Sidespouts

Last week the Senate's drilling into the Oil Scandal, having slipped momentarily from the firm, legalistic hand of Inquisitor Walsh, emitted several brief sidespouts more spectacularly stupid than significant.

The slip began last fortnight when Inquisitor Walsh let boyish Senator Nye go to Chicago to investigate what might be new evidence. Since Senator Nye is Chairman of the Senate Committee on Public Lands, which is charged with the investigation, it was logical to entrust him with the errand. That it was unfortunate soon became apparent. The importance of his mission overcame him and he returned hinting breathlessly that his findings involved "a name that it would be criminal to mention until further investigation." The name of Warren Gamaliel Harding soon leaked out. The Committee was reviewing the sale in 1923 of President Harding's Marion Star for a surprising price. No bonds traceable to Harry Ford Sinclair were discovered in these records, however. Inquisitor Walsh deplored his young colleague's prematurity.

Also due to Senator Nye, the name of Justice Frederick Lincoln Siddons of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, by whom Sinclair was lately tried and sentenced for contempt of court, was momentarily dragged into the case, then dropped when a mysterious package of '"bonds" turned out to be Christmas cards. The spirit of error spread. In the Senate, the Republican Robinson, from politically malodorous Indiana, arose and inquired if Harry F. Sinclair had not been a New York State horse-race commissioner from 1922 to 1925. Senator Nye jumped up and volunteered that it was his "understanding" that Sinclair had been "a very liberal contributor ... in the campaign of 1920 at which Governor Smith was elected."

Inquisitor Walsh interrupted his young colleague and asked if he knew whereof he spoke. Senator Nye retorted that he did. Inquisitor Walsh, looking puzzled, sat down. Indiana's Robinson, delighted, proceeded to impugn Governor Smith and asked that he be hailed before the inquisitors. Inquisitor Walsh hastened to promise that no such action would be taken and to deplore the aspersions on Governor Smith's reputation.

The basis of Senator Nye's "understanding" about a Smith-Sinclair relation turned out to be a letter he had just received from a casual Manhattan newsgatherer, one Charles T. White, who was forthwith discharged by his employers on the Republican New York Herald-Tribune. Records showed that Sinclair had never contributed to a Smith campaign fund, though in 1918 he gave $1,000 to New York County Democrats. In 1920, four years before the Oil Scandals broke, Governor Smith made Sinclair a racing commissioner with a five-year term. In the 1920 campaign Smith lost. These facts Governor Smith brought out in a blistering letter to Senator Nye, to whom and to Senator Robinson he wished "public humiliation" for reckless statements, "demagogic slander," "infamous insinuations," "outrageous conduct."

Senator Nye said he was satisfied with Governor Smith's reply but then, his public face stinging sorely, he sat down to retort in kind. While he composed, the Senate's attention was occupied by shrill-voiced Senator Couzens of Michigan, who thought he saw an opportunity to vent his own pet passion, hatred of Secretary Mellon. He introduced a resolution demanding Mr. Mellon's resignation. The Mellon spokesman, Pennsylvania's haggard Reed, defended his chief and the resolution was sidetracked.

Then it was Senator Robinson's turn again. He picked Governor Smith's reprimand to pieces, professing to find its language unstatesmanlike. Unfortunately for him, for Indiana and for the Senate's order of business, Senator Robinson used the phrase "birds of a feather flock together." Upon this, like a vulture upon a dead pig, swooped Mississippi's Harrison, champion Democratic ironist. Rather tritely, in a vein on the level of his subject, Senator Harrison dragged out all the dreadful exhibits of corruption recently exposed in Senator Robinson's Klan-fouled political entourage. " 'Birds of a feather flock together,' " croaked Senator Harrison, over and over. Better men in both parties groaned when they realized how low the Senate had sunk.

Senator Nye's reply to Governor Smith breathed outraged dignity and further betrayed his lack of self-control. Governor Smith, in his own anger, had identified Senator Nye with the "disgraceful" Republican party. This gave Senator Nye a chance to parade the fact, which everyone knows, that he is neither G. O. P. nor Democrat but a "Progressive" and as such no friend of Indiana's Robinson. He rehearsed his own record as an Oil Inquisitor, insinuated that Governor Smith had not done so nobly, insinuated that Governor Smith had blocked Inquisitor Walsh's presidential nomination by the Democrats in 1924 and supported John W. Davis "of the House of Morgan" instead; insinuated, finally, by an artful question, that Governor Smith's "reticence" on the Oil Scandal may have been "attributable to the fact that Harry F. Sinclair was a member of your official family." "I only regret," concluded young Senator Nye, "that you have seen fit to give aid and comfort to every scoundrel whose infamy has been exposed, by seeking to undermine public confidence in the fairness and impartiality of the Committee. . . . That is the status you now occupy, in my humble opinion, as the result of your unwarranted letter, with whatever 'public humiliation' it brings to yourself."

Governor Smith took his time replying to this outburst, but another fight sprang up before the week was out. In the Senate, Indiana's Robinson went off on a wide tack to show that five onetime members of President Wilson's cabinet had later entered the employ of Oilmen Sinclair and Doheny. It was the rankest sort of Senatorial innuendo and included the smirking suggestion that Inquisitor Walsh had been an intimate of Doheny's. Stalwart 38-year-old Senator Tydings of Maryland chewed hard on his chewing gum until Senator Robinson sat down. Then he repeated the Harrison performance, cramming Indiana's "birds of a feather," including murderous Dragon D. C. Stephenson of the Indiana Klan, down Senator Robinson's throat.

"Lies! All campaign lies! Uttered by the Senator from Maryland!" screamed Senator Robinson.

Senator Tydings leaped up, livid. Senator Robinsop, himself only 47 years old and no weakling, strode to meet him. Senator Fess, Ohio's little fussbudget, rushed between the near-combatants waving a copy of the Senate rules. Senator Robinson had to retract his epithets. Senator Tydings sat down and chewed his gum again, glaring, angry.

Aside from so much fury and fulmination, the week's actual Oil Scandal progress amounted to:

1) The discovery, by the investigating Senators, that Albert D. Lasker, opulent Chicago advertising man, intimate of President Harding's and onetime (1921-1923) chairman of the U. S. Shipping Board, gave $26,000 to the Harding campaign fund in 1920, $1,000 of which was recorded and $25,000 kept secret.

2) A verdict by his doctors that Albert Bacon Fall was too wrecked physically to go from his home in El Paso, Tex., to Washington this week, as scheduled, for fresh trial with Sinclair.

3) A ruling by Justice Jennings Bailey of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia that the Fall and Sinclair cases be separated, Fall's case to be postponed indefinitely, Sinclair's to be tried beginning April 4.

4) The departure of Sinclair's lawyers for El Paso to take Fall's deposition for the defense. The gist of the Fall statement was expected to be the old story that it was Edwin Denby, the Harding Navy Secretary and not Fall who persuaded President Harding to transfer Teapot Dome from the Navy to the Interior Department, a transfer to which Fall says he assented "reluctantly and only at the instance of the President."