Evening Star Newspaper, February 22, 1931, Page 23

Editorial Page EDITORIAL SECTION he Sundiwy St Part 2—-8 Pages C. SUNDAY MORNIN( FEBRUARY 22, 1931. SESSION NOTABLE FOR TEST OF POLITICAL LEADERSHIP Troubles of Robinson Following Demo- cratic Pledge to Co-operate With Presi- dent Hoover—Senate Deliberations. BY MARK SULLIVA HIS session of Congress is close enough to its end to permit a artial review. The only respect n which the review can be im- portant is as it relates to the wubject of leadership in the Senate. The session itself was unimportant. Its principal business, like that of most short sessions, was the enactment of the 11 great appropriation bills upon which the orderly functioning of the Govern- ment depends. Aside from that there bas been so far no legislation of prime importance. e session, soon after its beginning turned itself iargely into an enterprise for the consideration of special ap- propriations in the interest of the un- employed and of persons distressed by crought. The aggregate of these ap- propriations was very large. If we in- clude in it the legislation for veterans, the whole sum is an _extremely large total of gifts by the Federal Govern- ment. Only in that respect, unhappy for the taxpayer, has the work of the session been impressive. It was the discussion of these gifts, and quarrels over them, that con- sumed most of the session’s time. In the Senate, especially, a fair estimate would say that seven-eighths of the time was devoted to the politics— politics in the smaller sense of the word—that arose out of several aspects ©f Federal largesse. Light on Leadership. In one respect the session was im- rtant. It has thrown a strong light, ecessary to be seriously considered, on the subject of political leadership as it expresses itself in the Senate. ‘The session took its tone and color from the election that had occurred in November, four weeks before the session itself opened. That election had resulted in a marked increase of the number of Democrats in the Senate and in the House. The election, in short, had had the atmosphere of a Democratic victory. Due to this, the opening of the ses- sion and the public attitude toward it took on the nature of looking upon the session as one to be dominated by the Democrats. It was as if there had been a concrete change of party con- from the Republicans to the Democrats. Actually this had not happened. The Congress that was elected in November was not and is not the Congress that is now sitting. The November election determined the per- sonnel of the new Congress whose R:tem.hl life does not begin until after arch 4. The Congress now sitting was and is the same.that has been in existence for nearly two years. Nevertheless the psychological effect of ths nearness of the Democratic vic- tories in November to the opening of this session of Congress had the effect of causing everybody to think in terms of something like a change of control #nd in terms of the Democrats having greater power and responsibility. Statement by Leaders. ‘Taking account of this state of the public mind, the seven principal leaders of the Democratic party in the eountry issued a remarkable public statement. ‘The avowal of the leaders was to the effect that their party would co-operate with the Republican President in measures helpful to the country in the present condition of business; that they would not resist or delay confirmation of fit appointments to office made by the President; that they would facil- ftate the orderly conduct of the ses- sion’s business; that they would ab- stain from obstructive tactics—all of | which was summed up in the public mind in & word that passed into the headlines, “co-operate.” It should be interjected here that Shis statement of the seven Democratic Congress not yet in existence, for which the Democrats expected to be respon- gible, in which they expected to have a majority, or very close to one. Never- theless the fact that the Democratic Seaders issued the statement at the opening of the present session and all the circumstances attending it caused the public to feel that the promise of eo-operation had application to the gession then beginning and now in ex- ‘This was in the minds of the themselves. Their intention, in the statement they made, and their pctual effort when the session came into being,” was to co-operate in the present session as well as the future one. One of the implications of the promise, later made specific by Demo- cratic Senate Leader Robinson, was to 90 co-operate in the present session as to avert necessity for a special session ©f the new Congress after March 4. Ex-Candidates Signers. The Democratic undertaking to co- pperate was formally signed by all the highest leadership of the party. It was signed by the three living men who have been the party’s candidates for President: ex-Gov. Alfred E. Smith, candidate in 1928; John W. Davis, can- didate in 1924; ex-Gov. James M. Cox of Ohlo, candidate in 1920. It was signed by the two highest officials of the Democratic national organization, Chajrman John J. Raskob of the Demo- cratic National Committee, as well as Jouett Shouse, the