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''It was [Harding's] mission to compose the prejudices and conflicts at home, to lessen the threats of renewed war. When in two years he died, new peace treaties had been made; tranquillity had been restored; employment had been renewed and a long period of prosperity had begun. . . . My first meeting with Warren Harding was during the War. Late one evening the then Senator came to my office. When he was announced, there flashed into my mind the thought that here was some complaint or request. . . . Instead the Senator said simply: 'I've not come to get anything. I just want you to know that if you wish the help of a friend, telephone me what you want. I am there to serve and to help.' That statement was typical of him.
"I accompanied the President to Alaska. . . . We came to know that here was a man whose soul was being seared by a great disillusionment. We saw him gradually weaken from mental anxiety. Warren Harding had a dim realization that he had been betrayed by a few of the men whom he had trusted, by men who he had believed were his devoted friends. It was later proved in the courts that these men had betrayed not alone | his] friendship and trust but their country. That was the tragedy of the life of Warren Harding. . . . The breakdown of the faith of the people in the honesty of the Government [is] a crime for which punishment can never atone. . . . Warren Harding was a man of delicate sense of honor, of sympathetic heart, of transcendent gentleness of soul ... of passionate patriotism ... of deep religious feeling." ¶ After a year's trial President Hoover last week exiled dial telephones from the White House.
¶ President Hoover's name was last week posted on the bulletin board of Washington's fashionable Racquet Club for failure to pay a 25¢ house bill. Telephone calls by Son Allan accounted for the bill. Payment was quickly made and a clerk reprimanded.
¶ By executive order last week President Hoover opened confidential income tax returns of the U. S. to officials of States with local income tax laws. Purpose: to help States catch evaders of local levies. No one below a governor could request the inspection privilege.
¶ Last week President Hoover gave a garden party to 800 disabled War veterans. To a man in a wheel chair who said he was soon returning to California, the President remarked: "Fine! I'm not a native but I've lived there long enough to know what's the best place for a disabled veteran. It isn't often a Californian can be happy anywhere else very long."
*This was President Hoover's retort to William Randolph Hearst's $5,000,000,000 public works bond issue.
†lnto his Cabinet in 1921 Harding brought what he called "best minds." After a decade Secretary of State Hughes is Chief Justice of the U. S.; Secretary Mellon still sits in the Treasury; Attorney General Daugherty is a political outcast; Postmaster General Hays is cinema tsar; Secretary of the Interior Fall is on the penitentiary doorstep; Secretary of Commerce Hoover is in the White House; Secretary of Labor Davis is in the Senate from Pennsylvania. Dead are Secretaries of War Weeks, of the Navy Denby, of Agriculture Wallace.