POLITICAL NOTES: Ablest, Wisest

When the Senate hung five reservations on the proposed entrance of the U. S. into the World Court last January, it heaved a sigh of thankfulness that the child of international brotherhood was pacified. But the Adherent Powers of the World Court ignored the Senate’s labors until September, and then swathed the U. S. reservations with counter-reservations. And so the child is back again. The next session of Congress will have to do something.

The Administration, searching, perhaps, for a graceful end to the wrangle, has taken a sudden interest in the comparatively aged Hague Court. Here is a, chance to do something big and clean in an international way. Last week Representative Stephen G. Porter of Pennsylvania, after a conference with President Coolidge, announced that he would put before Congress a resolution proposing a third Hague conference to codify international law. Whenever the Hague or the World Court is mentioned, Elihu Root is waited upon for an opinion. Wise, he has spoken:

“The differences of opinion and of interests among the nations which have long prevented the establishment of further rules of international law cannot be disposed of in a day . . . progress may be made now where progress never could be made before.”

If the Governor of North Carolina asked the Governor of South Carolina who was the ablest U. S. statesman of the 20th Century, the answer might be Woodrow Wilson. If Manhattan Schoolteacher Annie O’Rourke put the same question to little Isadore Israbinowsky, he might answer, according to the degree of his precocity, Calvin Coolidge or Alfred Emanuel Smith or Will Rogers. Certainly neither the Governor nor little Isadore would be likely to name Elihu Root. They had undoubtedly seen his name somewhere. Mr. Root must have done something or the mighty President Roosevelt would not have said of him: “He is the ablest man that has appeared in public life in any country in my time.” And again, a month ago, onetime (1916-21) Secretary of War Newton D. Baker, who wants the U. S. to forgive and forget in the matter of European War debts said: “I would appoint a committee headed by Elihu Root, whom I believe to be the wisest statesman in America. . . .”

But now Mr. Root has other problems than foreign debt settlements. He is watching his 82nd year flicker defiantly; he sees the Permanent Court of International Justice (World Court), which he helped to found in 1920, bandied about between Senate reservations and counter reservations (TIME, Oct. 4.). He hears politicians and editors, young enough to be his grandchildren, say that World Court membership for the U. S. is becoming impossible; he reads that the Official Spokesman (Mr. Coolidge), young enough to be his son, thinks the international outlook is gloomy. Perhaps Mr. Root is sitting at a desk in his Manhattan home writing his last great speech in a language that will prickle the flesh of a clammy World Court issue—perhaps he is preparing his autobiography; the story of a man who might have been President; a man with codes on his lips, with courts beneath his snowy crown, with creeds lurking in his steely eyes.

It was in the autumn of 1865, five months after General Lee’s surrender and Lincoln’s assassination, that a not-very-prosperous school teacher from upstate New York packed his valise, boarded a train for Manhattan. The townsfolk of Clinton said Elihu Root would make a name for himself— was he not the son of a mathematics professor; was he not valedictorian of his graduating class at Hamilton College at the age of 19? Within a few years, he organized a law partnership of his own. Some people called Mr. Root a “crook lawyer.” Mr. Root was not a crook, but he usually fixed things up for his clients, whether they were members of the notorious Tweed Ring or onetime (1881-85) U. S. President Chester A. Arthur. Great spawning corporations found use for the mental agility of Attorney Root. James J. Hill, J. P. Morgan and E. H. Harriman came to his office. Said E. H. Harriman: “Other attorneys tell us what we can’t do, Mr. Root tells us what we can do.”

In the ’90’s, it was considered proper for ambitious Republicans to ally themselves with the “reform element” of the party. Mr. Root soon found himself Chairman of the Judiciary Committee which was drawing up a new state constitution for New York.* People called it a model. In Washington the name of Elihu Root began to be whispered. President McKinley appointed him Secretary of War; President Roosevelt liked him, kept him in office. Mr. Root became busier than the one-handed piccolo player. He despatched 70,000 troops to put down General Aguinaldo’s insurrection in the Philippines and wrote a complete constitution and code of statutes for the Islands; he acted for the U. S. in the internation dispute over the Boxer Rebellion; he (not President Roosevelt as is popularly thought) had the biggest role in the settlement of the Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902; he reorganized the Army, creating a general staff and chief of staff; he smoothed out the Alaskan boundary dispute with Great Britain.

In 1905, President Roosevelt made him Secretary of State. Then after a bitter skirmish with William Randolph Hearst,† Mr. Root entered his international era. From Venezuela to the Newfoundland fisheries, from the Pan-American Conference to the Hague Court, this shrewd lawyer became the angel of arbitration. He was made head of the Carnegie Endowment, an organization with an income of $10,000,000 to spend for international peace. In 1912 he won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Meanwhile, Mr. Root was elected Senator from New York. After one term (1909-15) he became vexed, did not try for reelection. One day he said to Senator Fall: “I am tired of it. The Senate is doing such little things in such a little way.”

So, Mr. Root left the upper chamber of the lawmakers and had his chance for the Presidency. But as onetime corporation lawyer, it was a slim one. Again, in 1921, Mr. Harding and his Ohio adherents searching for a Secretary of State, passed him by. “That man Root,” grunted Mr. Harding, “has done more harm to the Republican party than any man in it. He is always pursuing some end of his own or of some outside interest.”

Elihu Root sits alone in politics; a partisan above partisanship. He has a creed which Democracy must have made him memorize before his octogenarian era. Clinton W. Gilbert* makes a moral of this creed: “If you have an adroit and energetic mind you will find public affairs uninteresting; except in their occasional phases. If you have such a mind and must enter politics, hide it; otherwise democracy will distrust you. Whatever you do, be dull.”

*Later, in 1915, Mr. Root drew up another constitution for New York, which a popular referendum refused to adopt.

† At that time, Publisher Hearst was perpetually trying to boom himself for President. Mr. Root, in the most sensational speech he ever made, curtly announced that Mr. Hearst was unfit for the Presidency and implied that President Roosevelt regarded the publisher as an inciter of the assassination of President McKinley.

*In the Mirrors of Washington.