Evening Star Newspaper, February 28, 1932, Page 27

~ EDITORIAL SECTION Che Sunday Star. E ———— Part 2--8 Pages D. C, SUNDAY v T MORNIN( FEBRUARY 28, 1932 WASHINGTON, EUROPEAN IMPASSE CLEAR | AT GENEVA ARMS PARLEY Conference May Be But Observer S in Present BY FRANK H. SIMONDS. ENEVA, February 27.—As the Disarmament Conference drifts into its second month it is possible to draw certain conclusions. In the first place, it is clear that in the larger sense the conference has reached an impasse for the simple reason that it still exceeds the ability of the states- anship of Europe to end the last war. manifestly, as long as one group of nauons refuses to accept the result of the world conflict and another de- clines to modify them all international relations, whether in conferences such as this or in ordinary dipiomatic deal- ings, continue to ri ve about this fixed point. 65,000,000 Germans are Te- solved not to pay reparations at all, not to endure longer the unilateral dis- armament status imposed upon them | Ly the peace treaties. and not to ac cept their present frontiers, which are the result of a lost war. This last determination is shared by some 20,- 000,000 Austrians, Hungarians and Bulgarians, Thus a bloc of 85 millions | of peoples in the center or Europe con- | tinue in purpose at war against their existing circumstances, m conflict with nations insisting upon maintaining | these conditions. | Now, on the other side, stand 125.-| 000,000 of ~French, Belgians, Poles,| Czechoslovaks, Rumanians, Jugnsla\'s.‘ for all of whom the purpose of the an group to modify the territorial | ccisions of the peace treaties is an| immediate threat. France is_appre-| hensive about Alsace-Lorraine, Belgium over Eupen Malmedy, Poland about the corridor through Upper Silesia, Czecho- slovakia about the proposed union of‘ Austria and Germany, all three of the little entente states about Hungarian claims, Jugoslavia and Rumania about Bulgarian demands. Italy on Other Side. This situation is further complicated by the fact that Italy, With the weight of 40,000,000, is thrown upon the Ger- | man side by Premier Mussolini's de- ( sires to upset the preponderant posi- tion that France now holds in Europe by reason of her alliances. Thus you| have the fact that two groups of states, | each numbering about 125 millions of | peoples are actually in deadlock. Ger- many and her allies of the war are seek- ing territorial revision, supported by | Italy, seeking power and prestige. France | and her present ullies are striving to | maintain the status quo of the treaties. | It is obvious, therefore, that any in- ternational conference would inevitably be dominated by this circumstance. ‘This is particularly true in the case of the Disarmament Conference for the | simple reason that the superior armies | of France and her allies alone enable | her to maintain the status quo in the face of Germany and her present European influence and in the face of Italy'’s ambitions. Thus it is in- evitable that Germany and Italy will | undertake to break down the French | military ower 85 & necessary liminary to their common purpose of achieving their respective aims. France and her allies, on the con- trary, will just as certainly endeavor, before agreeing to reduce their armies, to set up some other means of main- taining the existing situation. And that is precisely what the proposal of Andre Tardieu, like all other French proposals since the peace conference in Paris, is aimed at. It will be recalled that Tar- dieu proposed the League of Nations | be authorized and empowered to act as a police power to restrain and coerce any attempts of violence to upset the existing order, and, of course, violence alone could upset it. Stick to Nationalism. If we examine all of the several dis- armament proposals of the nations be- longing to the two groups, it will be quite evident that underneath the dis- guise of enormous enthusiasm for the moral and economic issues involved in the matter of disarmament lies the same deliberate purpose to employ the world-wide desire for advancing dis- armament purely as a national thesis. But it is just as clear that France and her allies won't give up their arms while such a surrender could prove such a prelude to a mutilation of treaty ar- rangement, while Germany and her | associates will not agree to a system of disarmament which would for an Pictured as Success, ees Little Hope Deadlock. indefinite period close the door to ter- ritorial revision. Now on the margin of these two quarreling groups are the Anglo-Saxon nctions and certain states that were neutral in the Great War. All of these peoples are eager for disarmament and peace. They are not concerned in the least with the outcome of the con- tinental struggle. ~What they are anxious about is for some adjustment | between France and Germany which will remove the present political ten- sion in Europe, and beyond that they seek to contribute in bringing down | the vast costs of armament and the removal of the peril to peace which these armaments must eventually con- stitute. | 'But so far the Anglo-Saxon powers have been faced with the alternative | of accepting the French thesis of join- |ing in the forcible