active head of the committee, Pinally it was signed by the two men most directly responsible for the actions of the party within Con- gress—the party leader in the Senate, Senator Joseph T. Robinson of Arkan- sas, and the leader in the House, Rep- resentative John Garner of Texas That the Democratic promise of co- operation went to unhappy wreck is familiar to every one. This fate con- stitutes no unique reflection on the Democrats. The fundamental cause of what happened does not lie within either party: it is a condition that affects both parties and lies deeper than both. To realize this it is only neces- sary to imagine a reversal of the situa- tion. Imagine that the Democrats were in wer with the Republicans out. Imag- Pre that the seven highest leaders of thbe Republican party had made exactly the promise that the seven Democratic leaders did. Can any one doubt that in such a reversed situation the hypotheti- cal Republican promise of co-operation would have come to wreck? Does any one doubt that the insurgent Republi- can Senators—La Follette, Brookhart, WNorris and the others—would in many cases have resented and in all cases fgnored any official, collective party ise made by the leaders, and would ve prevented its fulfillment? The an- swer is obvious. What happened in this session of Congress, what caused much of the public almost to deplore the very existence of Congress, arises from causes common to both parties. Resentment in Ranks. The promise by the seven Democratic feaders to co-operate with the Repubi- can President was hardly dry on the mewspapers that printed it before any one close to the situation in Washing- ton was well aware thl‘! ke ::‘r:mu; was resented by many of the rank an of the Democratis within Congress. press and other ns of pub- Yie opinion were 8o enthusiastic in ap- for the generosity of the gesture Seaders had relation literally to the new | MAiority party, supposed of the Democratic leaders as to ('l\ut‘ dissenters to confine their comments to angrily muttered defiance. That the re- sentment was there and that in due time it would explode was apparent to every one familiar with Congress. It is not 100 much to say that to more than half the Democratic Senators the prom- ise of the seven national leaders of the party meant nothing. So far as it meant anything, it was something to resent, Leader Robinson undertook to co-op- erate. If it is difficult now to recall any detail of the work of the session that was carried on more expeditiously, that is no qualification of the fact that Leader Robinson undertook to live up to the spirit of co-operation. If the sena- torial confirmation of appointees was about as long delayed and as acrimoni- ous as in sessions in which no co-opera- tion was suggested, if the Senate was just as dilatory about passing the indis- pensable appropriations as is its usual habit, if the session as & whole did not differ from normal ones—the reason lay not in Senator Robinson’s leadership, but in the condition which made his leadership difficult in any session, re- gardless of the promise of co-operation that happened to have been made in this session. The same conditions would have made the leadership of any other man, Democrat or Republican, equally difficult. Lesson As to Leadership. In short, the thing that stands out as the conspicuous lesson of this session of Congress is the passing, as repects the Senate, of the whole function of leadership. It is often expressed as “lack of leadership.” It is not that. It is lack of the possibility of leader- ship. Senator Robinson is as strong and able, of as elevated character and as experienced in the requisites of official leadership as any Senate leader that elther party has had for many years. - The condition that besets the Democrats with Senator Robinson as leader, and that besets the Republicans with Senator Watson as leader, is some- times expressed in a witticism so often repeated as to be trite: “The trouble is not lack of leaders but lack of follow- ers.” To express it plainly, the troul is that in the Senate as it is now com- posed, and under the present method of electing Senators, hardly more than a handful of them, in eitber party, feels or practices any obligation to accept leadership, or live up to party respon- sibility. ‘That this condition exists with the Republicans has long been familiar. What this session demonstrates is that the condition exists in even greater degree with the Democrats. If the Democrats should have a majority and | control of the next Senate, or of any Senate in the near future, the re- calcitrancy among them will be found :10 be greater than among the Repub- cans. ‘The proportion of refusal to accept leadership among the ublicans can be roughly measured. e number. of :eg:b!i&m (nominal) in the Senate . these roughly 15, typified La Follette and Norris, for example, -‘z | frankly avowed rebels against leader- ship and against party programs. About another 15 are but little less insurgent; typified by Senator Couzens of Michi- gan, they assert and exercise the privi- lege of conforming or not conforming to the party program, of following or not following the official leadership. There remain but 26 Republicans who can be looked upon as party men, de- pendable ‘to abide by party platforms, to_support party programs, to follow official leadership. To say there are 26 is rather too much. The number is perhaps closer to 22. That is, in the to be réspon- sible for the conduct of the Govern- ment, there are only 22 Republicans out | of 26, only 22 Senators out of 96 who regard party responsibility as binding. Few Willing to Accept. If and when the Democrats come | into power the proportion of them who | are willing to accept party leadership | | will be even smaller. This has been | demonstrated by what has happened in | th_er hperesl;:t session. 