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and shared responsibility, answerable to God and country. The Republic summons them to their duty and I invite co-operation.

There are two conceptions of government. Mr. Harding's inaugural makes it clear, if it had not been made clear before, that of these two he chooses one and rejects the other. According to the one conception, the Executive is the source of authority, 'he promulgator of policies as well as the executor of them, and the legislative branch is useful

principally as a means of disseminating through debate the Governmental policies of the people, and of serving as the more or less effective check upon the Executive's initiative and power. According to the other conception, the real authority of the Government, derived from the people, is exercised through the deliberations and actions of the legislative branch, which promulgates the laws, leaving to the Executive the function of putting these laws into effect and otherwise carrying out the will

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of the people as legislatively expressed. The one conception was embodied in the Imperial German Government. The other is perhaps most logically embodied in the Government of Great Britain. Mr. Harding's inaugural indicates that he leans towards a government not by an Executive, acting through clerks of his own appointing, with an acquiescent Duma or Reichstag to give it a semblance of democracy, but to a government by a party through parliamentary discussion and conference.

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EXIT WILSON:
WILSON: ENTER HARDING

THAT'S the use of wasting this ideal day on a small show?" complained a Washington resident this morning. "We haven't hac such brilliant sunshine as this all winter. What a day for a real military parade!"

What a day, indeed! But this Fourth of March falls at a time when individuals and nations need to save every possible penny. Hence Mr. Harding wisely frowned on a repetition of the traditional great parade and inaugural ball.

I am glad of it. For there have been two gains: First, money saved; second, a concentration of popular attention, not on marching men by day and dancing women by night, but on the vital feature of the celebration-the taking of the oath of office, followed by the Inaugural Address.

Of course this sudden simplicity does not please the hotel-keepers (whose reported demand of extortionate prices is said to have confirmed Mr. Harding in his decision). They say that a repetition of the old-time festivities would bring twice as many strangers to Washington as have been here to-day-and fill the hotel men's pockets with twice as much. They are probably right.

Again, to-day's comparative austerity does not please the ordinary observer, who is sure to be a lover of gold lace and color and rhythm and vibrant motion and parading military bands and the general holiday air.

Finally, it does not please those who justly contend that a great pageant, bringing many folks to Washington who would not come otherwise, means the extension to that additional number of the inspiration and the spirit of patriotism sure to be engendered by their intimacy, no matter how short, with the center of our National Government.

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STAFF CORRESPONDENCE

it. At least he could escort Mr. Harding to the Capitol. White House attendants aided to his car the broken man, whose commanding presence and potential power had made him a towering figure in two continents. Had the band struck up a funeral dirge, it would not have seemed altogether inappropriate. The bells of St. John's, just back of me, might have tolled, too, for an Administration which had but an hour more to live. When the little procession of motors moved from the portico at a snail's pace, the funereal impression was only heightened. It took an incredible time for it to come down the drive to where the ruddy-faced battalion of the Washington High School Boys in uniform was drawn up and where many of us were waiting. The motors came slowly, silently along, Mr. Wilson sitting limply in his corner but looking better than

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one would suppose. Not until the motors passed the gate and emerged into the street was there any cheering; even then hardly a hat was lifted, I was amazed to see, in response to Mr. Wilson's attempts to lift his or Mr. Harding's robuster gesture.

Yet there was a real feeling of sympathy for the retiring President on the part of the crowd. A man close to me sighed: "There he goes out of the White House gate for the last time. It's all over, poor man!"

Another rejoined: "Well, we're through with one-man rule, and, what's more, a government by introspection." He added: "Look at those gates. They had to be closed during the war, but, under Wilson, the one-man ruler and the man of introspection, they stayed closed. Under Harding they will be open." And they were.

This afternoon the

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PRESIDENT WILSON AND PRESIDENT-ELECT HARDING ON THEIR WAY TO THE CAPITOL

people were swarming over the White it on boxes and mugs and trays, and it House grounds as of yore.

ENNSYLVANIA AVENUE leads to the

P Capitol, and the avenue was lively

enough-full of folk, white and black, high and low, rich and poor. But one missed the temporary stands familiar on former occasions, erected at good vantage-points for a view of the parade. Then, too, the marching clubs and the militiamen from afar and the troops were lacking. Four companies of cavalry from Fort Myer escorted the Presidential party.

The next feature which the great body of the people were permitted to see was the taking of the oath of office. heard:

We

I, Warren Gamaliel Harding, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God

raised the

Then the doorkeepers standards. The trumpeters blew a fanfare and the Marine Band crashed forth the National anthem.