guarantee of the tatus quo through Tardieu's formula for the League of Nations or of sup- | porting Germany in her program for | the removal of all limitations placed jon her by the peace treaties and com- pelling France and her allies to submit to such a surrender of their present policles. The difficulty lies in the fact that Anglo-Saxon powers are resolved not to guarantee the status quo and haven't the means of bringing pressure to bear upon France to modify her policies. Britain and U. S. Helpless. Now while there has been an enor- mous flow of oratory and recommen- dations and maneuvering during recent weeks, the net result of the conference up to date is to disclose that France and her allies are anchored in their position, Germany and her associates are uncompromising in their demands and the Anglo-Saxon nations are equally unwilling to join France and un- able to coerce her.” Thus America and Britain have been helpless and re- main so. They have all the risks of the innocent bystander; and the chief of these risks is that both groups hold them responsible for the lack of ad- Jjustment. In this situation it is clear that under the eircumstances some wholly innocu- ous convention prohibiting the use of inhumane bombs and gas warfare might be signed, that owing to the fall of world commodity prices some reduction in budgets might be agreed to which would in fact leave the huge military establishments of today undisturbed. In a word, there are a whole variety of devices which might be resorted to in order to disguise the actual failure. Nevertheless, actual failure will result if no real reduction in the size and costs of the armies and navies is made and no end placed to the present ten- sion, which gives Europe the appear- ance, to Americans at least, of a vast insane asylum. And that is precisely what now stares the conference in the face. Moreover, since in all history no country has ever voluntarily ceded its own citizens and lands in order to satisfy claims of its neighbors, there is now no possibility that France and her associates will consent to the return of territory taken by the treaty of Versailles from Ger- since Germany continues condition of associating herself with her former enemles, these nations won't consent to reduce armies, which alone insure the retention of these territories. All of this was clear before the con- ference assembled. It has been made dcubly clear as the conference pro- gressed. It is all now tenfold apparent. Since the conference has become dead- locked, all progress has been inter- rupted, but what the American people will now have to watch out for are the inevitable attempts to give an air of success to a conference which has failed, and thus for a moment to dis- guise the actual situation. That was what Woodrow Wilson at- tempted in behalf of the Paris Peace Conference, what Charles Evans Hughes attempted .at the Washington confer- ence, what President Hoover attempted | at_the London conference. But the failure to make peace at Paris is ob- vious here today; the failure of ths| Washington conference was disclosed | by the subsequent Anglo-American | naval disputes, and the failure of the London conference is proved by the | present Pranco-Italian disputes, pres | cluding all possible naval agreement, | and thus presaging inevitable recourse to the escalator clause. (Copyright, 1932.) Exclusion of Women From Industry Is Burning Question Facing France PARIS.—Should women work else- where than at home? Should advan- tage be taken of the present general de- pression to reduce radically the number of women workers in France? These questions are agitating this country at the moment and they are being dis- cussed on all sides. Prof. Charles Richet, a leading physi: cian, set the ball rolling by the sweep- ing propositi 1 that women should be compelled by legislation to work only in the home, as otherwise the future of the race is jeopardized. The proposal has been a: y all feminists, who reject it in its entirety, but between the two camps there is a middle view. Those who hold it suggest that, without re- sorting to radical measures, the time has come when France should take some action with regard to female labor. War Forced Changes. ith many other problems, this | s an_outcome of the war. The in killed and disabled resulted population of 40,000,000 showing > of women over men. of virtually the entire ( population necessitated the presence of women in factories and of- th a consequent great social n. to 1914 women were content to makers and mothers. Ex- T through the ages e always worked in the fields female labor was unim- it numerically. The great major- v of the women engaged in gainful oc- cupations worked at home in leisure moments and home industries were de- veloped to a very large extent. Now home industries are declining idly, because they cannot compete with factories, to which women are at- tracted more and more. The housing crisis resulting from the war (it has ended only in recent months) also played a part in modifying the sqcial | condition of women. There could be no question of homemakjng when there viere no homes to be found. The daugh- ters of mothers working in factories or offices could see