PRESIDENT HARDING MEMORIAL

Hokitika Guardian, 13 December 1930, Page 6

PRESIDENT HARDING MEMORIAL

MR HQOVER WILL NOT UNVEIL 'll ' AMAZING STORIES OF SCANDALS. MRS HARDING AND A CHILD. I NEW YORK, October 20. A memorial to Warren G. Harding) President of the United States, concerning the circumstances of whose death in 1923 amazing allegations have been made,‘awaits dedictation in Marion, Ohio, his home town. It cost £160,000, but no one can be found who will undertake the ceremony.

Those responsible for its erectionfunds were collected by public subscription—say that unless President Hoover will honour a dead man who was once leader of the Republican Party and holder of the greatest office in the United States no one shall dedicate the memorial. Mr Coolidge has already refused, and the White House remains silent'. A New York newspaper recently published a leading article in which Mr Hoover was urged to forget for a moment that he was a. “Quaker” and to, remember that . President Harding had Qiice been a “man.” , The decision that unless Mj'.-Hh° ver would dedicate the rhemorial the ceremony should be held was taken on the recommendation of Mr Harry M. Daugherty, who was Attpyuey-General u,nder President Harding and whose name has been blazed the world oyer in connection.' with the ; scandals of the Harding regime: Although most of the subscriptions towards the memorial were obtained before the Teapot Dome Oil scandals threw their lurid light on the Harding Administration, Mr Daugherty asserted that none of the subscribers would accept the return of a penny. His resolution adopted by the Memorial Association postpones indefinitely the dedication so strenuously shunned by all those who were. members of the Harding Cabinet. The desire of Mr Hoover and the Republican Earty to bury the late dent’s memory in oblivion coincides with the fact that Mr Harding’s life and defith are : being more intimately discussed thropgh America to-day than at any time since his death. It was understood that he died'from the' effects of ptomaine poisoning, but wild rumours about his end circulated at the time. These have found expression in a book, “The Strange Death of President Harding,” by Gaston B. Means, which has become a best seller in the United States and is shortly to be published in England by John Hamilton, Ltd. The book attaches a sinister significance to -the. fact that Mis Harding was alone with her husband for a few minutes. before he expired. Mrs Harding herself died at Marion in November, 1924- ‘ Mr Means, who acted as her private detective and professes to have received her confidences, conveys his allegations in suggestive phrases which have no meaning at all if they do not mean that a wife, jealous of her hus-' band’s national and domestic honour, encompassed or hastened his end for the dual purpose of saving him from impending impreachment apd preventing him. from retiring into seclusion with his illegitimate child. Mr Means, an investigator of the Department of Justice, emerged from prison—where he had served three years for violation of the liquor laws—to make his startling allegations, which, it must be said, are no more than biased deductions from certain wild utterances credited to Mrs Harding.

< He purports to reveal in dramatic detail impassioned scenes at the White House arising out of President Harding’s liaison with Nan Britton, the daughter of an old home-town friend, by whom he had a child. " On the eve of the Washington Disarmament Conference, inaugurated in November 1921, when President Harding was about to enjoy a few fleeting months of eminence as a world leader, Mrs Harding (according to this book) employed Means to unearth the facts about Nan Britton.

She believed that certain of bis Cabinet Officers held over him |he threat of exposure of the Britton affair. Acting on her instructions, Means says he stole the letters Nan Britton had received from the President and also the jewellery he had sent her and his presents to his child, and took all this sorry evidence to Mrs Harding.

“You Have Ruined Me.” He describes a heated scene at the White House when the President burst in on the detective and Mrs Harding. The infuriated Chief of State forthwith discharged Means from the Department of Justice, and, shaking a clenched fist at his wife, cried, “You have ruined me —you and your contemptible detectives!” President Harding died while on his way home from Alaska with his wife and an entourage selected by her. Means declares that shortly before the trip began Mrs Harding told him she had warned her husband that she feared the imminent exposure of the bribery and graft carried on by some of his Cabinet officers. ■ Thep he seemed to go all to pieces. He said: “Parn it, let it come! Let' it come! God—l’ll he glad to have it come afid over with it!” “You’ll be impeached!” “I will fell the truth!” “You will be disgraced!” “I will tell the truth !” “You may be imprisoned!”

“I will tell the truth. The exact truth.

“There can be no jury of twelve American men or women who would send me to gaol. But even, in a gaol —a prison would be peace compared to this! lam no criminal. Let them impeached! God knows, I’m sick and tired of it all. I’ll be glad to have it over. Glad! Glad! ......

“If they impeach—then—then do you know what I’ll do? Do you want to know? I’ll tell you! The world is a big place—and—l’ll take my child and go away. No one shall keep me from my child. You shall not. You hear me You shall not ....

I registered a solemn vow (Mrs Harding is recorded as saying to Means) —-a solennU vow that never, never, never should he take his child and go away!

From that night, in spite of a spoken word for forgiveness, there has been hidden war between us.

I hate Warren Harding with a hatred greater than my former love and affection.

I think of the poor weak fool—the President of the United States willing to be disgraced and impeached and made a laughing-stock of the whole world and go down in history in this way—because he had determined to get hold of apd to keep his illegitimate child .... whose mother is thirty years younger than he—a vain silly little fool who loves his money and the thrills of his attentions and the excitement of their rendezvous.

On the day the body of the President was brought to Washington for the ly-ing-in-state Mrs Harding is said to have given'Means this account of his end.

'■ “I was alone with the President . . . ,and . . only about ten minutes. It ■was time for his medicine. . . . . f gave it to him .... he drank it. He lay hack on the pillow for a moment. His [eyes were closed. . . He was resting. ... Then—suddenly—he opened his eyes wide .... and moved his head and looked straight into my face. I was standing by his bedside.” As she paused I (Means) could not refrain the question (sic):

“You think—he knew?” “Yes. I think he knew. Then —he sighed and turned his head away —-over —-on the pillow. .. . After a few minutes—l called for help. The papers told the rest. “Had he lived twenty-four hours longer he might have been impeached

. . .1 have not betrayed my country or the party that my husband loved so much. They are saved—and I have no regrets—l have fulfilled my destiny.” ; Then out of the deep—almost impressive—silence /that followed, and is if in answer to my unuttered question, in a stiff, frozen voice, without a tremor, she looked me full in the face and said “Mr Means—there are some things that one tells—nobody.”

To which I replied: “Mrs Harding —there are some things-—it is not necessary to tell.”

The book has no historical value. As tri all that passed between Means and Mrs Harding we have only his uncorroborated version.

Meanwhile a little boy has gone to school in New York, entered hv the name of Britton Harding, whose father is inscribed in the records as “late President of the United States.”