National Affairs: Inquisitors’ Week

The Senate Committee on Public Lands and Surveys, oil inquisitors, suffered a partial eclipse because its younger brother, the special committee investigating the Attorney General, preempted sensational testimony. Nevertheless, it ground its weekly grist.

Senator Lenroot of Wisconsin, its Chairman, resigned on account of his health, as he had threatened to do if the investigation was protracted. In his place Senator Ladd of North Dakota, insurgent Republican, was made Chairman, thus bringing the Demo-crats and the radical Republicans into the ascendency. The Ladd-Waish-Dill combination should prove an excellent disclosure team. Meanwhile the vacant Republican place on the Committee was left temporarily unfilled.

During the week the President gave the much craved permission to examine income tax returns. The Committee had been anxious to see what Messrs. Doheny and Sinclair had set forth as their net receipts. The permission, however, provides only for inspection of tax returns. The Committee may not have actual possession of the returns, nor may it publish them under penalty of $1,000 fine or a year in prison, or both, for the person doing so. On this account the permission seems to have lost many of its scandalmongering possibilities.

The testimony taken by the Committee during the week had only two chief features:

¶The testimony of Edward B. McLean, Washington publisher, in regard to his statement (TIME, March 10) that he had lent $100,000 to ex-Secretary Fall. Mr. McLean declared that he had actually given Mr. Fall checks for that amount although he did not have that amount in the bank. The checks were not to be cashed until later. Instead Mr. Fall had returned the checks uncashed. With regard to Mr. McLean’s statement, telegraphed to the Committee, that he had lent Mr. Fall $100,000 in cash, the publisher said the statement was made at Mr. Fall’s request. He said further that Mr. Fall had accompanied the request by the statement that the whole thing had nothing to do with Teapot Dome.

¶ The testimony of Theodore Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, in regard to the use of Marines to drive other companies off Teapot Dome after it had been leased to the Mammoth Oil Co. of Harry F. Sinclair. Mr. Roosevelt said that it had been done at the request of Secretary Fall, who declared that President Harding had approved the action, and that the action was legal. Later Mr. Roosevelt mentioned to the President that he had sent a capable officer to handle the matter, and Mr. Harding had replied: “Good.”