no reason why they should not follow in their footsteps. As a consequence of tnese and other factors, there are now in France 8- €00,000 women workers in a total fe- male population of 13,000,000. Of these, there are 4,000,000 engaged in agricul- tural pursuits, as compared with 5, 000,000 men; 2,500,000 women in fac- tories, as compared with 5,000,000 men; 900,000 in offices and stores, as com- pared with 1,000,000 men; 200,000 in | government service, as compared with | 1500,000 men: 245,000 in the so-called lib- | | eral professions, as compared with 240,- | | 000 men. | | In agriculture the great majority of | | the women are married, for generally a | family tills the land as a unit, but of the ,600,000 working in factories and of- | | fices, only 1,500,000 are married. The | spinsters include a proportion of young | girls still living at home, but even when | these are eliminated, there remains a very large number of women who sup- port themselves by their own work. As seen in this country today, the problem of female labor is twofold. In | the first place, the question arises of | how to keep the married women at home. rurely financial. If the housewife and mother were sure of obtaining from | | some other sourcé the money that she | earns in factory or office, it is con- | sidered that in the very great majority ot instances she would prefer to remain at _home. There are government grants for fam- | ilies, increasing proportionately with the | number of children, but they are ridic- | ulously small. Many industrialists also have established a system whereby the | wages of heads of families are increased | according to the number of children. Now it is proposed to reduce these to a minimum when the mother works and to increase them to the maximum when she undertakes to devote all her time tc_her home. | | France needs to increase the birth rate. She wants children—healthy children—and she must pay for them |by contributing to their upkeep and | education. This principle is generally accepted today, but the means avail- | eble are woefully disproportionate to | the ends. Spinsters Cling to Jobs. | The second part of the problem is much more complex. The spinsters at work pay the same taxes and other charges as the men and on the face of | it have the same rights. They have not | |yet the right to vote, but they claim | that no power on earth should deprive | |them of the right to work. Yet, for | | the greater good of the nation, they should become homemakers in their turn. This is general agreement on this point, but no satisfactory solution of the problem has yet been offered, 'CAMPAIGN SPECULATION CENTERS ON DEMOCRATS Making Jobs for Thousands Government’s Building Program Will Have Far-Reaching Effect on Question of Unemployment. BY FERRY K. HEATH, Assistant Secretary of the United States Treasury in Charge of Public Buildings. HROUGHOUT the United States the Government today is en- gaged in the greatest work of construction ever undertaken. 5 It is more than an immense building pregram; it is a vastly im- portant part of the Government's fight against unemployment and the depres- | sion. As a result of it, jobs are being given to 100,000 men and women, and, since the average worker’s family num- bers five, this means that half a mil- lion people are being supported through this period of distress. Looking back over the pages of his- tory one sees vast works of man in the past; the Pyramids of Egypt, the | magnificent temples of the Orient, the | Great Wall of China; the roads, aque- ducts and public buildings of ancient | Rome, standing to this day; the cathe- drals of medieval Europe, the palaces of a later era, our own construction of the Panama Canal at a cost of hun- dreds of millions of dollars. But the gigantic, far-:eaching pro- gram of public building construction in which the Government of the United States is now engaged exceeds in mag- nitude and usefulness anything ever before undertaken. When George Washington laid the |marble by the brawny arms of thou- ! —Painted for The Sundsy Star by Stockton Mulford. corner stone of the National Capitol the sands of men engaged in quarries, on first building program of the Govern- cranes, in the forests, before blazing ment was inaugurated. one is under way because of the initia- tive, foresight and enthusiasm of Her- bert Hoover, the second enginger to oc- cupy the White House, assisted con- stantly by the wisdom and interest of Andrew W. Mellon while he was Sec- retary of the Treasury. and by that of | ing spent for American products and |And June. The American voter likes | Ogden L. Mills, Mr. Mellon's successor. | This is not a “paper” program. It is a program that is actually be- ing written, day after day, week after week and month after month with steam shovels, hammers and riveting machines, concrete, brick, steel and The present furnaces and high up on scaffoldings and framework. | It is a program the following of | which is being accomplished by the ac- | tual, authorized and planned expendi- ture of $700,000,000. And these mil- lions—practically all of them—are be- American labor. They are furnishing | support for thousands of families at |a time when employment is most | needed. | What