War is the other great cause that leads to autocracy in popular governments. In times of common danger we revert to the herd with the single leadership. We resort to the only form of rule of which we have any experience in our daily lives, the only form in which the race has yet developed any lasting faith. From the time when war threatened, with the invasion of Belgium, till the time when it ended with the armistice, Mr. Wilson became what any President may become under like circumstances, what Mr. Wilson's temperament especially fitted him to become--an absolute dictator. When we think of the powerful executive as the natural development of the American system, imparting that unity to our government which the makers of the Constitution in their zeal for checks and balances refused to give it, we are over-impressed by the phenomena of Roosevelt and Wilson and do not make sufficient allowances for the conditions which made their power inevitable. So impossible is it for authority to remain permanently in the hands of the executive that we are now witnessing its spontaneous movement away from the White House--toward, well for the moment I should say, toward nowhere. A distinguished alienist tells me that the desire for power over your fellow man is an unmistakable sign of paranoia, not necessarily paranoia amounting to insanity, but the same kind of paranoia which makes history amusing. If that is true, then we are in an era of perfect sanity at Washington. No one, no one, in the White House, in the Capitol, in Wall Street, the capitol of business, or back among the home folks, as far as I can learn, wants power--and responsibility. The picture I have drawn, quoting a bright young observer at the capital of what happens when Business arrives in Washington is the picture of our whole present national political organization. "A bunch of tall-hatted fat boys comes. The governmental nose is thrust out awaiting the guiding hand. The guiding hand is put unostentatiously behind the back." It is the same when the organ of leading is extended from the White House for the hand of leadership at the Capitol, or, as happens, as often the organ of leading at the Capitol awaits the hand of leadership at the White House. Power is in transition and we do much inconsistent thinking about where it is and where it should be. We deliberately elected a weak executive, to retrieve the blessed days of McKinley, the old equilibrium and co-ordination of the equal and co-ordinate branches of our government. Yet when things go badly in Congress, as they mostly do, the critics exclaim that the President should be firm and "assert his authority" on the hill. Mr. Harding himself said, over and over again, "This is no one man job at Washington." Yet we read that his face assumes a "determined expression"--I have myself never seen it--and he sends for the leaders in Congress.