The same violence of his likes and dislikes is shown in his att.i.tude toward the British and his espousal of the Irish cause. At the time of the visit of the British mission to Washington, Vice-President Marshall designated Senator Borah a member of the committee appointed to escort the British visitors into the chamber. This Borah resented as a personal affront.
"Marshall has a distorted sense of humor," he said. "He knows I dislike the British and that I despise the hypocrite Balfour." This feeling was probably due in large measure to the Irish lineage which Borah can trace in his ancestry as well as a temperamental dislike of the British methods of maintaining control over subject peoples.
It is difficult to label Senator Borah from a political standpoint.
His most striking characteristic is his inconsistency. For a long time in the early days of the progressive movement he displayed a marked inclination to be "irregular" and he is to be found voting for most measures for which the "progressives" claimed sponsorship, but when the more radical leaders began to advocate the recall of the judiciary, Borah rose up and delivered an invective the memory of which lingers in the Capitol. It was one of the few speeches he has made that had a permanent effect and, strangely enough, it was the kind of speech that might have well been delivered by Root or Knox.
There has always been reason to believe that Borah was never more enamored of La Follette in his prime, or of Hiram Johnson, than he has been of the "reactionary" leaders with whom he has been oftentimes in open conflict. When the latter deluded himself with the hope of securing the Republican nomination, Borah was supposed to be his chief supporter. When Johnson had eliminated Lowden and Wood, and seemed to have eliminated Harding, Borah showed more interest in the Knox candidacy. He wanted Knox at the head of the ticket mainly because he knew that Knox was an implacable foe of the League of Nations. On that fateful Friday night in Chicago when the signs of the trend toward Harding had begun to appear, the Senator from Idaho was anxious and prepared to place Knox"s name in nomination and begged Johnson to swing his delegates in that direction.
Borah has succeeded very well in concealing his own ambitions, possibly because he is more cautious than some of his impetuous colleagues, or because the opportunity has never come for an avowal. But among those who have followed his career there is a very strong suspicion that his one great desire was to be the successor of Roosevelt. This might be one reason for his antagonism toward the politicians of the old regime, such as Penrose, who have barred his way in that direction, and his fitful devotion to progressivism championed by others. The failure to realize this ambition might account in some measure for his later reticence and his suspicion of politicians in general. He has shown a p.r.o.nounced distrust of them. The only exception has been the audacious Amba.s.sador to the Court of Saint James who in his REVIEW and in his WEEKLY flattered the Senator from Idaho with an absence of restraint that might have made a more trusting person skeptical.
The Senator from Idaho has too many years before him to justify predictions concerning his career. Whatever faults he might have they do not entirely obscure his virtues. It is possible that the occasion might arise for him to serve as the spokesman of a popular cause, which he would do with undoubted earnestness and eloquence, in which event he might still become a dominating figure in American politics.