an invalid too tired to be fair; for a reason so
obviously disingenuous that Mr. Lansing had the sympathy of the
country. He should either have told the truth then and there or
forever have held his peace; and had he remained mute out of the
mystery would have grown a myth. The fictitious Lansing would have
become an historical character. But he must needs write a book. It
does not make pleasant reading. It does not make its author a hero.

It does, however, answer the question the curious asked at the time
of his appointment: "Why did the President make Mr. Lansing
Secretary of State?"

BOIES PENROSE

The most striking victim of the American propensity for
exaggeration is the senior Senator from Pennsylvania, Boies
Penrose. He has a personality and contour that lend themselves to
caricature. Only a few deft strokes are needed to make his
ponderous figure and heavy jowl the counterpart of a typical boss,
an institution for which the American people have a pardonable
affection in these days of political quackery. For, when the worst
is said of the imposing array of bosses from Tweed down to the
present time, they could be forgiven much because they were what
they were. That is why, perhaps, the altogether fanciful picture of
Penrose, propped on his pillows with his telephone at his bedside
directing the embattled delegates at Chicago, who in sheer
desperation turned to Warren G. Harding, is dwelt upon fondly by a
deluded public.

Penrose does not despise the appurtenances of bossism. If the truth
were told he probably likes the idea of being represented as the
hard-fisted master of party destinies. He knows that such a
reputation inspires awe if not respect, on the part of the rank and
file, from the humble precinct worker to the gentleman of large
affairs who provides the necessary campaign funds. It has its
value, sentimental as well as practical, for the American people
likes to set up its own political idols. The politicians who for
the moment guide the destinies of the nation are so misdrawn, so
illuminated with virtues and endowed with vices quite foreign to
them, that they frequently achieve a personality quite fictitious,
but which, none the less, passes current in the popular mind as
genuine.

Nothing could be more grotesque, for example, than the picture of
Senator Smoot, who is merely a sublimated messenger boy, as one of
the arbiters of the Republican policies; or of Senator Lodge, by
sheer s