And a
perfectly logical mind would flirt with Disraeli warily. It would
say, "One does not at fifty change from business to politics with
success. Disraeli didn't start out in Wall Street. As the Germans
say, 'what will become vinegar sours early.'"
Mr. Baruch slips easily through the three sides of this reasoning.
Life is not logical. Fate is not logical. He is not logical.
He has had his taste of public life under Wilson and he wants more.
I venture to say that he would give every one of his many millions
and be as poor, well, poorer than any member of the present
cabinet, to be in the place Mr. Hughes occupies to-day.
Everyone who knows him has heard him say that when he entered
office he resolved to quit business because he learned so much as
head of the War Industries Board that it would be improper for him
ever to go into the market again. There is more to it than that;
public life has given him a profound distaste for mere money-
making. He wrote to Senator Kenyon the other day that he had not
made a dollar since he went to work for the government. I believe
that to be true for I have found him an extraordinarily truthful
and honest man. He has that desire for public distinction which is
so often characteristic of his race. He has the idealism, a
characteristic also of the race which gave to the world two great
religions.
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