Feeling Wetter

In the last three national elections the Republican Party has gone to the country on an adroit Prohibition platform promising enforcement of the 18th Amendment and nothing more. Last week political wind was full of straws to indicate that the party might stop weasling, might devise a new, Wetter formula at the Chicago convention to match the shifting sentiment of the past twelve years. What the formula would be was anybody's guess but there was no doubt that the idea of a referendum plank has lately gained great strength among G. O. P. leaders. Seven straws:

1) Republicans in the House of Representatives divided 112 Dry to 97 Wet in last fortnight's Prohibition vote.

2) In Chicago to make a St. Patrick's Day speech Secretary of War Hurley, talking privately to friends, was overheard by a newsman to say: "I believe the national convention will adopt a more liberal stand on Prohibition. A great many people are going to look for Wet candidates in November. Eventually I think the Prohibition question will be settled on the basis of State's rights." Back in Washington where Dry leaders were shocked and hurt by his words, Secretary Hurley hastened to explain: "When I want to speak in quotation on Prohibition, the words will be mine and not what someone else supposes I have said. I didn't mention Prohibition in my address in Chicago nor did I mention it anywhere else for publication."

3) Missouri prepared to send a Wet pro-Hoover delegation to the National Convention and Secretary of Agriculture Hyde, ardent Dry Methodist though he is, acquiesced.

4) Ohio is the birthplace of the Anti-Saloon League. A majority of Ohio's convention delegates will be Wet.

5) Emerging from the White House, Ralph E. Williams of Oregon, vice chairman of the Republican National Committee, declared: "There is very strong agitation in favor of a Wet plank of some kind among Republicans. The party will have to adopt some kind of platform to meet the changed situation."

6) From a meeting of Republican national committeemen in Washington to arrange convention details word was passed out that 25 of the 53 members of the platform committee were already Wet and ready to support a referendum plank, while at least 535 of the 1,154 delegates will take a more liberal stand on Prohibition.

7) Fresh opposition was heard to the renomination of Vice President Curtis, a Dry of Dry Kansas. Mentioned for his place on the ticket were such non-Drys as Secretary of the Treasury Mills, Secretary of War Hurley, Philippine Governor Theodore Roosevelt.

P: Meanwhile President Hoover, who will have to stand on any Prohibition plank carpentered by the Convention, continued diligently to pursue his policy of silent neutrality. Ever since he threw away his chance, offered by the report of the Wickersham Commission, to take a Wet stand, he has been increasingly regarded by the public as a Dry. His friends report that he is irritated by the liquor agitation, calls it "poppycock," insists that the question is one for Congress to deal with first.

But suppose the President's party should declare for a referendum. Would he acquiesce? If he did, what then? Asked this question by the Christian Science Monitor last week, Prohibitor Clarence True Wilson gave the Dry answer: "Drys would not support him and would go to extreme lengths to repudiate what they would consider a policy of Judas Iscariot. . . . They would either put up an independent candidate or would vote for the other [Democratic] side even though it were Wet as a rebuke for that kind of leadership."

P: Ten of the eleven Republican convention delegates elected in North Dakota's primary last week (see p. 16j, were Hooverites. The eleventh was independent. President Hoover was not a candidate in the Republican preference voting where Dr. Joseph Irwin France beat "General" Jacob S. Coxey three-to-two in a notably light ballot. Since he did not win a single convention delegate. Dr. France's victory was meaningless.

P: Announced was the early retirement of Maurice Maschke, Cleveland's boss, as Ohio's member of the Republican National Committee. He will be replaced by Postmaster General Brown of Toledo, who, after the Convention renominates President Hoover, is slated to supplant Senator Fess as G. O. P. chairman and manage the national campaign.

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