G. O. P.

Oh yes, said Senator Fess, who is to keynote at the Republican convention, President Coolidge would accept the nomination if, to escape deadlock, the convention should draft him.

Oh yes, said Vermont, the Vermont delegates were not merely uninstructed but reserved for President Coolidge.

Oh yes, said Connecticut, the Connecticut delegation would go uninstructed.

In Chicago, the Coolidge movement was permitted to continue at the Mayor William Hale Thompson headquarters. In Manhattan, the same movement was kept alive in a suaver fashion by G. O. Politicians Charles Dewey Hilles and George Morris.

And then, the primary in Massachusetts approached. The same thing that was happening elsewhere began to happen in Massachusetts. This time President Coolidge wrote a note to Chairman Francis Prescott of the Republican State Committee and to him said: "Report has come to me that some persons in Massachusetts are proposing to write in my name as a candidate for President at the primaries on April 24. Such action would be most embarrassing to me and, while appreciating the compliment that is intended, I request that it not be done.

"My name is being used in other States in a way that is contrary to my wishes. I have heard that in New York it has gone so far as to be claimed such use is with my tacit consent.

"In my own State to give any countenance to such a movement would tend to compromise me and lend color to the misrepresentations that apparently are being made in other States.

"I am, therefore, sending you this public declaration of my position and requesting that such attempts be discontinued."

Mr. Prescott and many another read the note, read it again.

It referred specifically only to New York. Would that mean an answer to the report that Wall Street is definitely assured of the ultimate Coolidge acceptance in case of a locked convention (TIME,

April 16)? No, because like all other Coolidge statements on the subject it omitted the final renunciation, the I-will-not-accept. Then it must mean simply a quietus to the Messrs. Hilles and Morris of New York.

His Massachusetts note, said most observers, was simply a repetition of his original choice, coupled with a patient request to the G. O. P. not to come running to him before it had gotten hurt. His silence beyond this seemed to assure the party--and no statesman's silence was ever more eloquent--that if the party was really about to get hurt, he would be there, of course.

Apropos the resurgence of Coolidge-Anyway, on the very morning that President Coolidge's note to Massachusetts was released, the New York World, whose interest in Democrat Smith might be expected to make it help the nomination of the least formidable Republican candidate, published one of its bold uncompromising editorials, entitled "The Candidacy of Mr. Hoover." The World said:

". . . The Republican leaders know that as against Gov. Smith their local tickets in the cities all the way from Boston to Chicago are going to be dangerously threatened. Naturally they are looking for a Presidential candidate who looks as if he might avert this danger.

"There is little reason to think that Secretary Hoover is this candidate. No doubt Mr. Hoover has a great personal following. Probably on a Nation-wide poll of Republicans he would easily lead all the available leaders, barring Mr. Coolidge, himself. But the trouble with Mr. Hoover's following is that it is diffused, that it is politically unorganized, that it is not concentrated in the strategic centres. . .

"There are a number of reasons for Mr. Hoover's weakness in the debatable territory. The Republican farmers in the section from Illinois west have an old prejudice against him which is difficult to remove by explanations, especially since he is lined up against them on the McNary-Haugen bill. The Republican big business men of the East have, so far as one can ascertain their state of mind, a rather subtle but deep distrust of his temperament and his philosophy. They seem to feel that Mr. Hoover thinks too highly of his own judgment in business affairs and that his judgment is not so good as it is supposed to be. They think there is something incalculable, headstrong, moody, in Mr. Hoover's temperament which would make the White House, if he were President, a centre of restless activity, of manifold arrangings and fixings. They think Mr. Hoover is too sure he would be a good President; that he would think himself too competent to solve all difficulties; that he would be too ready with solutions of everything that turns up. They do not regard him as radical, and they do not seem to be afraid of anything in particular that he proposes to do. They seem to feel, in the deeper recesses of their intuition, that he would be a centre of disturbance, that he would get involved in complicated conflicts with Congress and with various interests, that he lacks tranquility, that he would not create confidence, that he is touchy, that he becomes rattled, that he bears grudges.

"None of this may be true, but the belief that it is true exists among large numbers of the most influential men who will have to be consulted in rounding up delegates at Kansas City and in collecting campaign funds afterwards. Among the politicians themselves there is in addition a belief that Mr. Hoover's personal prestige is not of a kind which would stand up well in competition with the intimate personal quality of Gov. Smith's popularity. Mr. Hoover's virtues suggest the clean precision of the scientific man. They are abstract and intellectualized. He has not the flair of a man like Vice President Dawes for heating the blood, and he does not convey that sense of apostolic authority which surrounds Mr. Hughes."

"The logic of the situation would be powerfully against Mr. Hoover were it not for the fact that the opposition to him is uncertain and somewhat divided."

The same morning as the World's editorial, the New York Herald Tribune, outstanding G. O. P. organ in the East, stoutly stated in its leading editorial: "The Hoover campaign continues to make steady progress over a wide territory."