N the dining-car of the Peking-Han

kow railway line Chinese waiters who speak a smattering of French serve cosmopolitan dishes to travelers of all nationalities who like to come and go between Peking and the coast by way of Hankow and the steamers on the river Yangtse.

At one table sit a Japanese professor and an attaché from the Japanese legation. Both are lean and spectacled. Their sparse, badly trimmed mustaches bristle defiantly. They pitch into the cosmopolitan dishes with savage impartiality and conclude with a ferocious champing of toothpicks and cigars.

What a contrast to this feverish feasting is the placid gormandizing of three Chinese exporters at another table! They clean their plates at each course, too; but their full figures and round, contented faces bear witness that their slow, quiet way of acquiring nourishment does the body more good than the mad munching of the lean Japanese.

Beyond the Chinese, and fatter even than they, are two Russians, a man and a woman. Each one's thick body is wedged tightly between chair and table, and each one's neck and cheeks are creased with layers of fat. Their elbows are squared, their napkins are tucked in at the neck like children's bibs. Eating is the serious business of life with them, and never a word do they exchange with each other. Slower eaters than the Japanese, faster than the Chinese, they attack their food with a voluptuous determination, a revolting enjoyment marked by grunts and lip-smacking which far exceeds the frank gustatory pleasure of the Orientals. When a Russian is bestial, he is the most bestial thing in the world,

BY GREGORY MASON

unless it be a bestial German. After they have finished a meal which would have filled a Gargantua and laboriously raised their shapeless bodies to leave the car, the woman drops her napkin under her foot and scuffs it all the way to the door. Only that touch of final crudity is needed to make complete the disgust which they arouse in their fellow-diners.

Of all the people in the car the most oblivious of his surroundings is a solitary American. He holds an American magazine before him, and even when he drops his spoon into his soup his eyes remain riveted to the printed page. Not until the waiter removes his empty soup plate and replaces it with a small portion of fish is the American's literary concentration broken. His fork carries some fish to his mouth, returns and carries more fish. Then he looks at his plate in disappointment.

"Waiter!"

"Oui, Monsieur."

"Got 'ny potaters?"

There is a blank look on the face of the waiter.

"I say, got 'ny potaters?"
"Qu'est-ce-que Monsieur a dit?"

"Got 'ny potaters, potaters, potaters," shouts the man from the United States.

"Il veut des pommes de terre." One of the Chinese exporters, not speaking the particular native dialect of the waiter, interprets the American's desire in French.

chopped up fine in the French fashion. This time the man from America looks down at his plate when it is set before him.

"Waiter," he shouts angrily, "ain't you got 'ny potaters?"

The poor waiter looks terrified. He appeals to the Chinese merchant again. "Il veut encore des pommes de terre." "Ah, non, Monsieur," sighs the waiter, "il n'y en a pas. . . . Pas de potaters, Monsieur."

Disappointment is written all over the American's face, and contempt for a people who would serve a whole dinner without potatoes.

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Bring my coffee, then. Coffee, coffee, d'ya understand.?"

"Oui, Monsieur." Back goes the American into his magazine. The waiter returns with a cup of black coffee. Absent-mindedly the American tastes it.

it, gimme milk," shouts the Yankee, hammering the table. That familiar profanity stirs up forgotten memories of pidgin English in the waiter's mind.

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"All light, Master, me bling chop chop," says he, triumphant at being able to understand at last, and cheerfully shuffles off to the kitchen.

TISITORS to the Coolidge head

V

quarters at the Chicago Convention found two rather commonplace rooms next door to the Massachusetts headquarters and opposite the spacious parlor where a band and a glee club were playing and singing the praises of Senator Harding. A part of the time the rooms were fairly well filled with delegates from various States who had conceived an interest in the quiet, simple, old-fashioned Governor of Massachusetts and wanted to know more about him. But late in the week, when it seemed pretty certain that Coolidge could not win the Presidential nomination, the attendance at the headquarters thinned out noticeably. Sometimes the rooms were almost vacant, except for the few worn chairs and the wobbly desk and for one lone man who day and night stood at his post, keeping the home fires burning.

