Читать книгу The Goose-step: A Study of American Education онлайн

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So President Butler’s campaign continued, and with the help of D. O. Mills, the banker, and Elihu Root, the fox, and Bill Barnes, the infamous, he corralled the sixty-eight delegates of the New York state machine, and a few days before they departed for the Chicago convention we find President Butler giving them a dinner and making them a speech at the Republican Club. They went to Chicago, and in the hotel rooms where the wires were pulled President Butler argued and pleaded and fought, but in vain. One of the most prominent Republicans in the United States described these scenes to me, and told of the pitiful, impotent fury of Butler when finally Harding was nominated. He stormed about the room, denouncing this man and that man. “Look what I did for him, this, that and the other thing—and what he has done for me!” And when the delegation returned from Chicago, Butler received the newspaper reporters and poured out his balked egotism in a statement which startled the country. He denounced the campaign backers of General Wood, “a motley group of stock-gamblers, oil and mining promoters, munition makers, and other like persons.” These men, he said, had “with reckless audacity started out to buy the Presidency.” He went on to picture the New York delegation, the heroic sixty-eight who had stood by President Butler and saved the nation’s honor.