National Affairs: Wet and Wetter

It was a warm week in New York State. At the end of it, Nominee Smith motored down Long Island to Hampton Bays, where stands Canoe Place Inn, oldtime roadhouse patronized in summer by Tammany politicians and Southampton society folk, in winter by hungry & thirsty duck-hunters. Surrounded by friends, family and the ears and eyes of the public press, he plumped into the salt water in a white-striped bathing suit with a gold religious medal hung around his neck. He rolled like a porpoise, spouted like a whale, chortled like a boy. The cooling off had been made doubly welcome by a series of political backfires during the week—the Owen "bolt," the Simmons resignation (see p. 11), the digging up of some anti-cigaret legislation which the Nominee had introduced under pressure as a young legislator, and the republication of that same legislator's entire voting record on legislation touching public morals. The latter "expose" was the work of Willian Allen White, the round-faced, good-humored, politically astute editor of the Emporia, Kan., Gazette, stout friend of Nominee Curtis. Earlier in the month Editor White had sketched the Smith record in an editorial and Nominee Smith had answered sketchily. He had accused Editor White of giving currency to inaccuracies broadcast by a New York clergyman-propagandist (TIME, July 23). Editor White had engaged two investigators to scour the New York Assembly's Journal. Last week, armed with a mass of documents including photostats, he spoke forth again. He said: "Governor Smith has been a busy man, a fine, useful American citizen since he left the New York Assembly [in 1915]. But, in his many activities, he has forgotten much of his Assembly record. . . . "He, with all his intelligence, with all his honesty, with all his courage—seems to have left his high qualities in escrow with Charles Murphy [oldtime Tammany Boss] when he went to Albany and there made a Tammany record on the saloon, the gambler and the prostitute. "No Klansman in a boob legislature, cringing before a Kleagle or a Wizard, was more subservient to the crack of the whip than was Al Smith—ambitious and effective and smart as chain lightning—in the Legislature when it came to a vote to protect the saloon, to shield the tout and to help the scarlet woman of Babylon, whose tolls in those years always clinked regularly in the Tammany till. . . . "I am throwing no mud at Governor Smith. He is honest, he is brave, he is intelligent. I don't question his motives. To get where he is with the crowd he had to do what he did and from his standpoint it was probably worth the price. But the real point of interest in that record for the American people now, if Governor Smith will defend it, is the picture of Tammany putting pressure on fine, aspiring young men like Al Smith . . . how it overlays his conscience with Tammany psychology. . . . "I make no claim here that Smith is a Tammany plug-ugly. I honor him for having risen from the debasing subserviency. . . . This record is, of course, the old record of a young man. But the young man rose on this record. . . . The Tammany system goes on today as it went on 100 years ago and, indeed, as it will go on in our American cities unless Governor Smith and the sinister forces behind him are overthrown." Editor White, who was in