It is absurd to use the word radical of Borah, Johnson, or LaFollette, for none of them is truly radical; but if one must do so for the lack of any better term, then Borah is the conservatives' radical. The angriest reactionary remains calm when his name is mentioned, perhaps because Borah never gets into a passion himself and never addresses himself to popular prejudice. He is not a mob orator. He is impersonal in his appeals. No one any longer suspects him of an ambition to be President. He seems, like a hermit, to have divorced himself from the earthly passions of politics and to have become pure intellect operating in the range of public affairs. He is almost a sage while still a Senator. If we had the custom of electing our Ex-Presidents to the Senate, you can imagine one of them, beyond the average of intelligence, freed from ambition through having filled the highest office, occupying a place like that of Borah. Borah perhaps likes it too well ever to descend into the market place and become a leader. His is an enviable lot, for he is the most nearly free man in Washington; why should he exchange the immunity he possesses for a small group of followers? Besides he believes in the power of oratory rather than in the power of organization. He said to me at the Republican Convention of 1916, "I could stampede this crowd for Roosevelt." The crowd was thoroughly organized against Roosevelt. Nature made him an orator, one of the greatest in the country. And he has come to be satisfied with the gift he has. The unimportance of his state, Idaho, has freed him from any illusions about himself with respect to the Presidency. The habit of carrying a comb in his vest pocket marks him as free from the social ambitions which number more victims in the Senate than the ambition for the presidency. He is almost a disembodied spirit politically, of the revolution he discerns he will be a spectator. Hiram Johnson is a declining figure. I see no reason to modify the conclusion which was reached about him in the _Mirrors of Washington_, that he thought more of men than of principles and especially of one man, Johnson. The test of his sincerity came when the vote was reached on the unseating of Senator Newberry for spending too much money in the Michigan primaries. Johnson's great issue a year before had been sanctity of popular nominations. Yet when he had an opportunity to speak and act against a brazen even though foolish attempt to buy a nomination, he was rushing wildly across the continent, arriving after the vote had been taken.