There he stood, our new President. Yesterday he was only one among ninetysix Senators, his name not mentioned nearly as often as those of some of his colleagues; to-day, the appointer of tens of thousands of officials whose salaries aggregate over a hundred million dollars; the director of our foreign and domestic policy; the possessor of more power than has any other ruler. A year ago his face was unknown to most men. Now you may see it in photographs and prints all over Washington, you may see

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greets you from the front pages of all the newspapers.

The event of the day was the Inaugural Address, not only notable in itself, but notable beyond any preceding address because a new invention, the amplifier, made its every word distinctly heard by any one in the many thousands massed in the great space bounded by the Capitol, the Congressional Library opposite, and the Senate and House buildings on either side. The vast hrong, marvelously quiet, was fascinated by the machine's complete success. During the thirty-seven minutes' duration of the address men, women, and even urchins perched in the trees, gave it their entire attention. Just before the close, however, a man near me remarked: "An amplifier is all very well; what Harding needs is a condenser."

But to most it did not seem to contain too much repetition. There were frequent nods of approval and now and then a burst of instant applause or an emphatic "That's good!" as the new President said: "We need a rigid and yet sane economy," or, "I speak for administrative efficiency, for lightened tax burdens, ... for an end to Government's experiment in business and for more efficient business in government," or, "I earnestly hope a way may be found which will . . . consecrate all America, materially and spiritually, body and soul, to National defense."

Occasionally there was an explanatory comment, as, for instance, when a man said, "That means reciprocity," as Mr. Harding declared, "Ties of trade bind nations in closest intimacy and none

MRS. WILSON AND MRS. HARDING STARTING FROM THE WHITE HOUSE TO THE CAPITOL

may receive except as he gives. We have not strengthened ours in accordance with our resources or our genius."

During the delivery of the phrases concerning foreign policy, however, expressive glances warned me that I should hear some adverse criticism Later it came to me as follows from an "irreconcilable:" "You see that Harding with one hand apparently throws over the League of Nations when he speaks about 'the wisdom of the inherited policy of non-involvement in Old World affairs;' but with the other hand he accepts some sort of union with the League when he says, 'We are ready to associate ourselves with the nations of the world, great and small, for conference.'"

A

DISTINGUISHED diplomat objected thus: "Wilson swung to the extreme of sentimental internationalism. Is Harding going to swing to the opposite extreme of crude nationalism? The representatives of foreign countries who sat around him to-day might have thought that, in certain paragraphs, they were listening to a campaign speech. They admire America. They appreciate what America has done for them. But at this exigency, brought about by German defiance of her pledged faith, they did expect from the new President some specific word of sympathy, if not of co-operation, with the Entente Allies. In that they were disappointed."

There was a little knot of fifty wounded soldiers from the Walter Reed Hospital who had been wheeled to a wooden platform near Harding. Pointing to them, he interpolated at an appropriate place in his address: "This Republic will never be ungrateful for the services you have rendered." That brought the loudest applause of all.

Not until the end did the people realize that they were listening to a sermon, for not until the end did the preacher announce his text. It was from the book of the prophet Micah, chapter vi., verse 8: "What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" Mr. Harding had kissed the Bible at that passage, the favorite passage of Theodore Roosevelt and of many another. The attention of the crowd became sensibly reverent as the speaker recited the verse.

Harding made in general a favorable impression. His manner was not autocratic. His speech was, as a rule, clear and cogent. I heard a woman say: "We have had Wilson eight years, and I have not understood him. I understand Harding already."

ELBERT F. BALDWIN. Washington, D.C., March 4, 1921.

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These etchings were selected from the 1921 exhibition of the Brooklyn Society of Etchers, an organization which includes many of the bestknown American etchers of to-day. A collection of their prints is being sent to all the prominent art centers of the country. "An etching," says the announcement of the Society, "is a print from an incised plate of metal. The plate is coated with wax, drawn upon by a stylus or needle, which lays bare the surface, and immersed in a bath of acid, which bites into the exposed lines. . . . After completion the plate is covered with ink and the surface then wiped clean, leaving the lines full. A damp sheet of paper is laid on it, and it is passed under a roller, which presses the ink onto the paper. This produces the print." This method of expression has appealed to some of the greatest artists of modern times, including Rembrandt, Dürer, and Whistler

BY JAMES GIBBONS HUNEKER

AVID BELASCO presents Mrs. Leslie Carter!" I read no more.

