Unsolicited

Veterans of the Spanish War banqueting in Baltimore's Southern Hotel last week were startled when an unscheduled speaker arose in their midst. The veterans' commander-in-chief, Thomas W. Payne, had just concluded the evening's big speech, in which he had waved the flag for ham-handed Representative Dies/- and his Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities. The unheralded speaker, tall, iron grey, with a noble-Roman nose, announced: "I have seen the Dies committee in action in its hearings. It appears to me that Congressman Dies wants to be Vice President of the United States!"

The Spanish War Veterans stirred in their chairs, whispered together. "Sit down," they muttered. "Shut him up!" But the speaker went right on and said his say, for he was a veteran in perfectly good standing. More, he was Captain William S. Ortman, chief of the Capitol police, a body whose opinions on the behavior of statesmen should be intimately informed but is seldom solicited. He had attended several Dies hearings and "didn't think it was fair to let people get up and talk without proper evidence, so I stopped going. A lot of those witnesses were mentally ten years old."

No fear of what Mr. Dies might do to him hung over redoubtable Captain Ortman. From Chicago, he enjoys his $2,700-a-year job and smart blue uniform as patronage from Illinois' old Senator J. Ham Lewis. Besides, he explained, his chief quarrel was not with Representative Dies & committee but with veterans and their organizations. Said Veteran Ortman: "They're beginning to think the country is permeated with "isms" when . . . the American public is 99 44/100% pure."

To disconcerted banqueting Veterans, their toastmaster hemmed: "Well, at any rate, we can be thankful that there is one country in the world where a man can get up on his feet and say what he thinks...."

/-Last week Mr. Dies was rushed to hospital, relieved of a gangrenous appendix.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.