Mr. Harding, being commonplace himself,
likes a more commonplace kind of greatness than Mr. Root's. Those
who were close to him said the President feared that Mr. Root would
"put something over on him." A certain moral quality in Mr. Hughes
outweighed Mr. Root's special experience and wider reputation.

Mr. Roosevelt used to tell a story boastfully of his own
practicality which throws much light on Mr. Root and upon the
reason for Mr. Root's comparative failure as a public man.

"When I took Panama," he would say, "I found all the members of my
Cabinet helpful except one. Mr. Root readily found numerous
precedents. Mr. Taft was sympathetic and gave every assistance
possible. Mr. Knox alone was silent. At last I turned to him in the
Cabinet meeting and I said, 'I should like to hear from the
Attorney General on the legality of what we are doing.' Mr. Knox
looked up and said, 'Mr. President, if I were you I should not have
the slightest taint of legality about the whole affair.'"

Such was Mr. Root. Public questions always were likely to occur to
him first as exercises in mental adroitness rather than as moral
problems. His extremely agile mind finds its chief pleasure in its
own agility. Then he was always the advocate, always instinctively
devoting himself to bolstering up another man's cause for him.

"He is a first class second," said Senator Penrose, objecting to
him as a candidate for President at the Republican Convention of
1916, "but he is not his own man."

He is always someone else's mouthpiece and publicly he is chiefly
remembered as Mr. Roosevelt's mouthpiece. When he came to New York
and made the speech that elected Hughes Governor and made possible
Hughes as Secretary of State he said, "I speak for the President."
He equally spoke for the President when he delivered that other
remembered address, warning the States that unless they mended
their ways the Federal Government would absorb their vitality.

The law is a parasitic profession and Mr. Root's public career is
parasitic. He lacks originality, he lacks passion--there is no
place for passion in that clear mind--he lacks force. He elucidates
other men's ideas, works out or puts into effect their policies,
presents their case, is, by temperament, by reason of gifts
amounting almost to genius, of defects that go with those gifts
always and everywhere, the lawyer. His public career has been
controlled by this circumstance.

I doubt if he ever had