The Republican
fathers, who now feel a sense of responsibility, after a lapse of
many years, for the future of party and country, do not yet know
how to take him.
As a campaign asset his value could be expressed in intelligible
terms. But as a party liability, or asset,--many a good Republican
wishes he knew which,--he remains an enigma. There is not one of
the array of elders of either political persuasion who, while
laughing at his satirical sword-play, does not watch him covertly
out of the corner of the eye, trembling at the potential ruin they
consider him capable of accomplishing.
With all his weaknesses,--principally an almost hilarious political
irregularity,--but two Republican hands were raised against him in
the Senate when he was nominated for the Court of Saint James. When
he rather unbecomingly filliped John Bull on the nose in his maiden
speech as the premier ambassador, incidentally ridiculing some of
his own countrymen's war ideals, President Harding and Secretary
Hughes, gravely and with rather obvious emphasis, tried to set the
matter aright as best they could. But there was no hint of
reprimand; only a fervent hope that the mercurial Harvey would
remain quiescent until the memory of the episode passed.
The quondam editor, now the representative of his country on the
Supreme Council, in which capacity he is even more important than
as Ambassador, represents a new strain in American politics.
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