NEW BOOK: The Behinder

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NEW BOOK

BEHIND THE SCENES IN POLITICS−Anonymous−Button ($2.50). It is always pleasing to meet a man who is a vivid personality. When that personality has something to say not only interesting, but frequently penetrating in judgment, he is a real treat. Such a man is Anonymous.

Anonymous is too often cheated of his laurels. He writes a good book on politics and in a short time Edward G. Lowry or Clinton W. Gilbert conies forward to claim it.

Anonymous is not an "Insider." He is a "Behinder."

Of the "Insiders" he says: "I detest those who advertise themselves as insiders. The crop of them on the Roosevelt and Wilson soil was tremendous. The sense of importance is tempting. The best of men succumb to it. I remember Colonel House sending for me one day and how I speeded my taxi to hear the fate of the world. He said to me: 'Here is something between you and me and the angels. I have given you confidences, but never one like this.'

"I said: 'I know. I have just been in Wall Street lunching at the Midday Club. They told me there. I have stopped at the Union Club on my way uptown. They told me there. There is a good chance of an armistice being signed soon and you are sailing tomorrow very secretly for Europe.'"

Of President Makers: "I have always found it more difficult to find one hundred per cent partisans of a candidate before he is selected than it is after the nomination. Harding knew this as well as any man. To a stranger who had explained to him that he had been against his nomination Harding exclaimed: 'I am glad to see you! I always knew that some day I would find the man who had nothing to do with making me President.'"

Of Independents: "One of the greatest exhibitions of an instinct to be good divorced completely from the obligation to be intelligent lies in the tendency of those unripe in American politics to worship mere independence. I confess that I have found that independence is a bad way to get joint action of any kind in real motion. Usually when two independents rally around the banner of independence it results in two banners of independence and then four and then eight. No man or woman in the world is so independent as an independent. As political workers they are usually fanatically unselfish for six months and then as temperamental as prima donnas forever after."

Of Mud Slinging: "Cleveland was the object of much underground accusation. Roosevelt, without any cause, was called a drunkard. Wilson, as much as any man, suffered from stories grotesquely fabricated and of peculiarly unrestrained venom. Harding went through these filthy attacks before election. To the best of my knowledge, for every vote lost because of a whispering campaign directed against him, the candidate gained a little more than one vote.

"It is an extraordinary fact that the silk-stocking element is often the greatest offender in whispering campaigns. It is the woman with the low-necked dress and with orchids, and it is the young broker seeking to justify his political prejudices, who lend themselves to being carriers of these scandal stories.