Smith's invincible team, the rising star of machine politics in New
Jersey. Down the aisle sat the "Little Napoleon" of Hudson County, Bob
Davis, wearing a sardonic smile on his usually placid face, with his big
eyes riveted upon those in the Convention who were fighting desperately
and against great odds the effort of the state machine to nominate
President Wilson. Across the aisle from me sat "Plank-Shad" Thompson, of
Gloucester, big and debonair, a thoroughly fine fellow socially, but
always ready to act upon and carry out every tip that came to him from the
master minds in the Convention--Davis and Smith.

These were the leading actors in this political drama. Behind the lines,
in the "offing," was the Insurgent Group, young men like Mark Sullivan and
John Treacy of Hudson, stout defenders of the liberal wing in the
Convention, feeling sullen, beaten, and hopelessly impotent against the
mass attack of the machine forces. What a political medley was present in
this convention--plebeian and patrician, machine man and political
idealist--all gathered together and fighting as leading characters and
supernumeraries in the political drama about to be enacted.

Not three men outside of the leading actors in this great political drama
had ever seen the Princeton professor, although many had doubtless read
his speeches. I watched every move from the side-lines. The bosses, with
consummate precision, moved to the doing of the job in hand, working their
spell of threats and coercion upon a beaten, sullen, spiritless body of
delegates. One could easily discern that there was no heart in the
delegates for the job on hand. To them, the active forces in the
Convention, the Princeton president was, indeed, a man of mystery. Who
could solve the riddle of this political Sphinx? Who was this man Wilson?
What were his purposes? What his ideals? These questions were troubling
and perplexing the delegates. Colonel Harvey, the commander-in-chief of