is belng done cannot possibly be seen by any one person, Washington, ihe Nation's _Capital, (Continued on Fourth Page.) Schoolmaster Runs Nation Joe Lyons, New Prime Minister of Australia, Has Many Notable Victories. BY A. J. VILLIERS. HE people of Australia must have heaved a large sigh of relief when they read the returns of the Commonwealth's recent election and learned that their fates were in the hands of Joseph The solution, it is agreed, is | Lyons. One of the latest entrants in | aDd took up office work. the stormy arena of Australian federal politics, Mr. Lyons soon made his mark. He achieved, first, the distinction of be- ing elected to cabinet rank by the Labor caucus even before he had taken his seat in the House; later, when Prime Minister Scullin was in England attend- ing the imperial conference, he stood out against the hot-heads of that same all-powerful Labor caucus and guided Australia’s finances, in grave danger of a complete breakdown, along sound lines; and again, when Mr. Scullin re- turned to his troubled land, Mr. Lyons definitely broke with him and rallied the forces of sound government to- gether into what has proved to be a successful stand. What manner of man is this, who as he could walk, the small Joseph, like | all the other boys of the neighborhood, was required to do his share about the rm. Was Avid Reader. At the age of 9 Joseph left the farm He was a | office boy until he was 12; later he agai | worked on the land as'a hired hand. | He had been taught reading and writing |and the rudiments of arithmetic, and | little else. But this was enough: he | carried on with his own education. | Always an avid reader, he formed the habit of retiring to the small local libraries when his work in the office or on the farm (12 hours a day in each occupation was the normal thing then, and his wages were about $1 a week) was through, and there he sat and read as long as the place was open. He bor- rowed books and took them home. He had a striking face, even as a boy, With mop of jet-black Irish hair, He found good friends who helped him with his education. his high forehead and his great unruly | ideals, but he was no firebrand. Prof. Richet's legislative remedy being considered unacceptable in the twen- tieth cen! (Copyrisht, 1931 afger a brief two years in federal politics | . is' now Prime Minister of Australia?| He was ambitious; he saw beyond the Two years ago few persons outside | office and the farm. He had no dreams Australia had ever heard of Joseph|of politics then; these were to come | Aloysius Lyons. He himself has never later, He desired to equip himself men- been outside Australia. Born and reared | tally as well as possible, and by dint of in Tasmania, he had reached full man- | continued determined effort he passed hood before he crossed even the narrow | the matriculation standard for the Uni- straits which separate that lovely island | versity of Tasmania when he was about from the mainland States of the Com- | 18. He took up work as a teacher and monwealth. Tasmania is the smallest | Worked his way through the university. and the quietest and the loveliest of the | From 9 o'clock in the morning until 4 Australian States; cut off from them by in the afterncon, five days a week, he the sea, it seems cut off in traditions as | taught in the public schools; afterward well, and the Tasmanian es a he wrestled with his own “lessons” at greater sense of individuality than the | the university lectures, He graduated Dnatives of the mainland States. | with honors and a distinction in mathe- Such is the land that bore Joseph| matics—always a strong subject, and Lyons 51 years ago. His parents were|one which was to stand him in good humble he began life with no ad-|stead as treasurer of Tasmania and vantages. " He was born in the north of | later of the commonwealth itself. Tasmania, about 250 miles from the| He now returned to teaching, holding Australian main coast. Here the soil | posts in Tasmanian public high schools. was good and every one tilled the land. | The majority of the teachers Were Potatoes flourished, and cabbages, and, | young ladies, men not being attracted here and there, apples as well. As soon | to the mul?mhn principally because of o 4 |the low rewards. Many of the men | who did enter its ranks soon left to take better appointments on the mainland. | Not so Joseph Lyons; a Tasmanian he was born and a Tasmanian he intended to remain. He married another school teacher, a brilliant intellectual woman, vho has been his sturdy helpmate ever ince. A very qulet, modest young man in those days—he still retains the charac- teristics to a marked degree—at first he shied from the idea of entering poli- tics. Here the influence of his young wife was a great aid—she urged on. At the age of 30 he stood for his first, election as a Labor member in the Tasmanian State Assembly. Labor in those days was looked upon askance in Tasmania, always the most conservative of the Australian states. But Lyons stood for the Labor cause because there was nothing else he could stand for. He thoroughly approved the Labor He never was a firebrand, and he is not now. He never had any revolutionary ideas, and he has none now. Stood for