'mocratic Insurgens inst | senator_Robinson's Teaderaniy became | aggressive during the consideration of | measures for the relief of drought in 1s-mw{J Robinson's home State, Arkan- sas. Up to a certain point Senator | Robinson tried to co-opefate in & pro- | gram of relief emanating from the Re- | publican administration and the Re- publican majority in the House. The |leading Democratic dissenter from this program. and from Senator Robinson's | leadership, was his fellow Senator from Arkansas, Mr. Caraway. The snarl in which these measures | for relief became involved led to & cli- | max in which Senator Robinson called a caucus of his party. The caucus dic- | tated and Senator Robinson read to the | Senate a formal ultimatum of six pro- | posals which he said must be accepted | by the Republican House and the Re- publican President. 1If the latter should | ail to accept, the ultimatum said, Sena- tor Robinson and the Democrats would not feel obliged to further the passage of the regular appropriation bills which are indispensable for the Government's functioning. The ultimatum, the whole incident, amounted to Leader Robins~ - saying., ‘as spokcsman for the Dem - crats, that unless the Republican Pre - dent and the Republican majority n the House would accept the six proposels of the Democrats, the latter would in effect delay the passage of the indis- pensable appropriation bills and thereby | | precipitate a special session of the new | Congress. The reversal from the early attitude of co-operation was complete. Mistake and Compromise. Presently there was compromise, as there was bound to be. Everybody hav- ing the faintest familiarity with parlia- | mentary politics knew that Senator Rob- | inson and the Democrats, in presenting | a formal six-point ultimatum, had made & mistake, a mistake so obvious that it | could only be accounted for by a state of anger which temporarily eclipse Judgment about parliamentary strategy. S0 soon as the compromise was ef- fected Senator Robinson, in defending it and carrying it out, was supported by precisely those Democrats who prev- fously had led the insurgency sgainst his leadership. He was now, for the moment, leader of precisely the group that had destroyed his leadership. At this point arose a new departure | from Robinson’s leadership. So con- servative a Democrat as Glass of Vir- inia denounced the compromise. As | he did so, newspaper dispatches said, Senator Robinson. “gazed steadily a the floor * * ¢ his face was very red. Not unnaturally. Senator Robinson is an exceptionally high-minded man. What he would have and could have resented as a private individual, he had to endure as a party ieader. What he had let himself in for was an accident of the only kind of leadership that any man of either party can have in the Senate as 1t now is. { | BY CYRIL ARTHUR PLAYER. ERBERT HOOVER is the sym- bol of a great transition. Nation is only beginning to Tead between the lines and sense the significance of the man and his term of office; of what he has done, what he has left undone and what he has tried to do. Here in Washington, with one'’s nose pressed against the front window of public business, there is confusion worse confounded. The story of the last 23 months is distorted by the eves of tragedy which see everything through the glasses of economic depression: the personality of the man in the White House has become as obscure as the strangely negative clothes and dismal necktie in which he sweeps business so_swiftly through the executive office. Faint or loud, ‘the voices in conflict are heard speaking of deadlocks, party perils, balance of power; of mischievous politics, of no politics at all; of wave ing, diminishing authority; of every- thing and anything that expresses the chaos of mind which seeks to fit a new condition to an old and seedy formula Yet, somewhere in all this there is a | story ‘of almost two years of service. There they are, the months stretching from March 4. 