"No, No, No"

The Senior Senator from Idaho has been pressing other public men for their views on Prohibition in the next election. Last week he was himself pressed for views. Wrote a Dr. Charles Alfred Lee Reed of Cincinnati:

"Dear Senator Borah . . . "

1. Are you in favor of the principles and practices of super-government as exemplified by the Anti-Saloon League, the Board of Prohibition, Temperance and Public Morals of the Methodist Episcopal Church and by their ancillary organization, the late, unlamented Ku Klux Klan?

2. Are you in favor of having any religious denomination, Protestant or Catholic, backed by a nation-wide militant organization, established at Washington for the declared purpose of exercising what the Methodist Church now openly assumes to exercise, namely, the functions of censorship and dictatorship over all branches of our constitutional government?

"3. Are you, as a Republican, in favor of having our party as a stalking horse for any candidate who emanates from super-government sources, is controlled by super-government policies and who, therefore, in event of election would be the agent of the super-government rather than the executive of the people under constitutional government?"

Dr. Reed also said to Senator Borah: "You have diverted attention from the vastly more important questions upon which that issue [Prohibition enforcement] rests. You have also in a measure diverted attention from the fact that you yourself are a potential candidate . . . from the equally evident fact that your championship of this particular issue puts you on a favorable position to have its organized friends . . . stampede the convention to you in the event of a deadlock."

Senator Borah, bearlike friend of logic, answered plainly, boldly:

"Assuming for the purposes of this letter that I am a candidate for President, which I am not, and assuming for the purposes of this letter that the implications and inferences and statements in your questions are based upon facts, then I answer your interrogatories as follows:

"To interrogatory No. 1, my answer is, No.

"To interrogatory No. 2, my answer is, No.

"To interrogatory No. 3, my answer is, No."