Page:Points of View (1924).pdf/249



A wise book, charmingly written, is the autobiography of Oscar S. Straus, called Under Four Administrations. The reasons follow. Between an outspoken natural man and a public official there is something like the difference which exists between an "instructed" and an "uninstructed" delegate. By an apparent paradox the uninstructed delegate appears to possess more intelligence than the instructed delegate. This is really creditable to human nature, for it shows the superiority of a man over a marionette. An official is often so much a marionette, so fully operated by strings which are yet out of sight, that he is almost customarily credited by the press, before his term of office has expired, with being a blockhead. But no man, not even a journalist, can really believe that presidents, judges and Congressmen are actually as stupid as he says they are, or as they sometimes appear, even to the laity, to be. It is incredible. No one has a right to expect in an official such exhibition of heart and brains as one expects in an outspoken natural man, any more than one has a right to expect a satisfactorily thrilling embrace from William