1929. And there is the man, his desk clean of papers, his speech &:flnpt‘ his brain quick, logical, penetrating. | The photographers have Don » BY CHARLES WAYMAN HOGUE. OT so many miles from Hot Springs, Ark., you will sce a sign in the road saying, “Road passable to Jesseville—im able beyond.” If you hav small car that can climb stecp h ford streams and makc its way betw trees and boulders, you will find self in a world as strange and different n journeyed to the furthermost parts of the earth. This was my home, and the home 'of my people for many generations. My father told me that his grandfather came here on a gold hunting expedition after the Battle of New Orleans and tiked it enough to stay, though he found no gold. Here I was orn and reared. years old. Then I went away in search of a bet- ter education. At first I intended to return after a year and settle down to the life of my people. But year afler year passed, and pefore 1 knew it I had become entangled in the mesh of civil- ization. Forty years passed—without my once P B bl i e i the word. There are only chartered in- temporary coagulations. gard the, ‘The truth is, there is not, in the Senate, any party in any fajr sense of Tesponsibil States as & going concern, WITH A CAN FLATTE! WASHINGTON, D. CHARACTERISTIC POSES OF PRESIDENT HOOVER. done him the disservice -of smoothing dent of our time and his task is im- out t his face, betra. of the which impa but t He h, directly you see instinctive geniality pontaneous_affability 7 when fac- but expands ace conver- hose lines wh h ties are numerous e eness ance h something unnamed at tience 0 be gue: is the second transitional Presi- ;measunbly more difficult than in the |day when President Wilson saw the old | manner of life vanish into history and |the new, perplexing post-war attitude emerge. Wilson was borne through the crisis on the emotional billows of war hysteria. Hdover wades stolidly through the somber morass of fairly universal dejection. Occacionally some discerning spirit here in Washington sees this period of or at least | economic depression as part of & world- | deadlock, and wonders whether, | wids before the bell rings, President Hoover will assert his good sense with some The President’s Two Years Mr. Hoover Is Symbol of Great Transition in Nation—Many Great Things Accomplished. statesmanlike gesture aimed at & new co-ordination of world needs. | " The President never claimed politi | sophistication. Nor did the American people elect him as & politician. Poli- tics, it is true, is complementary to statecraft: a proper, essential tool, worthily employed. But there are many millions of sound American citizens who | not only understand Mr. Hoover's lim- | itation in politics, but see themselves as sharing t. Like Average Citizen. He is closer in thought and attitude | to the average non-political eitizens of well developed intelligence than many Presidents who enjoyed a reputed ‘“‘pop- ularity.” If the public does not know that, it is because of the confusion of voices raised by politics—politics which | quiteaccurately fails to recognize in Hoover & 100 per cent reflection of | itself. | In this President Hoover is as old- | fashioned as the millions whose polit- ical skill is either amateur or negligible; all of these s#ill entertain a wholesome patriotism to which politics is, or should | be, distinctly subordinate; mentally they draw a line beyond which politics be- comes shabby and dublously honest. The condition is not peculiar to one party, but as the present is a Republic- an_administration the matter may be |« (Continued on Fourth Page)” t Pity Mountaineer He’s to Be Envied Living ! havin, g the opportunity to return. Then last Summer I went back for the first |time in all those {find & trem ”\"r‘n!r h life world | And from the world you left as if you had | fiist came | come rs. I expected to rdous cha Customs, . means of livelihood e, would be en- Instead, was like boyhood. The itself. Ji 4 if randfather, who e 1g tor gold, should h. d find no greater back |change than I Nat home moun! iy unie tainous om leave ate to other Sometimes a o inecrs is to em: sections. se |month a scholar. Not much of' this as paid in money. One man would pay him in molasses, another in corn and another would give him a ham. Once my mother gave a teacher a cou- |ple of pairs of homeknit wool socks. | This paid for my tuition for a month. School in “Meetin’ House.” | our chool was held in the “Meetin’ | House,” & long log house fronting the big road. which served as the religious, educational and social center of the en- | tire © ghborhood. Near the back door was a rostrum with a desk that an- | swered for a pulpit. In front of this | was a long boxed bench, not unlike the young man goes to the river bottoms | easing of & coffin. This was known as t pic the | alway as were held tn that part of the Ozarks. |moved in a t Here I stayed until I was more than 20 | to Texas, where the |and | they whe solved As I have said, it was the search for | education that moun | the p free under | that | trict. cotton k cottom, and stays to work affer s hered. But nearly these boys come back. I re- Here I attended such schools | member one year when several families ns overland ind rich soil profitable farming; but one by ong drified w0 our community, e the problem of lving has been d long ago. ain of W anzed me to leave the tains. When I was growing up people there were opposed to the ools. Somehow they did not stand the system. It was seldom a school tax was voted in our dis- Hence, to have a free school we dividuals and tiny groups that make | had to wait