At Charlottesville

At Johns Hopkins University, no professor enjoys greater prestige than Dr. John Holladay Latane, U. S. history man. At a Smith rally, a fortnight ago, Dr. Latane said: "Speaking as a historian, I say very seriously that it is my opinion that the Society of Jesus*in the palmiest days of its history never held a nation in so firm a grasp as the 'political parsons' of certain Protestant sects hold the United States today. Whenever I pass that large building in Washington, which overlooks the Capitol and houses of the offices of the Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals of the Methodist Episcopal Church, I feel like turning anarchist and throwing a bomb in the cellar!"

Through public prints, Secretary (Rev. Dr.) W. H. Burgan of the M. E. T. P. P. M. replied: "Rabble-rouser!"

Last week, this first-class historian or rabble-rouser or both, went to Charlottesville, Va., to the Institute of Public Affairs. There he met many another professor, nearly all of them in a mood to speak out smartly on many a public affair. But, again it was John Holladay Latane who spoke most decidedly out. Said he:

"Governor Smith is the first man of national prominence in this country to come forward and say what we all know to be true, namely that enforcement is a failure. Mr. Hoover doesn't believe in prohibition any more than I do."

Even the pro-prohibition professors applauded. They, in an outspeaking mood, were not inclined to resent outspeaking Brown Derbyism, especially since the equitable chairman of the prohibition roundtable, Prof. Augustus Raymond Hatton* of Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.) had opened his discussion as follows:

"Governor Smith is a man for whom I have profound admiration. He is undoubtedly the greatest State Governor we have had in half a century, and I admire his honesty on the prohibition question. I also believe, because he said it, that he would lead a movement to repeal the Volstead Act and the Eighteenth Amendment. Because of the large wet element in the Democratic party, I believe he would have greater difficulty in enforcing the amendment than Hoover would have."

But Prof. Hatton's round table was only one of many. Dizzy was the rate with which all U. S. (and some foreign) affairs spun metaphorically round and round. Thus, for example, Prof. Latane is an expert on Latin America. He knows that since 1900, U. S. investments in the Caribbean, Central and South America have increased from the nest egg of $300,000,000 to the imperial fortune of $5,000,000,000. As an historian he stated his fear that so much money would lead the U. S. into imperialism of the bad sort, and concluded: "We are facing one of the greatest struggles in American history, the struggle between imperialism and democracy.''/-

Equally famed as historian is William E. Dodd of the University of Chicago. He told why the Solid South might shift. But as to whether it would, he said, "The answer is not easy."

Trans-Atlantic airways, the degradation of the press, State Legislatures, the Negro, the farmer, formed part of the cosmic program, the vocalists including, besides great historians and divers experts, an Italian count who long ago had a good position in Italy.

One absence was noted, that of vacationing Edwin Anderson Alderman, president of the University of Virginia ("Jefferson's University") on whose campus the institute talked.

* Roman Catholic organization founded in 1539 by Ignatius Loyola (Inigo Lopez de Recalde) Spanish knight, now canonized. The Jesuits grew politically and commercially potent in Spain, France, The Netherlands, Italy, in the 16 and 17 Centuries; in Prussia, Poland, Russia, in the 18 and 19 Centuries. *Author of Cleveland's city manager charter. /-With this as his major issue, Bryan attacked McKinley in 1900, and was defeated.