A man of medium height and more than medium girth, with a round face and glasses covering his fine, earnest eyes; a man sixty-three years of age, whose physicians have more than once warned him that he takes his life in his hands. when he goes into a political campaignthroughout the long, grueling week he never wavered. Younger men who had come to do what they could for Coolidge grew tired and went to bed. Or they yielded to the lure of the convention hall and rode down to see the sessions. But he was never away. Through every single hour, from early morning to late at night," he was there, buttonholing any man who came within his reach and talking in his quiet, earnest way, as he has been talking for years, always about "the Gov'nor."

"Who is that man?" a stranger asked, pointing to him.

"Oh, that's Stearns-Stearns, of Boston, another answered, as much as to say: "You must have heard of Stearns! Surely everybody who ever heard of Coolidge must have heard of Stearns!"

And the answer was not far wrong;

NOTE.-This article continues the series on "The Presidential Campaign-Its Problems and Personalities."

for most of the men who have heard much about Coolidge have not merely heard of Stearns, they have heard from him. How many thousand letters he has written, how many thousand talks he has had with people of all sorts in the past ten years, not even he himself could estimate. But by those letters and those talks, and the faith behind them, he has played his big part in making an obscure member of the Massachusetts Legislature the nominee for the Vice-Presidency of the United States.

I imagine he may not be altogether pleased to find his name in print; and yet it seems to me his story ought to be written. It constitutes a brief and shining chapter in the rather drab records of political activity; it renews one's courage in the capacity of simple men for unselfish sacrifice. It is a classic of faith.

Frank W. Stearns is a dry-goods merchant in Boston, the owner of one of the city's principal department stores. He made a success and established a reputation for fair dealing and right ideals. He was a good citizen, presume, as thousands of other men are; voting regularly and doing what he could for the success of the Republican ticket. He had heard of Coolidge as a fellow Amherst man, who was Mayor of Northampton and later a member of the State Legislature; but he had never met Coolidge. And the first contact between the two was a painful experience for Stearns.

THE AMHERST PIPE-LINE

He was a member of the Board of Trustees of Amherst College and Coolidge was Senator from the district in which Amherst lies. The College and the town of Amherst had come to an agreement by which the College sewer system was to be connected with the town sewer system. Everything was settled, except that a special act of the Legislature was required to give the necessary legal authority. And Stearns sent his lawyer with a fellow-trustee of Amherst to see Coolidge and arrange for the introduction of the measure.

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WHERE THE

SONS OF
AMHERST
GATHER

They found the Senator in his office and laid their case before him. Coolidge listened to them without a word of comment. He said neither "Yes" nor No," nor "I'm glad to meet you," nor "Good-by." Neither of his callers had ever seen so curious a phenomenon; they left the office baffled and considerably hurt in their pride. And they reported to Stearns that they had no idea whether the measure would be introduced or not.

The Legislature was just about to adjourn, and no measure was introduced at that time. It turned out later that Coolidge, being familiar with the ways of legislatures, had known that nothing could be done at that session, and assumed doubtless that his visitors also knew. At the opening of the next session he took the matter up and, without consulting any of them, introduced the law and saw it safely through. They did not write to thank him for what he had done; he did not write to say, "It gives me great pleasure to tell you, gentlemen, that your bill has passed; and now I hope you won't forget me when another election comes round." He had promised nothing, but he had done all that they asked. And yet his way of doing it was so wholly contrary to all political procedure that it left them wondering-and interested in spite of themselves.

Later Stearns came to know Coolidge better; and later still he incorporated his business, turning the active management over to younger men and leaving himself free to give all his time to the task of promoting this strange, able, and altogether different young man.

Coolidge was no easy man to promote. He is made in his own peculiar mold, and the mold was broken after fashioning him. He simply cannot and will not conform. For weeks Stearns besought him to announce himself a candidate for the Lieutenant-Governorship. He would not say that he intended to do so, nor that he intended not to. His friends felt that precious time was being lost; other candidates were in the field, and were making the most of their early entry.

Still Coolidge was silent. He was President of the Senate at the time, and he felt that if he announced himself for another office every move in the session would be given a political bias. His friends and opponents alike would seek to put a political interpretation on every ruling; the normal business of the body would be delayed by the maneuvering of candidates for his position; and the public interest would suffer because he had let his own personal interests be pushed to the fore.

On the day when the session adjourned a single paragraph in the papers announced that he would run for the Lieutenant-Governorship. But Stearns, who had been urging him so long to act, was as unprepared as every one else for the action when it came.