until the accumulation of There is no|State tax per capita amounted to as considerable group of Senators who re- | much as $50. This hired a teacher for mselves as having a continuing | two months. ity for operating the United |would come through the country and lteach a subs:ripn%n school at $1 altravel, and my folks hated Sometimes a teacher he mourners’ bench in times of the “big meetin’.” In front of the mourn- | ers” bench was & small table where our | preacher presided. | The benches, made of undressed lum- | ber, were nailed to sawed blocks. There | were no back rests and there were no desks in front. In addition to the front |and back doors, the house was further lighted and ventilated by means of large cracks between the logs of the wall. These cracks also were convenient to { spit_through for those who chewed and dipped and wanted to deviate from the usual manner of spitting on the floor. | T earned a little money picking cotton n the lowlands and sold a horse and ome cattle that my father had given me. This netted me enough to spend a year in Little Rock, where I could a! tend school. Little Rock was consid- ered a long way from home, owing to way From Worries of Civilization, Says One Who Went Back. Drawn for The Sunday Star by Harry Fisk ED OUT AND PERFORATED WITH NAIL HOLES, SHE GRATED THE CORN INTO MEAL. leave. My father advised me to take ::he money and invest in some land near ome. see me own a home and farm while I was still young. Returns After 40 Years. I fully intended to return the next | vear, take out a homestead and try to teach school. But after one year had passed I wanted to keep on until I fin- ished college. And before I knew it the years had started slipping by. Then, after 40 years away, my thoughts turned again to the simple life of my boyhood. And I went home to find the world of the mountaineers just where I had left it. My niece and her husband, with whom I am living in the moutains, have built the same kind of house my par- ents had when I was & boy. The “big house,” one large room, is built of logs and floored with split logs with the flat side up. It is.rgofed with boards, and the overhead jolsts are_made from un- barked poles. There is no loft, but some boards are placed ross these Joists, on which are stored apples, pea- nuts and sacks of cotton. Sticks hold- ing rings of dried pumpkins are hung up, extending from one joist to another. ‘The kitchen is a smaller house of one room, standing out in the yard, facing the back door of the big house. There is a long bench against the wall of the kitchen, with the dining table in front of it. The other seats for the table are He seemed to think that I had | sufficient education and he wanted to | | in Surry County, Va., as early as 1658. | Lanier, but Sampson. EUROPE DRIFTS TOWARD i | | BY FRANK H. SIMONDS. ENEVA.—It is & far cry from the Polish Corridor to the Pal- i ace of the League of Nations. But after many days spent along “Bleeding Frontiers,” to employ the recent phrase of the Ger- man foreign minister, nothing is more natural than to turn back from pres- ent and prospective battlegrounds and visit the center of all European peace effort, to seek after some general esti- mate of the whole situation. Such an investigation was made easy |by the fact that the Midwinter Coun- {'cil of the League of Nations recently brought to Geneva not less than 17 foreign_ministers of various countries, thus affording a unique opportunity to get a conspectus. The -article which follows represents the results of a se- | ries of conversations with more than | half of these ministers, together with public men and journalists of various nations At the outset it is essential to set forth the unanimous judgment of all European public men Whom I encoun- tered, that war is for the present, and for a time long enough to remove it from the field of news, out of the ques- tion. For this consensus two reasons are invariably presented: First, that no | country save France could face even | the preliminary expenses of conflict, | and, second, that all people, including | the French, preserve that horror of war | which was born of bitter experience in the last struggle. | Crisls Reached. | When, however, one has eliminated | what has seemed to many American ob- servers the most immediate and con- | siderable danger in contemporary | Europe, it is necessary to emphasize at |once the general view that, notwith- | standing the absence of any date for a “next” war, Europe is today in the midst of the most acute and dangerous crisis since 1914. 