PRESIDENT WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING

BEHIND THE MIRRORS

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DISINTEGRATION AT WASHINGTON

By the Author of "The Mirrors of Washington"

ILLUSTRATED

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
1922

Copyright, 1922
by
G. P. Putnam's Sons

Made in the United States of America

[Pg iii]

FOREWORD

"A book like the Mirrors of Downing Street is well enough. It is thefashion to be interested in English notables. But that sort of thingwon't do here. The American public gets in the newspapers all it wantsabout our national politicians. That isn't book material."

An editor said that just a year ago when we told him of the plan for theMirrors of Washington. And, frankly, it seemed doubtful whetherreaders generally cared enough about our national politicalpersonalities to buy a book exclusively concerned with them.

But they did. The Mirrors of Washington became an instantaneoussuccess. It commanded almost unprecedented attention. It was heartilydamned and vociferously welcomed. By the averagely curious citizen,eager for insight behind the gilded curtains of press-agentry andpartisanship, it was hailed as a shaft of common-sense sunlight throwninto a clay-footed wilderness of political pap. And close to one hundredthousand copies were absorbed by a public evidently genuinely interestedin an uncensored analysis of the[Pg iv] people who are running us, or ruiningus, as individual viewpoint may determine.

The Mirrors of Washington was by way of being a pioneer, at least forAmerica. Overseas, it is habitual enough to exhibit beneath the literarymicroscope the politically great and near-great, and even to dissectthem—often enough without anæsthesia. To our mind, such criticalexamination is healthily desirable. Here in America, we arecase-hardened to the newspapers, whose appraisal of political personagesis, after all, pretty well confined to the periods of pre-electioncampaigning. And we are precious little influenced by this sort ofthing; the pro papers are so pro, and the anti papers so anti, that fewtry to determine how much to believe and how much to dismiss as routinepartisan prevarication.

But a book! Political criticism, and personality analyses, frozen intothe so-permanently-appearing dignity of a printed volume—that issomething else again! Even a politician who dismisses with a smile or ashrug recurrent discompliments in the news columns or the anonymouseditorial pages of the press, is tempted to burst into angry protestwhen far less bitter, far more balanced criticism of himself is voicedin a book. A phenomenon, that, doubtless revisable as time goes on andthe reflections of more book-bound Mirrors brighten the eyes of thosewho read and jangle the nerves of those who run—for office.[Pg v]

Beh