iberal journal, a "Manchester Guardian"
of America. But an opportunity to buy a newspaper in New York is an
opportunity to invest $3,000,000 or $4,000,000, to lose $500,000 or
more for several years thereafter and to become the national figure
that Mr. Ochs is, or Mr. Reid is, or Mr. Munsey is, certainly
something far short of the American Disraeli or even the Baruch of
the War Industries Board.

Mr. Baruch, you will observe, has no vulgar illusions about what
money will buy. He likes money. It brings with it a certain
personal enlargement. It adds to the romance of himself in his own
eyes, as well as in the eyes of others. It procures the flattering
ears of journalists, and a place on front pages, and, if one
inclines toward ostentation, even the ownership of a newspaper
itself.

But money will not buy a commanding place in public life. And even
if it would buy such a place he would not be content to do other
than earn one. He wants to repeat the thrills of his youth in the
market, in the thrills of a second youth in Washington. He is
incurably romantic.

To sum him all up in a sentence--he has an extraordinary sense of
wonder and an unequalled sense of reality, the sense of wonder
directed toward himself, the sense of reality directed largely but
not exclusively elsewhere.

ELIHU ROOT

Elihu Root might have been so much publicly and has been so little
that a moral must hang somewhere upon his public career.

He might have been many things. He might have been President of the
United States if his party ever could have been persuaded to
nominate him. He might have been one of the great Chief Justices of
the Supreme Court if a President could have been persuaded to
appoint him. He might have given to the United States Senate that
weight and influence which have disappeared from it, if he had had
a passion for public service. He might have been Secretary of State
in the most momentous period of American foreign relations if a
certain homely instinct in Mr. Harding had not led him to prefer
the less brilliant Mr. Hughes. He might have made history. But he
has not. Out of his eight years in the Cabinet and six years in the
Senate nothing constructive came that will give his name a larger
place in history than that of Rufus Choate, another remarkable
advocate who was once Attorney General.

Distrust has always barred his way, distrust of a mind and
character to which problems appear as exercises in ingenui