Fair Deal. He never was an agitator; the de- structive defeatism of such tactics were anathema to his intelligence from the very first. They still are. He stood for a fair deal for the workingman, for & fair deal for Tasmania, for sound gov- ernment finance and government con- trol of banking, for better education for the people, better opportunities, for se- curity, fair wages and homes for all. Lyons was disturbed by what he had seen on the farms, distressed by the poverty of the little children who came to his schools. His fine nature, swayed by these things, early turned to the Labor cause idealistically; he is no less an idealist now. He is no orator now and he was none then, but he possessed to a marked degree the power of ex- pressing his convictions in lucid, force- ful language that all might understand. He won his first political contest and went down to the capital of Tasmania, him | face to face with bankruptcy. Hobart, to take his seat in the lower House there. In the Parliament Mis abilities early shone out, but the strength of Labor was small then and there were never lacking persons who forecast, frequently and at very great length, that Labor never would get into | control in Tasmania. They were wrong. Early in the commonwealth's federal history Labor took control and achieved great things; in Tasmania it had to wait nearly 20 years longer, but eventu- ally it did achieve control when its op- ponents had brought the small étaiu esi- tantly, a desperate populace at the polls put Labor in, but by so small & majority | that it could achieve nothing. Mr. Earle was premier of the state then; | Mr. Lyons was his treasurer. He was | then in his early forties. The big mop | of jet-black hair was rapidly graying; | he had six children, and on the meager | salary of a state polticlan he was never free from personal worries as well as those of state. The Earle government soon fell and | was succeeded by the Conservative-Na- tlonalists, I think they called them- selves. It does not matter much; they brought the state close to ruin. Tas- mania is rich and the land is beautiful, but it always has been depressed. A kind of Norway of the Far South, with the South Pole almost at the back door and a fourth of its area so inaccessible and storm-swept that it has never been | explored, it early felt the consequences | of foderal mistakes (and of some mis- takes of its own). At first whaling was the Jeading industry, but this died when sperm oil became no longer profitable. | Great mountains of tin were discov- | ered, one of them alone yielding tin | worth $350,000,000 in 20 years. But the dollars did not stay in Tas- | mania. Tasmanians worked the mines | and' recelved their wages; the wealth flowed abroad, where the mines were owned. Gold was found; the story was (Continued on Fourth Page. 'S | idge had no part in it Even in | Seven Candidates, Ea;-h 7With Real Chance of Nomination, Constitute Field. Hoover Unopposed in G. O. P. BY MARK SULLIVAN. i ROM now until June all the interest of the pre-nomination campaign will be in the Demo- cratic fleld. The Republican situation is quickly told. Mr. Hoover will be renominated prac- tically without opposition. All the pre- | dictions of gory battle in the Republican convention have come to nothing. They were always nothing. When headlines a_year ago talked excitedly about & draft Coolidge” movement, Mr. Cool- | except to deplore it when it came to his attention, and | ultimately to repudiate it, definitely and publicly. ‘Then, when the headlines turned to an _engaging allteration, “draft Dawes.” Mr. Dawes laughed that into silence. There was the same com- plete absence of substance in the dis- patches about Borah being a contender, about “Borah clubs” and the like. Borah trying for the Republican nomi- nation, and Borah about to lead & third party. have become classic myths of American politics. The legend has turned up every four years since Borah emerged into public life, in 1908. There has never been the faintest shadow of substance in it. Borah has never tried to get the Republican or any other presidential nomination. He has never tried to get a delegate. He has never asked any cne to support him nor given anything except a quizzical smile to persons who have proposed to make him a candidate. Johnson Remains Silent. Last in the series of predicted con- tenders against Mr. Huover was Senator Hiram Johnson of California. There was some little possibility of substance | in that. But February 9 came and went with Johnson silent. February 9 was the last day on which to file for the primaries in North Dakota—and if Johnson were going to run at all he should have filed in North Dakota, for that is the one spot in the country where apparently ment is strongest, where an aggressive anti-Hoover candidate would be able to make his best start. The time is now practically past when any one can enter the race in either party with any hope of becoming formidable. Somewhere in the last two weeks of February is & kind of deadline. Taking into account the dates of primaries, which begin in March, and the fact that little local leaders and workers all over the coun- try begin to line up for their favorites, there is, about