France-for-President

If he follows the standard rules of presidential politics (TIME, Nov. 24), a candidate for the White House will never publicly appear to seek office. Aloof and silent, he will feign indifference while his friends build up sufficient popular sentiment to give his candidacy the appearance of a draft movement. But last week in Maryland Dr. Joseph Irwin France, one time (1917-23) Republican Senator, reversed the usual procedure by announcing his candidacy for the nomination against President Hoover next year. Truthfully he added that he had no promises what ever of public support. As the first step in his campaign to secure that support, this eccentric politician deposited $270 with the Maryland Secretary of State as his price of admission to the preferential primaries.

Dr. France's candidacy was chiefly important because it was the first overt act by a regular to deprive President Hoover of renomination. In a long message ad dressed "to my fellow Americans," Candidate France, who lives the life of a country squire on his Cecil County farm, declared Wet, flayed President Hoover for his lack of "candor and courage" on the Prohibition issue, denounced the Farm Board's activities, excoriated "rancid radicalism." As a physician (he was graduated from Baltimore's College of Physicians & Surgeons in 1903) he diagnosed the aftermath of the War: "the ligaments of international association torn, the arteries of intercourse blocked, the nerves of effective international concert paralyzed, painful financial dislocations. . . ."

Few Marylanders wondered where the money for the France campaign would come from. In 1903 the doctor married the wealthy widow of Jacob Tome, founder of Tome Institute (boys' school) at Port Deposit. Three months after her death in 1927, Dr. France married in Paris a Russian girl by the name of Tatiana Vladimirovna Dechtereva. He was the first U. S. Senator to get into Russia after the revolution, has always advocated cordial relations with the Soviets.

The chief reaction of the France candidacy among Maryland Republicans was a prompt and widespread declaration in favor of President Hoover's renomination.

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