"HOT-AIR" CHARGES its way into print in spite of him, jauntily dismissed them as merely "hot air." No extraordinary keenness of insight is needed to see the folly of such an attitude when assumed by the head of a great department toward a scandal which had tainted the whole atmosphere of that department. The time for discovering that the Tulloch charges were only "hot air" would have come when the charges had been examined and discredited by evidence, or the lack of it. It was the same way at every stage of the proceedings. First Mr. Payne would talk to no one about what was going on, then he would go to the opposite extreme and become loquacious. One day he would insist that the press had dragged up the whole miserable business for sensational purposes, and was magnifying molehills into mountains; the next, he would declare that, gross as were the iniquities already brought to light, he foresaw worse revelations yet to come. These shifts of position were attributed in some quarters to bad faith and a purpose to deceive the public, in others to a frequent change of policy by the Administration. As a matter of fact, they were merely the fruit of Mr. Payne's idiosyncrasies. He had been for years an invalid, whose illness took on changeful phases from day to day. It might find him in good spirits on waking, and leave him in deep dejection at bedtime. One week he needed all his will power to force himself through his regular routine of duty, the next would see him as eager as a fighting-cock. Time-tried campaigner as he was, the maker and destroyer of other men's political fortunes, he had a heart as tender as a woman's in the presence of distress; and a fresh discovery that some trusted employee had been leading a double life would throw over him a pall of depression of which he could not relieve himself for a fortnight. Through the whole of this trying period the single prominent figure that stood always in one place, with face turned in one direction, was the President's. His policy never wavered, his force of character overrode every obstacle. Even the indefatigable Bristow, the special investigator clothed with the powers of detective, judge, jury and executioner, seemed inclined to pause now and then in his work and turn aside for a moment when the train of testimony bore too straight toward some public officer high in confidence; at once would come fresh orders from the White House, never fired THE PRESIDENT'S FIRMNESS into the air for the benefit of the outside multitude, but shot right at the mark, like: "Follow up So-and-so"; "Do not let up on such-andsuch a line of search"; "The enclosed newspaper paragraph suggests a new lead; get your hands on everybody concerned." When the prosecution of the thieves and grafters seemed to lag a little more than circumstances justified, and the District Attorney explained that the delay was due to the immense burden of work thrown upon the law-officers of the Government, the President quietly reached out and brought to their aid two of the best lawyers he knew in private life: Charles J. Bonaparte, a sworn foe to spoilsmen everywhere and an unsparing critic of Federal administrations in the past, and Holmes Conrad, a stanch Democrat of the old school, who could have no compunctions of any sort in hunting down Republican rogues. All the "politics" of the situation, as far as Mr. Roosevelt could see, was the politics of capturing rascals and putting them into the penitentiary or the pillory, regardless of who they were or by whom appointed, or what the particular influence that still stood at their backs. If damage were to come to the party, it would come, he believed, ΙΟΙ |