2 This crisis is only political in its ef- fects and is actually to be traced di- rectly to the economic depression which in Europe, in direct contrast to the | United States, has called into question | not alone the st ility of various gov- ernments, but has raised lasting ques- tions as to the future of the whole po- litical and economic structure. As a consequence of the economic depres- sion peoples have lost confidence in their public men, in the existing forms of government, in the prospect of or- derly and normal recovery, and have been caught in vast and perhaps in- creasing numbers by the propaganda of those who urge violent remedies and advocate various forms of revolution and methods of which Russian Bolshe- vism and Italian Fascism are the most familiar, ‘Thus, instead of one general or va- rious loeal wars, European statesmen are today most fearful of domestic rev- olutions which can produce upheaval in varfous countries, large and small. But although the general crisis thus resolves itself into numerous local crises, one circumstance is everywhere unmistak- able. Economic depréssion, which has made war almost impossible has, at the same time, produced unparalleled explosion of nationalism in almost every country. Or, to be more exact, while in some countries the depression has produced an explosion of extreme na- tionalism, these explosions have in others aroused a sense of apprehension and danger which has ended in similar consequences. Arms Are Improved. ‘Thus, on the one hand, there has been an incalculable multiplication of | the barriers to trade and commerce, | growing out of the domestic legislation | designed to protect home markets, while, | on the other, there has been a growing | insistence upon expanding and perfect- |ing all forms of armament. The first | of these circumstances has ended in ac- centuating the economic crisis by put- ting a term to all forms of co-operation: the latter has automatically closed all present prospect of progress toward dis- armament or, indeed, any limitation of armaments. All of this was vividly disclosed when the foreign ministers of League mem- | ber nations came here in the closing | days of January to discuss the two | major problems of a disarmament con- ference and of a United States of Eu- rope. Mere contact between these | minist ers disclosed the transparent fact | that the atmosphere in Europe at this moment was such that nothing could be done in either direction and, without exception, the ministers themselves confessed to a sense of almost unlimited depression in discovering at close range the extent of the divisions in Europe at the present hour. | “Better war than a disarmament con- | ference now,” was the bitter comment of one foreign minister, and his ob- vious meaning was that any conference, | until the general state of mind had changed, would lead to struggles be- tween nations which could only have grave and enduring consequences for European peace. Moreover, in this connection, one must note 'the further detail that, in | the present domestic crises, foreign ECONOMIC CATASTROPHE Crises in Many Nations Center About Whole System of Rule and Dismay Leaders. ministers have felt obliged to divert heme a#tention from home problems b3 carriag on a form of prestige politics ab=oad. But prestige politics, like tariff devices, have only awakened reprisal, and in the end the extreme nationalists of various countries have been brought into collision, and foreign ministers, contrary to their will and judgment, have been condemned to wage futile battles over questions which are either trivial or beyond adjustment in any present time. Foreign Policies Involved. It is true, of course, that the economic crisis in America has prod results, but these results rially affected our foreign relations. The quarrels between Congress and the President . have arisen over parochial questions. The opposition in the United States is not assalling the administra- tion because of its Mexican or Cani dian policies. That is the great and unmistakable difference between the effect of the eco nomic crisis in Europe and in the United States. Moreover, there is a second dif- ference, not less striking, that while in America the battle centers around the next presidential campaign and the per- sonality of President Hoover, in many European countries it centers about the whole form and system of government. Looked at on the surface, viewed solely through the news reports of day- to-day events, Europe seems in general to be foliowing its traditional course, to be quarreling over the old issues, rivalries of states, the conflicting claims of races. All the old stuff is there and is unpleasantly reminiscent of both pre- war and post-war days. But the more closely one studies the situation, the clearer becomes the fact that something far more serious is at work, and that we may in the end be facing something as far reaching as the French Revolu- tion itself. Public Men Disillusioned. More than one foreign minister has in recent times expressed to me his vast disillusionment, his self-deception in be- lieving that with the various intern tional agreements, the League Covenant, the Locarno and Kellogg pacts, the va- rious arbitration agreements, the war had been liquidated and European re- covery assured. This economic crisis, which M. Hymans, the foreign minister of Belgium, vividly likened to a delayed post-operative shock, has come unex- pectedly, demolished all plans, and has left the public men in visible and mounting disarray. Actually the public men of Europe, despite the noise in the press and on the platform, are not thinking about war, but about unemployment. But in no European country is there a political leader or a political party