A SILENT CANDIDATE

Sometimes Coolidge would come to his office, light a stogie, open the paper, and sit for half an hour without a word. Then with a nod he would get up, put on his derby hat, and vanish again. Once he was a visitor for three days in Stearns's country house, and during all that time he addressed Stearns directly only once. Those silences were exceedingly painful at first; neither Stearns nor his family could understand them. They fairly ached in the effort to carry on what would ordinarily be a normal conversation. But gradually they learned to know their man, and ceased to make the effort. If Coolidge talked, they answered him; if he did not talk, they disregarded him as though he were merely a familiar bit of furniture. And through it all they found their admiration for his character and capacity mounting steadily until it became a deep and consuming affection. "We have thought of the Governor," Stearns said to me one day, as though he were our own son." Years back, when Coolidge was merely President of the State Senate, Stearns began to talk about him as a future President of the United States. It became a recognized subject for jest at gatherings of Amherst alumni. "Here comes Frank Stearns. Well, Mr. Stearns, what's the latest news about the next Presi

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dent?" And Mr. Stearns, always goodnatured, yet never losing any chance to spread his gospel, impressed us by his earnestness in spite of ourselves. Nor would he be satisfied until we too had journeyed up to Boston to look at this remarkable man and be convinced.

Six months ago Stearns gathered together a little group of Amherst men, and others, who shared his conviction that the Nation needed Calvin Coolidge much more than Coolidge needed any office; and this group conducted what is probably the most unique campaign in political history. All the members with one exception were amateurs. None of them wanted any appointment for himself, or sought reward of any sort. They were merely college men working for a fellow college man, inspired and heartened all the way through by the transcending faith of Frank Stearns.

WHY THE HOOVER BOOM FAILED

We think of politics as a pretty sordid business, and in many of its aspects it is sordid enough. But there is a side to polities which is too little dwelt upon-a vastly encouraging side. I rode out to the Convention with some of the supporters of General Wood. There were old-line politicians among them who believed they had heard the rumble of a wagon; there were doubtless some expostmasters and men who hoped to be postmasters. But the majority of them were business men who have never sought political preferment, and would be loth to accept it if it were offered to them. They had given their time and money because they believed the Nation needed Wood for President, and because they had a thoroughgoing loyalty and affection for the man.

Every political leader who is worthy of the name calls forth that sort of devotion from men; and every political campaign, no matter how bitterly fought, is in large measure a campaign of ideals. It is worth while for us to remember that fact, and to set it over against the discouraging phases of politics. There are many men in America who are giving time to politics with no selfish motive at all; the number of such men is increasing, and in the

further increase of their number lies our best hope for the future.

No other lesson of the Convention impressed me more than this-that any organized effort by "good people" which springs into being just before a party convention and disintegrates immediately thereafter is doomed to inevitable disappointment. That was the trouble with the Hoover campaign. Behind it were some of the finest people in the Nation; and those of them whom I happened to know were people who seldom attended a primary, who were blissfully ignorant of the name of the political leader in their district, and whose voting record was exceedingly spotty.

To all such citizens there is a useful lesson in the record of Frank Stearns. He is in politics, not merely at election time, but all the time. The public business occupies a part of every single day with him, along with his own affairs. He wants nothing for himself. He has never, so far as I know, suggested an appointment to Governor Coolidge, nor volunteered advice about a public measure. He is interested only in the triumph of certain principles which, in his judgment, are embodied in the character of Calvin Coolidge. And he works for those principles, and for Coolidge, as regularly and as unrelentingly as any ward heeler works for a political advancement for himself.

IF A MILLION MEN

In a world where ingratitude is unpleasantly prominent, where selfishness seems so much to hold the center of the stage, a really unselfish spirit is as refreshing as an oasis in the desert. Frank Stearns is such a spirit. To meet him and to hear him talk of Coolidge is to feel inspired and heartened. One wonders what kind of a country this might be if a million business men would give to its affairs the same day-by-day thought and sacrifice that he has given. Faith can move mountains, we are told. Certainly it can move political conventions. It did move the Convention at Chicago in the nomination for Vice-President. And the faith that was working in them-though the delegates did not know it-was the faith of Frank W. Stearns.