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The above description would exactly fit Senator Heflin if he were not a human being. But he is human. He was born 59 years ago in Alabama, which illiterate but fast improving State first sent him to Congress in 1904, to the Senate in 1920.
Fat boys, dubs and freaks are sat upon, whipped into shape, gaped at or pitied, as the case may be. Or, by serious people, they are ignored. To his raging humiliation, newsgatherers did start a practice last year of leaving the Senate galleries so soon as Senator Heflin got up to talk. But from the nature of their "greatest club," other Senators cannot sit on their preposterous colleague, nor wholly ignore him. They must address him as they would be addressed, with windy ceremony. They must "give him the floor" and let him sprawl upon it. This is hard enough for Republicans but for his Democratic teammates, Senator Heflin is as embarrassing as he is painful. They cannot whip him into shape. They cannot send him home. They must humor him, bear with him.
One day last week the "greatest club" was just settling down, as its funnyman (Senator Moses of New Hampshire) put it, to "declare vacant an empty seat" (see above), when up raised the bulk of Senator Heflin. Senators groaned. They knew what was coming.
Senator Heflin hates and fears the Roman Pope with a furious, mouthing phobia. And Senator Heflin was lately connected, in the Hearst press, with a viciously false charge of bribery by Catholic-bating Mexico. Senator Heflin had been swiftly and cleanly exonerated by a committee of his colleagues. Publisher Hearst had been scathingly denounced. But this was to be Senator Heflin's speech of self-vindication, the retribution of a monomaniac. When he opened his roaring mouth, busy people fled and sightseers came tumbling in for places. Before they had caught their breaths, Senator Heflin was already breathing hard. . . .
". . . The despicable Hearst-Mexican scandal," he bellowed, ". . . is the direct result of a conspiracy on the part of certain Roman Catholics to frame, injure and if possible to destroy me* for the work I did in the Senate† to defeat the efforts of the Knights of Columbus and the Roman Catholic hierarchy to involve the United States in war with Mexico on behalf of the Catholic Church!
"The man from whom Hearst got the forged papers is a Roman Catholic! . . . Hearst's wife is a Roman Catholic! . . ."
Then followed a rehearsal of Roman Catholic activities in the U. S. two years ago when Roman Catholics were sore oppressed by the Calles Government in Mexico and when "I was the only Senator who laid bare the Roman Catholic program to get us in war." Then followed a sheaf of recent letters and telegrams to Heflin from anti-Catholics, of which the following sentiment by one H. C. Haddy Jr. of Camden, N. C., was typical: ". . . Seems like your friends the Roman Catholics hit you a foul blow. . . ."
Then followed regurgitation of the two-year-old "war" scare. Then 56 lines of doggerel verse** in reply to the man who last year moved in the Alabama Legislature that Senator Heflin be made a U. S. Admiral, to guard the Atlantic coast against Romish invasion by his blasts of hot air.