ar was subtly
turned by his Cabinet or by the Senate or by the press or by all three
into something futile and ridiculous or contemptible. It was a complete
demonstration of the silliness of the fiction that the President could
be an autocrat if he chose. Even had Burbank seen through the fawnings
and the flatteries of the traitors round him, and dismissed his Cabinet,
whatever men he might have put into it would not have attached
themselves to his lost cause, but would have used their positions to
ingratiate themselves with the power that had used and exhausted and
discarded him.

He had the wisdom, or the timidity, to proceed always with caution and
safe legality and so to avoid impeachment and degradation. His chief
attempts were, naturally, upon monopoly; they were slyly balked by his
sly Attorney General, and their failure was called by the press, and was
believed by the people, the cause of the hard times which were just
beginning to be acute. What made him such an easy victim to his
lieutenants was not their craft, but the fact that he had lost his
sense of right and wrong. A man of affairs may not, indeed will not,
always steer by that compass; but he must have it aboard. Without it he
can not know how far off the course he is, or how to get back to it. No
ship ever reached any port except that of failure and disgrace, unless
it, in spite of all its tackings before the cross-winds of practical
life, kept in the main to the compass and to the course.

His last stagger was--or seemed to be--an attempt to involve us in a war
with Germany. I say "seemed to be" because I hesitate to ascribe a
project as infamous to him, even when unbalanced by despair. The first
ugly despatch he ordered his Goodrich Secretary of State to send,
_somehow_ leaked to the newspapers before it could be put into cipher
for transmission. It was not sent--for from the press of the entire
country rose a clamor against "deliberate provocation of a nation with
which we are, and wish to remain, at peace." He repudiated the despatch
and dismissed the Secretary of State in disgrace to disgrace--the one
stroke in his fight against Goodrich in which he got the advantage. But
that advantage was too small, too doubtful and too late.

His name was not presented to the convention.

XXXIII

A "SPASM OF VIRTUE"

I forced upon Goodrich my place as chairman of the national committee
and went abroad with my daughters. We stayed there until Scar