Washington's birthday, a crystallization such that thereafter it is impracticable for any new candidates |to enter the presidential race in either party, with any hope of getting any- where, There is one contender against Mr, Hoover. He is Joseph I. France, an | ex-Senator from Maryland. The writer of this article has hitherto spoken of Mr. France's candidacy as ‘“eccentric,” and Mr. France has objected to the word. But what is the word to use when a comparatively unknown man, without the backing of any important party leader, running only as the head of a self-generated movement. tries. to take the presidential nomination away from a President in office? There are always such movements and they are always futile. It would be so unusual as to be spectacular if Prance should accumulate as many as 100 delegates out of the 1,154 who will compose the Republican National Convention. Prob- | ably all the non-Hoover delegates, in- cluding those from Wisconsin, will not aggregate 100 delegates. 00 itrfito - theonelas- So much for that. The Republican situation is set. Mr. Hoover will have more than & thousand out of the 1,154 delegates. The opposition to Mr, | Hoover will express itself, not in the Republican primaries, and not in the shape of opposition to his renomina- | tion, but in adherence to Democrats. Many of the votes, for example, which | Prance hopes to get in the Republican primary will eventually go into the Democratic primary and express them- | selves by getting behind Gov. “Alfalfa | Bill” Murray, or some one like him. In the Democratic primaries will be found all the struggling between now |a fight, and doesn't like to throw his ballot away on minor candidates and | lost causes; he likes a struggle. and |he will find plenty to satisfy him in | the Democratic situation. ‘The Democratic Nomination. ‘The struggle for the Democratic presidential nomination will be more lively and more mixed than any within the memory of living men. It need not be so bitter as the one in 1924 be- tween Smith and McAdoo. That was bitter for the reason, in part, that there were two outstanding candidates; it was & personal duel. In the present struggle there are seven men who have real chances; the size of the field should save the fight from bitterness. But it will be very mixed. Nothing like it has occurred in any campaign since 1880 at least. There are at least elght candidates, each of whom has friends believing their man has a real chance for the Democratic nomination -Gov. Roose- velt of New York, ex-Gov. Alfred E. Smith of the same State, Newton D. Baker, Speaker John N. Garner, Gov. Albert Ritchie of Maryland, Gov. Harry Byrd of Virginia, Banker Melvin Tray- lor of Chicago, Gov. “Alfalfa BIll" Murray of Oklahoma. Here are eight men, each of whom has friends and partisans who believe thelr man is the best, who hope to get the prize for their candidate, and who will work hard for delegates. As to at least six of the eight disinter- ested outsiders will agree that each of those eight is a real possibility. Not only that. There is another pos- sibility who is not a conscious candi- | date, who is not often mentioned in lists of Democratic possibilities, in whose behalf no one is working—but who might readily be the outcome of | the many-sided, many-angled puzzle the Democrats are going to have. That Is ex-Gov. James M. Cox of Ohio, Wi ' | was the party's presidential nomir:- | in 1920, and who now, at the of | 62 and looking like 40, is completely available to be the nominee again. The mtgre o: the Detmocrlmc :’ltunuan i such as to suggest prolonge: 3 one candidate after another huofin(m out, followed by exceedingly intricate realignments of delegates, changed loyalties within the convention. That might end in the nomination of any %ne of at least seven men, including ox. Roosevelt Leads Field. For the immediate present the most | active interest centers around two of the Democratic possibilities, Gov. | Roosevelt and ex-Gov. Smith. Roose- velt is without doubt the leader of the field. He is conducting an aggressive, highly organized, nation-wide cam- paign. He is the only candidate who is doing so. He hopes to get some 500 delegates instructed for him before the convention meets. If he should get that many he would have a kind of moral title to the nomination, anti-Hoover senti- | that are necessary to nominate in the Democratic convention. Five hundred is the high estimate of Roosevelt's strength, the esdmate of Roosevelt’s managers and partisans. Independent estimates assign Roosevelt anywhere from 500 down to 300. Three hundred would be, under the circum- stances, a weak showing for Roosevelt, considering the energy and preten- tiousness of the campaign in his behalf and the length of time it has been under way. Whether Roosevelt gets depends much on ex-Gov. Smith. Broadly speaking, every delegete that Smith gets is a delegate that Roose- velt would have got had Smith not entered. The test of Roosevelt's for- tunes is in the Eastern States. where he and Smith are substantially the only contenders. If Roosevelt should get practically all the delegates in the Eastern primaries, and Smith very few in that event Roosevelt would seem to have the band wagon surely. The