is always the function of the
Roosevelts to take from the Bryans. But it is a little silly for an
agitator to cry thief when the success of his agitation has led to the
adoption of his ideas. It is like the chagrin of the socialists because
the National Progressive Party had "stolen twenty-three planks," and it
makes a person wonder whether some agitators haven't an overdeveloped
sense of private property.

I do not see the statesman in Bryan. He has been something of a voice
crying in the wilderness, but a voice that did not understand its own
message. Many people talk of him as a prophet. There is a great deal of
literal truth in that remark, for it has been the peculiar work of Bryan
to express in politics some of that emotion which has made America the
home of new religions. What we know as the scientific habit of mind is
entirely lacking in his intellectual equipment. There is a vein of
mysticism in American life, and Mr. Bryan is its uncritical prophet. His
insights are those of the gifted evangelist, often profound and always
narrow. It is absurd to debate his sincerity. Mr. Bryan talks with the
intoxication of the man who has had a revelation: to skeptics that always
seems theatrical. But far from being the scheming hypocrite his enemies
say he is, Mr. Bryan is too simple for the task of statesmanship. No
bracing critical atmosphere plays about his mind: there are no cleansing
doubts and fruitful alternatives. The work of Bryan has been to express a
certain feeling of unrest--to embody it in the traditional language of
prophecy. But it is a shrewd turn of the American people that has kept
him out of office. I say this not in disrespect of his qualities, but in
definition of them. Bryan does not happen to have the naturalistic
outlook, the complete humanity, or the deliberative habit which modern
statecraft requires. He is the voice of a confused emotion.

Woodrow Wilson has a talent which is Bryan's chief defect--the scientific
habit of holding facts in solution. His mind is lucid and flexible, and
he has the faculty of taking advice quickly, of stating something he has
borrowed with more ease and subtlety than the specialist from whom he got
it. Woodrow Wilson's is an elegant and highly refined intellect, nicely
balanced and capable of fine adjustment. An urbane civilization produced
it, leisure has given it spaciousness, ease has made it generous. A mind
without tension, its roots are not in the somewhat barba