MENCKEN'S MENTAL MARIBOU'S

"Who will do a textbook of the art and science of politics under democracy--that is, of practical politics, of the polities of job getting and boob bumbing? Surely there is a long felt want there." This is Mr. Mencken's latest dictum. Once again the modern Machiavell speaks the credo he has long assumed. Not a treatise which will lift the ethics of the profession of politics into the realm of the ideal, which will make of the gentlemen at Washington the "Guardians" of the state, but a textbook of bunkum and blither, a composite of the formulae of all the successful political Barnums of American history--that, and that alone, is the desire of the garrulous editor of the American Mercury. A lover of the pragmatic, he believe that what works best is best. And, since bunkum is effective, bunkum is best. To fool most of the people most of the time is all that Mr. Mencken can desire. Of course, that is rather simple with the people so guileless, so ready to accept the guff of the grandiloquent.

This champion of the unprized causes builds like his Fifteenth Century model a policy for political progress on the firm conviction that the voice of the people is but the echo of those who lead them. In short, he caricatures democracy by giving the face of that goddess a Roman nose and by handing her a club, labeled "bunkum". And to those who delight in the raucous ribaldry of Mr. Mencken, and even to those who parade the pageant of their political pessimism a with perennial precision, these words seem the utterances of an oracle. Yet an oracle can have its tongue in its cheek, as Croesus discovered. Indeed, the sincerity of the editor of the jade journal for jaded tastes has long been a moot question. To assume the clear of a Machiavelli in serious, sane, and democratic America is to insure some notoriety. Mr. Meneken often prefer being exactly notorious to being notoriously exact. Perhaps the need of American politics is a manual of malfeasance, of the psychology of political pragmatism, perhaps not. For, although the Machiavellian side of political theory will always remain the abode of the cynic in politics and, therefore, continue always to maintain some importance one cannot consider this particular proponent too seriously. The ironies of Shaw may be "gargoyles on a great cathedral"; the ironies of Meneken are as yet but poor figures on a trifling edifice.