firmly in con- trol and possessed of a definite program of relief. Thus, as I have said, in all countries public men strive to distract public attention from economic ques- tions by agitating such issues as revision of frontiers, reduction of debts and disarmament. Meantime, as the total of unemploy- ment mounts in &ll countries, all sober. minded public men perceive that public treasuries cannot indefinitely stand the strain. And the day when relief from public funds is no longer available, the deluge may come. Moreover, there is one more striking circumstance. Before the present economic crisis the parli- amentary system had in many countries broken down and dictators had been substituted. But under the strain of the present crisis the dictator has been as helpless as the prime minister of a parliamentary country. Mussolini and Pilsudski have been just as powerless as Ramsay MacDonald and Bruening. Therefore dictatorship, too, is on the decline. On the whole, the worst plight of all is that of the dictatorship of the proletariat in Soviet Russia. In sum, the impression I gather from Geneva and from the public men of all European countries here assembled is this: With the exception of France, the condition in all continental countries has become such that the familiar issues and problems of the post-war era, problems political and military, have become actually side issues. - integration within countries has. be- céme so general and gone so far that one of the most familiar judgments one meets is that capitalistic and demo- cratic civilization is endangered, if not doomed, and that Europe is drifting toward a general catastrophe, still con- tinuing to murmur the old words of nationalism. Or. to put it differently, there is & growing recognition that recovery from the World War has not even yet begun jand that no one can now guess what the new Europe will be like, although more and more are convinced that it ill be incredibly unlike the old. In any event what seems in America to have remained an economic crisis has in Europe broadened into a political, social and intellectual crisis. Informed people are no longer discussing the question of return of prosperity, but whether old Europe can survive this final catastrophe. (Copyright, 1931.) Virginia History Hundreds of Americans of several | well known and aristocratic families be- lieved, until comparatively recently, that they were the descendants of John Wash- | ington, great - grandfather of George ‘Washington. It was not known, at least not with any degree of certainty, that this John | ‘Washington, who settled in Westmore- land County, Va., in 1657, had a con- 1 temporary of the same name who was | Until Atwood Violett, a member of the | New York Genealogical and Biographi- cal Society. directed research into the subject, it had been thought that Eliza- beth Washington, daughter of John Washington of Westmoreland, had mar- ried Thomas Lanier, with the result that the Laniers, and related families, were connected With the branch of the Washington family, of which George ‘Washington was a member. Laniers of Surry Branch. Researoh has proved through docu- mentary evidence that the Elizabeth ‘Washington who married a Lanier was not the daughter of John Washington of Westmoreland, but the granddaugh- ter of John Washington of Surry. The former also had a daughter, but she never married. Moreover, Elizabeth of the Sufry family did not marry Thomas nier. ‘Thomas Forsythe a genealo- gist, Washington was of Mr. Vilett, himself a descen lor 1 the road conditions and the mode of to see m supplied with chairs brought from the (Continued on Sixth Page.) search, He Based his findings on & numkat Two John Washingtons in Early Confuse Genealogy documents. The first was a marriage contract dated “the 15th of September, 1658, ‘between John Washington and Mary Fford, “widow filed in Surrey County. revealed that Mrs. Fford previously had been the “Widow Blunt.” Richard a Surry Washington. Another document, an assignment of land by Thomas Blunt, who was de- scribed in the marriage contract as “sonne of ye Mary,” “to my brother, Richard Washingtos fixes the fact that Richard Washington was the son of John Washington of Surry, . Richard’s will reveals that he had & daughter, Elizabeth, who married Samp- son Lanier, whose will names his seven . childeen. His fourth son, also named Sampson, married Elizabeth Chamber- lin,” and their daughter, Winnifred, marnied Col. Drury Ledbetter. Lanier Wed to Ledbetter. In an article in the New York Genea- logical and Biographical Record of Jan- u 1916, Mr. Violett wrote: The exhibit shows one line of the Washington-Lanier ancestry as estab- lished by the report of Mr. Nelson, down to and including the marriage of Win- nifred Lanier to Col. Drury Ledbetter. The records of my family (i. e, the Violett family) showing this con have always been complete, so there Was no necessity for Mr. Nelson to pur- sue his investigation beyond that it. “‘One of the children of Col. and Winnifred (Lanier) Ledbetter was Susan Washington Ledbetter. She married Maj. Thomas Martin of Alber, marle County, Va., a ed oml- cer of the Revolution."