John Purroy Mitchel, War Mayor

FREDERICK JAMES GREGG

IT was on the occasion of his last visit to New York, the place of his birth, that Henry James threw up his hands in supreme surrender to the City Hall as a divine little structure. Whatever he had found abroad in an architectural way had not altered his early judgment as to the charm of that ivory toned municipal treasure. There it stood, serenely beautiful amid the skyscrapers, as a sort of early American protest against the sordidness of local politics, with bosses and all the rest of it.

Through our entry into the Great War the City Hall has taken on a significance which Henry James would have delighted in, could he have foreseen it. Within the last few months it has been the noble background for simple but stately ceremonial of an international sort. Good citizens of all shades of political belief have had reason to feel satisfied that John Purroy Mitchel, the youngest Mayor in the history of the municipality, has proved himself eminently fitted to extend the welcome of New York to famous men representing the Powers involved with us in the first great European adventure in our history.

MR. MITCHEL will be remembered as our "War Mayor." Until this year, 1917, the chief executive of New York was simply the administrator of a huge and growing municipal machine, an administrator who was not expected to deal in more than a casual way with stray persons of distinction from abroad. Those whose memories go back a short space will recall the studied rudeness of a certain Mayor to a Spanish naval officer, who called to pay his respects before the war with Spain, and the way in which a great Japanese fighting-man was kept kicking his heels in an ante-room when he visited the City Hall after the RussoJapanese War.

To the French, British, Russian and Italian missions, New York was an object lesson, mainly through the tact of Mayor Mitchel. Everything went off just right. When Marshal Joffre saw his escort of mounted policemen he betrayed a longing to use them as cavalry. Mr. Balfour, who had passed a lifetime amid the pomp and circumstance of London, was surprised at the neatness with which this town showed its enthusiasm without once slopping over. Of course, what helped was. the skill with which the Mayor procured the cooperation of our best and most presentable citizens in doing the honors of the city.

AS a sign of the new manner in which the Mayor has been brought upon the stage of world politics, Mr. Mitchel and the Lord Mayor of London exchanged good wishes the other day. The jobs occupied by the two personages are quite different. London's head man is purely ornamental, and rules only over the City, the little inner district of antiquity, the actual entrance to which used to be represented by Temple Bar. New York's head man was not supposed to be ornamental at all, while, to make up for that his authority extended over all of the territory that lay within the boundaries of the metropolis.

Mayor Mitchel was able to represent New York fittingly, under peculiar and exciting circumstances, largely because he had given the city the best administration it had had in the memory of the oldest inhabitant. As he stood, time after time, on the steps of the City Hall, backed by New Yorkers who represented every important activity of the town, no spectator was conscious of the presence of any concealed but controlling influence. He is his own man, and for this reason there was a sincerity and significance in what he said as chief magistrate that would have been lacking in the Case of many of his predecessors under similar circumstances.

NOT only was he equal to each occasion as it arose, but his officeholders were as presentable as he. Gone Were the bad old days— good old days to some—when prize-fighters developed into commissioners, even if they were unable to spell correctly the titles of the offices which they held. These persons ruled departments not on account of any fitness in themselves, but because they stood in with some private individual who patted the strings of the lay figure that was called "Mayor" out of courtesy. Under Mitchel the same dignity has attended the business done inside the City Hall, that marks the placid Georgian exterior of the ivory toned structure.

New York is satisfied. There is nothing that brings a man so surely the votes of her electors as the sort of courage that stands fast in the face of powerful groups, influenced only by self-interest. She likes efficiency. She also likes to see in the place a man who can represent with distinction the greatest municipal government in the world. Though he has passed nearly four years in the seat of the mighty the Mayor is now only thirty-eight. Those who talked of him as the "boy Mayor" have reason to be bitter over the fact that fate supplied him with many opportunities to display qualities which are awkward to his enemies.