it clear? Or did I seem like a damn fool?"
 Less agile minded than Senator
 Edge. he watches the motions of his l New Jersey colleague as a fascinated 1 bird watches those of a snake or a 1 cat Intellectually he Is not at ease,
 even in the Senate.
 The Harding Set
 l Another of the Harding set Is | Harry New of Indiana. one of the
 "wa'al naow" school of statesmen,
 in dress and speech the perfect | county chairman of the stage. The | broad -brimmed black felt hat win | ter and summer, has withstood all the
 insidious attacks of fashion. The | nasal voice has equally resisted all l the temptations to conformity with 1 the softer tones which are now everywhere heard. In politics one | has to be regular, and New has the
 impulse to Individuality, which with | Borah and LaFollette manifests it,
 self in political isolation. With New | 1t manifests itself in hat and speech New thus remains a person. not c 1 corded "aye" when MT. Lodge votes
 faye" and mo" when MT. Lodge
 votes mo-" But this Is hardly fair
 MT. New has been irregular in other | ways. He has not made money, he | has lost it. fortune in stone
 quarry. He is indifferent to it. This
 marks him as a person. He would i rather whip a stream for trout thar | go after dollars with a landing net
 Fisherman New
 Whipping a stream for trout Is the | clue to Harry New. If you are g
 fisherman you impute all sorts ol
 wiles. to the fish. You match youl
 wits against the sharp wits under the water, and your ego is fortified
 when the day being dark and your
 hand being cunning, you land mess from the stream. The world is g
 trout stream to New. The hat anc
 the nasal accent are the good old flies that Isaak Walton recom-
 mended.
 A playboy of the western plains
 New would be happier if his col
 league, Jim Watson, did not take
 himself seriously as a politician
 .Jim," says New. lis an orator q
 great orator, but he ought to lei
 politics alone; as a politician he is like all orators, a child"
 New Is no orator. A fair division
 would be for Watson to be the ora
 tor and New the politician. But nc
 one is ready to admit that he Is nc
 politician. For New politics is a
 craft; for Watson it is embraces. Al
 dinner in Indiana, NeN. contrived
 to have his rival for the senator
 ship. Beveridge, and the politically
 outlawed mayor of Indianapolis, Lew
 Shanks, not invited. Watson would
 have led them both in with an arm
 around the neck of each. That in-
 dividualism whicL makes New pre-