Scare

"The American nation tonight faces the greatest crisis in its history since the Union was saved from disruption half a century ago. " With the deadlock of the last three weeks still prevailing in Congress--the House deadlocked on the election of a President and the Senate still unable to choose a Vice President--the prospect is that the country will be without a regularly elected chief executive when President Coolidge's term expires at noon tomorrow." Coming on top of the business depression and winter of unemployment . . . Government chaos has, wrought a general consternation. . . . "President Coolidge, at this hour, is meeting with members of his Cabinet and Republican, Democratic and Third Party leaders in a last effort to obtain a tripartisan agreement on the unusual steps that it now seems necessary to take in order to provide for the Presidential succession. . . .

"The course the President is said to have determined upon is to resign his office before tomorrow noon. At the moment he resigns, Secretary of State Hughes automatically will become acting President . . . will be required by the Succession Act to call Congress into extraordinary session."

The date line of this despatch read "March 3, 1925." It was the Chicago Tribune's story, a "scare head" devised by Arthur Sears Henning, famed Washington correspondent.