Morrows & Election

Eldest, slenderest of the daughters of Ambassador Dwight Whitney Morrow is blonde-haired Miss Elisabeth. Last week she started to teach school in Mexico City. Her scholars were 20 bright, beady-eyed little Mexicans.

"Good morning boys!" said Miss Morrow slowly, distinctly. "This is my dog." Patting it, "This is a dog."

"Gude mehrnink boyss," they obediently chorused, "Thees ees mai dohg. Thees ees ay dohg."

"Good morning boys," corrected Miss Morrow, "this is my dog. This is a dog."

According to Mexican newspapers the entire half-hour period was spent repeating, perfecting these three sentences. To reporters the beaming principal declared: "Gracious Miss Morrow has agreed to teach English to two half-hour classes weekly. Her instruction is a bounteous gift to Mexico! The entire nation hails this newest gesture of good will on the part of the Morrow family."

Mrs. Morrow. No less than husband or daughter was Mrs. Morrow a potent figure of the week in Mexico. She had received a formal, piteous appeal from women of the so-called Anti-Re-electionist Party--opponents of the Government's candidate in the presidential election scheduled for Nov. 17--begging her to save the lives of their campaigning husbands, brothers, sons.

"Gracious Mrs. Morrow," they wrote, "because your husband is the Ambassador in our country from one of the greatest countries in the world, you are in a privileged position to render a great service to the cause of humanity. You can secure peace and safety in the Mexican republic."

Cause of the women's petition to Mrs. Morrow was a recent election incident. In Mexico City a youth stood on a street corner shouting the praises of the Anti-Re-electionist Party candidate, Jose Vasconcelos, fighting intellectual, onetime Minister of Public Instruction. Came an armed gang, containing (it was rumored) Government members of the Chamber of Deputies, accoutered with pistols, brickbats. Pistols banged, the crowd scattered before a rain of brickbats, the young campaign orator was left writhing on the sidewalk, spitting blood. His terrified Anti-Re-electionist friends dove for shelter into a nearby cinema. From somewhere a machine gun appeared, was seen knocking white puffs of plaster from the theatre's cheap fac,ade, pouring a stream of lead into the ranks of screaming fugitives within. . . .

During the week Mrs. Morrow prudently avoided any overt appearance of striving to prevent such incidents, common in every Mexican campaign. She was not known to have acted on the final request contained in the Women's Petition: ''Would it not be well to appeal to all societies, clubs and groups of women in the United States, who are united in the desire for promotion of peace, asking their assistance in this time of our dire need?"

In a last-minute effort to get action the most famed of Mexican feminists, Dona Sofia Villa de Buentello, a handsome woman in her early 40's, called on President Emilio Portes Gil. Women she declared would make ideal pollwatchers and ballot-counters "because they would not let themselves be corrupted or suborned, nor can they hope to win high Government posts by selling themselves vilely." In a word Dona Sofia asked the President to decree 100% feminine custody of the presidential vote. He promised to ponder her suggestion, gallantly bowed her out; soon the Ministry of Interior announced: "Federal troops will be assigned to prevent disorder or fraud during the voting."

Candidates. In the presidential race the Grand Revolutionary Party of President Emilio Portes Gil is running scarfaced, jut-lipped Pascual Ortiz Rubio, one-time Ambassador to Brazil, a party regular picked by Mexico's most potent political boss, General Plutarco Elias Calles who put down the revolution of last spring (TIME, March 4 to June 3) and is now being overhauled by doctors at Paris.

Candidate Rubio is pledged to carry out the Party's aggressively radical economic and social programs. He shares the attitude toward Catholicism of General Calles who, while President of Mexico, publicly defied what he called "the grunts of the Pope." Betting odds favor Candidate Rubio so overwhelmingly that, taking a hint from the last U.S. election, he is campaigning with an air of ignoring his opponents, refusing to descend to debate with them.

Candidate Jose Vasconcelos, hero of Mrs. Morrow's lady petitioners, is pugnaciously campaigning on a platform of votes for women, no second terms for Mexican presidents, reduction of the Mexican Army, more conservative Government policies (notably curtailment of the practice of expropriating large estates and turning them over to the peasantry). In thunderous denunciation of President Portes Gil and Candidate Rubio last week, he shouted that as his chances of election grew their agents were plotting to spring a fake revolution in his name, which the Government would use as a pretext for calling off the election. Paradoxically he also threatened: "If the count goes against me and yet I consider myself to have been elected I will accept the will of the people!"