I saw,

The faded playbill on my desk set whirring the subtle mechanism of memory, and presently I was launched on a little excursion into the past. Psychologists tell us that we live forward, think backward; a formula that neatly divides the past from the future; two aspects of one and the same thing. So the old-time announcement that headed this theater programme served the purpose of liberating from my frozen subconsciousness a cloud of recollections which swarmed like moths about a summer lamp. David Belasco was the lamp. and my memories of him the incessant moths; a mere piece of paper that became as potent as some antique and muttered conjuration whose magic evokes the wraiths of vanished years. crystal-clear, a young man with ravenblack hair, eyes so large and luminous that their iris had no defined color, the thick lashes and eyebrows a color-note for the face; the delicate aquiline nose that seemed less Syrian than Assyrian, and a profile that had something archaic and Eastern. You may see such sharp silhouettes on Babylonian or Egyptian tablets and tombs in the British Museum. Exotic, yes; but the vitality that burned in the eyes of the man and his few, significant gestures revealed an intense, concentrated nature, one that could be stopped by nothing short of extinction. And the personality of David Belasco to-day is not a whit altered-if anything it is intensified; not mellowed, because he was born without angles. He is as much a riddle as he was three decades ago. Personality is an eternal enigma.

This young man was given to wandering about the streets at night. Hard working in the daytime, after he saw the curtain fall he loved to walk, not alone for the fresh air, but to commune with his thoughts. He was always a mighty wrestler with his ideas. The logic of life implanted in his brain, and filtered through the sieve of heredity, was importunate. Why? it asked, and he had to furnish an answer or feel defeated. Nor were the questions that assailed his maturing brain only those of the theater. He had asked, Why? from the time he began to run away from his mother's apron-strings on those "wandering feet," as she satirically yet tenderly described his propensity to disappear daily from the hearth. All of us pretend to some philosophy of life, and the little David began early to construct one. When I first met him, he had definite ideas of art and life, though the crystallizing process was at its commencement. Notwithstanding the simplicity of his speech and bearing, David Belasco is a complex personality.

The paradoxes are many. He was, ily for him, born a "Sunday-child,"

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mother," the Irish phrase it. Now this responsive and sensitive nature of his one that has caused him much sorrow as well as joy-presents a masculine surface of so resistent a fiber that it has been as a coat of mail his life long. Many are the battles in which it has protected him. He is an idealist, but his idealism would have proved his undoing if it had not been served by a volition that could never be swerved. It seems strange to relate that such a dreamer possessed pugnacious prowess. This man with a sense of the beautiful could hold his own when necessary. There was once a famous English pugilist among the Belascos. In searching for the salient traits in the personality of David Belasco this little fact must not be forgotten. It is a paradox, all the same.

As there is a reason for everything, a peep at his forebears may aid us in the search for the characteristics. There is Jewish blood in his veins, more than

enough to furnish the "precious quintessence" of which George Du Maurier wrote. This, allied to the Portuguese strain, has, no doubt, lent to his fancy its rich coloring. But it is unsafe to generalize in these matters. There is Arthur Pinero, for example, who is of the same origin-both Portuguese and Jewish. He is all logic and realism; imagination seldom rules in his work. His beaver-like brow betokens the builder, not the dreamer. He is, while eminently the master of contemporary British drama, its least imaginative creator. Of course I mean what is commonly accepted as poetic, fanciful, whimsical, such as the productions of Barrie, Shaw, and the wonderful John Synge. Dramatic characterization and invention Pinero has in abundance. No one but a play-boy of the Western world could have conceived two such masterpieces as "Iris" and "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray." Nevertheless his Pegasus does not often climb starwards.

The foreign strains in David Belasco have made him true to type. Originally Portuguese, his parents hailed from England. Well known in the theatrical world, a restless race of beings, their gypsy strain has peeped out more than once in their son. He had an actor father, versatile to the point of destructiveness-for versatility is a good servant and bad master; and a mother, the home-maker about whom rallied these diverging units, a central point that gave the inquisitive lad some sense of stability. But always the quest after new fortunes; the far West, the Northwest, large cities and little, the bare hills beneath the few stars, the noisy mining towns and their crudeness. Like his Semitic ancestors, David was a wanderer on the face of the earth before he was out of short clothes. However, there were modifying influences. He came early under the mild and beneficent influence of the Roman Catholic priesthood. California was still semiSpanish. With his inherited love of all that is mystic, exotic, of rich and ordered ceremonial, of the luxury appertaining to the Lord in the ritual that recalls the Hebrew, even more ancient faiths, it is not surprising that the lad should fall in love with a strange religion. He loves it to-day. I have heard him speak with reverence and enthusiasm of the mysteries of Catholicism. They soothed and made captive his too centrifugal temperament at the hour when he was most given to flying off at a tangent. He is ever grateful to the sympathetic priest who saw so clearly into his youthful soul. But David Belasco has an older racial pull in him, and it has been the prime factor in his remarkable performances; for a vertuoso in several arts he is, a much greater actor than some he fathered artistically.

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