Behind the Mirrors: The Psychology of Disintegration at Washington

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Gilbert Clinton Wallace. Behind the Mirrors: The Psychology of Disintegration at Washington

FOREWORD

CHAPTER I. PRESIDENT HARDING AND THE CLOCK. GOD'S TIME AS IT WAS IN THE AMERICAN POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

CHAPTER II. GOD'S TIME AS IT IS; AN INGERSOLL THAT REQUIRES MUCH WINDING

CHAPTER III. GOLDEN WORDS TURN TO BRASS

CHAPTER IV. THE SUPER-PRESIDENT GOES DOWN IN THE GENERAL SMASH

CHAPTER V. LOOKING FOR ULTIMATE WISDOM – IN THE BOSOM OF THÉRÈSE

CHAPTER VI. SHALL WE FIND OUR SALVATION SITTING, LIKE MR. MELLON, ON A PILE OF DOLLARS

CHAPTER VII. THE BOTTLE NECK OF THE CABINET, AND WHAT IS IN THE BOTTLE

CHAPTER VIII. THE GREATEST COMMON DIVISOR OF MUCH LITTLENESS

CHAPTER IX. CONGRESS AT LAST WITH SOMETHING TO DO HAS NO ONE TO DO IT

CHAPTER X. INTERLUDE. INTRODUCING A FEW MEMBERS OF THE UPPER HOUSE BOOBOISIE AND SOME OTHERS

CHAPTER XI. A PEAK OF REALITY THRUSTS UP ON THE LEVEL PLAIN OF SHAMS

CHAPTER XII. THE HAPPY ENDING

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"A book like the Mirrors of Downing Street is well enough. It is the fashion to be interested in English notables. But that sort of thing won't do here. The American public gets in the newspapers all it wants about our national politicians. That isn't book material."

An editor said that just a year ago when we told him of the plan for the Mirrors of Washington. And, frankly, it seemed doubtful whether readers generally cared enough about our national political personalities to buy a book exclusively concerned with them.

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The Greeks had left us records which showed that the human mind was as good three thousand years ago as it is today, or better. We shut our eyes to this bit of evidence by abandoning the study of the classics and excluding all allusion to them in the oratory of our Congress. And Mr. Wells in his History has since justified us by proving that the Greeks were after all only the common run of small-town folk – over-press-agented, perhaps, by some fellows in the Middle Ages who had got tired of the Church and who therefore pretended that there was something bigger and better in the world than it was.

So we pinned our hopes on the Martians and spent our time frantically signalling to the nearby planet, asking whether, when the earth grew as cold as King David when his physicians "prescribed by way of poultice a young belle," and responded only weakly to the caress of the Sun, when its oceans dried up and only a trickle of water came down through its valleys from the melting ice at its poles, we should not, like the fancied inhabitants of the nearest celestial body, have evolved at last into super-beings. We wanted some evidence from our neighbors that, in spite of the Greeks, by merely watching the clock we should arrive at a higher estate.

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