first test will come in New Hampshire March 8. New Hampshire will be & barometer, at once, of Roosevelt's for- tunes and of how large a part Smith is to play. | The Smith Possibility. If any one doubts that ex-Gov. Smith is a possibility, let him reflect |upon the opening words of Smith's | recent announcement: | “If the Democratic National Con- | vention, ~ after careful consideration, | should decide that it wants me to lead, | T will make the fight.” | Compare that with Calvin Coolidge's statement in 1927. “I do not choose to run.” Suppose Mr. Coolidge at that | time, instead of saying what he did, {had said “If the convention wants me . . . I will make the fight.” Would that have made Mr. Coolidge a can- didate in 19287 And would Mr. Cools idge have been nominated? | . For that matter, suppose Mr. Cool- | idge in this present year. 1932, should | adopt ex-Gov. Smith’s words. Suppose | Mr. Coolidge should today say (as | he will never say): “If the convention | wants me, I will make the fight" Would that make Mr. Coolidge a can- didate? In words of contemporary classics, “Oh, boy!" Smith is a candidate. He is not as he says in the body of his state- ment, “making a& pre-convention came paign to secure the support of dele~ | gates.” 'But his other words, “If tha | convention wants me I will make the fight,” gives liberty to every Smith partisan in the country. Every Smith | partisan is free to express his emo= tions and convictions by working te | elect Smith delegates. And the num- | ber of Smith partisans, Smith's per- sonal following, s very large. It is the largest personal following, without Question, of any individual in the Democratic party. Smith has a per- sonal following in the sense that | Woodrow Wilson had, and Willlam Jennings Bryan, Almost universally, the public fails | to recognize Smith's personal strength. After the election in 1928 the head- lines seid “Smith gets 8 States, Hoover 40, or ““Smith gets 87 electaral votes, Hoover 444" That looked like a severe defeat for Smith, and, neasured in States and electoral votes, it was & severe defeat. But measure it in terms of popular vote, as the politicians and the experts did, after the returns were all in and the public began to think about other | things, 500 or 300 A Phenomenal Following. Smith’s following. as expressed in the vote for him for President in 1928, is really phenomenal, Smith as the Democratic candidate in 1928 got not far from twice as many votes as any other Democratic candidate had ever received. The figures are: Democratic Candidate, Smith ... Vote. » 15,916,443 Davis 8,386,503 1924 Cox .. 9,147,358 1920 Not only did Smith in 1928 bring out more votes for the Democrats than any previous candidate, but Smith got a larger percentage of the total vote than either of his two predecessors. | The figures are: Democratie Candidate. Smith Davis Cox Year., 1928 Per cent. Year, : 42 It seems fair to say that Smith was able to bring to the polls for the Dem- ocratic ticket at' least 5,000,000 voters who, if any other than Smith had been | the candidate, would have voted the | Republican ticket or stayed at home, It will be objected at this point that some of Smith’s vote in the 1928 elece tion came to him as a result of his religion. But if so, that must have been balanced by the vote that went away from him on account of his re- ligion. Smith's following of 5,000,000 is net—ex-religion, as they say on the Stock Exchange. ‘These 5,000,000 voters were and are personal to Smith. They were his in 1928 and they are his today. If all, or |anywhere near all, go into the Dem= | ocratic primaries, Smith in the con= |vention should have a formidable number of delegates. In the Democratic situation as & | whole are many intricate complexities of possible outcome. Clearly one of them is that Smith will have enough delegates to “hold” Roosevelt, and Roosevelt would seem sure to have | enough to “hold” Smith. If that should | be the condition in the early balloting, |1t would be followed by an immenss shufling and migrating of delegates, he final outcome would be the nome ination of one of the other five men who stand today as valid possibilities, 'Mapping of Air Lanes Is Proposed by League GENEVA —With a growing feeling that the world knows too little con- cerning the air lanes over which day and night flying mail, passenger and freight airplanes are operated officially by governments with their support the communications and transit section of the League of Nations proposes map* ping the sky. The expense i8 to be met by hoped for contributions from countries where such services exist. The aviation industry is especial interested that such a step shall n be of a nature which will have a retard- ing influence on the free development of the new locomotion and restrict & market for its product among private owners and operators of non-official tone;cill lines. nother proposition 1s for bringin, about direct contact between th: League’s communications and transit organization and the Universal Postal Union at Berne, of which the United States forms a part, with the object of much short of the 770 (two-thirds) | securing more and better control and protection for mails carried by aircraft, L] -