POLITICAL NOTE: Tammany's Rothstein

Ever since the murder 13 months ago of Arnold Rothstein, one of its most amiable gambler-racketeers (TIME, Dec. 24). Manhattan has been kept acutely Rothstein-conscious. Last week, when the State's sole suspect in hand—burly, big-jawed Gambler George A. McManus—was acquitted, the Rothstein spotlight seemed likely to flicker out, leaving another famed Manhattan murder in unsolved darkness.

For weeks after the murder the police dawdled over clues, questioned suspects, released them. Mayor James John Walker, fretted by his police department's impotence, fearing a political backlash, released Joseph A. Warren as Police Commissioner...