LOWERING THE DEAD

Gladstone now has entered the Limbo of broken idols, with Florence Nightingale, Queen Victoria, George Washington, and Galahad. A certain Captain Wright in his "Portraits and Criticisms" asserts that "Mr. Gladstone...founded the great tradition, since observed by so many of his followers and successors with such pious fidelity, in public to speak the language of the highest and the strictest principles, and in private to pursue and possess any sort of woman." Gladstone's sons have retorted by telling Captain Wright that he is a liar; Captain Wright has delivered the last counter-check in suing the Gladstone. All in all it is a nice mess, and "the tight little isle" is much more wrought up about it than America was when Ruport Hughes attempted to belittle Washington,--Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker and Eddie Collins were under suspicion at the same time.

Even if the charges against Gladstone are true, what of it? Mr. Gladstone's morals did not affect his statesmanship; they are unimportant, for his statesmanship is what lives today. It is a characteristic of petty minds merely to seize what they can understand; and it seems that hundreds of petty minds must be writing biography today. Those that are afflicted with a conscience argue that their dissections are merely application of the scientific method in the search for truth. But there is truth and Truth. It is truth to say that Walt Whitman had perhaps half a dozen illegitimate children, and it is Truth that he was a truly great poet. The realist biographers are more interested in the petty truth.

They will again argue that by revealing the most intimate details they are making the men they treat more human, that they bring back a sense of balance, that they tear away the clouds of sanctified hokum which still surround such a figure as "The Martyr President" Harding, who died of eating crab-meat out of season to the end that all who exploited him Doheny, Fall, Sinclair, et al, should not be punished but should have everlasting freedom from justice.

The philosopher looking for tendencies of thought and modern ideals may see in much of modern biography the fruit of the democratic idea, that all men are created squal. Since all men are not equally good, they must be equally bad. The more practically minded may point out merely that historical scandal-mongering is a profitable business, without the dangers attendant upon libelling the living.