192 OHIO
HISTORY
38. "The United States Renews
Relations with Mexico," State Department Announce-
ment, August 31, 1923, 711.1211/154; and
William Phillips, Under Secretary of State,
to Coolidge. Case File 146, Coolidge
Papers. See also Hughes to Payne, September 11,
1923. Box 38, Hughes Papers. See also
Hughes to Warren, September 11, 1923, ibid.,
Box 47.
PRESIDENT HARDING
AND INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION
1. The Marion Star, March 2, 1921.
See also New York Times, March 3, 1921.
2. Cited in "Tremendous Problems
That Face Harding," Literary Digest, March 5,
1921, p. 8.
3. New York Times, March 3, 1921;
editorial, "Mr. Harding's Administration,"
March 4, 1921.
4. The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The
Cabinet and the Presidency, 1920-1923
(New York, 1952), 13.
5. Various items, Box 421, Warren G.
Harding Papers, Ohio Historical Society. This
general impression was concretely established by taking
twenty-four letters for the period
November 3, 1920 to February 1, 1921 and
discovering that eighteen were against, six
for the Versailles League. Quite
interestingly to note, Harding received human nature
arguments against ending war and racial
arguments for not entering the world organiza-
tion, see Daniel Moreau Barringer to W.
G. Harding, December 7, 1920 with enclosure
dated March 19, 1919. Ibid., Box
119.
6. Ibid., Frank Brandegee to
Harding, December 28, 1920 (typed copy), Box 694; for
a Harding rejoinder to one of his
prominent petitioners, see Harding to Henry Cabot
Lodge, December 29, 1920, Box 655.
7. Ibid., C. B. Miller to
Harding, December 13, 1920.
8. Ibid., J. E. Todd to H. D.
Mannington, December 27, 1920.
9. Ibid., Myron H. Bent to Harding, December 1, 1920, Box 421.
10. Ibid., William E. Anderson to
Harding, January 22, 1921 (typed copy), Box 693.
Another clergyman, Dr. James L. Barton,
on January 14, 1921, wrote in his three
powerful capacities as National Chairman
of the Near East Relief, Senior Foreign
Secretary of the American Board of
Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and Moderator
of the International Decennial
Congregational Council, ibid.
11. Hamilton Holt to Harding, December
10, 1920; Harding to Holt, December 22,
1920, Holt Papers, cited in Warren F.
Kuehl, Hamilton Holt: Journalist, Internationalist,
Educator (Gainesville, 1960), 155. Kuehl also has a perceptive
synthesis of Holt's
relationship to Harding on the League of
Nations issue, 151-175. One reader of The
Independent sent clippings of Holt's editorial criticism of
Harding's evasiveness on the
League to the future President, see O.
L. Deming to Harding, December 24, 1921. Box
119, Harding Papers.
12. New York Times, March 4,
1921.
13. Ibid., March 3, 1921.
14. Samuel Hopkins Adams, The
Incredible Era: The Life and Times of Warren
Gamaliel Harding (Boston, 1939), 35.
15. Hiram Johnson to Harding, August 9,
1921; Harding to Johnson, September 6,
1920. Box 502, Harding Papers. The
exchange showed that the two Senators were
professionally proud of their skills at
verbal imprecision. This ignorance of Harding's
deliberate vagueness on touching
political matters let the vitriolic Henry L. Menckin to
assert that the Ohioan's muddled
sentences in political writing or speaking were
occasioned by ignorance. Sometimes they
were. Often, they were not. The Baltimore
Sun cynic went on to state that he overheard the former
editor of the Marion Star
deliver a speech to the Elks which was
"clear, logical, forceful" with even "a touch of
wild, romantic beauty." But the
Elks speech was on a simple subject--hence Harding's
clarity. It is strange that the clever
Menckin did not go deeper into wondering why
the politician could write so clearly on
matters that were unimportant while the real
concerns of the day involving
consequences for America and himself were dealt with
so vaguely. Surely Menckin, so clever in
the use of words himself and a serious writer
on the American Language, should have
suspected another clever writer was at work.
The quotations from Menckin are cited in
David Shannon, ed., Progressivism and
Postwar Disillusionment: 1898-1928 (New York, 1966), 280.
16. For an impressive demonstration of
how precisely and clearly Harding could
write, see Harding to Richard Washburn
Child, letters of December 12, 1921; July 24,
1922; and April 16, 1923. Box 694,
Harding Papers.
17. Ibid., Harding to Lodge,
December 29, 1920. Box 655.
18. Ibid., Harding to Miss Mollie
Conners, May 17, 1919. Box 757.
19. Shannon, Progressivism and
Postwar Disillusionment, 280.
20. New York Times, March 5,
1921.
21. Kuehl, Hamilton Holt, 155.