REPUBLICANS: Naked Repeal

Last week the country began to wake up to the fact that the Grand Old Party’s grand old plank on Prohibition was a very Wet plank indeed (TIME, June 27). Typical of how most Republican Wets felt about it was the reaction of New Jersey’s Walter Evans Edge, Ambassador to France, who as convention delegate fortnight ago had voted for the minority plank for outright Repeal. Of the majority plank for Resubmission and Revision, he last week declared from the White House steps: “Although I voted against it, the more I look at it the more I think it’s all right. I feel that, when the people come to realize what it means, they will be satisfied.” What the plank really means as a Wet declaration received last week theinterpretative oratory of the Senate’s greatest constitutional Prohibitor—Idaho’s William Edgar Borah. Senator Borah did not attend the Chicago convention; he did not want to risk defeat on the Wet-&-Dry issue. Instead he used the Senate chamber to release all his pent-up opinions on his party’s position. Shaggy and sonorous, he delivered an hour-long speech. Excerpts : “The great majority of the convention were for naked Repeal. . . . Something like 500 voted for Repeal. When you take out the 204 delegates who came from Democratic States, you have an overwhelming majority for Repeal. . . . There were about 300-odd Federal officials in the convention and many of them voted as they did because of what they deemed political expediency. “As an illustration, the two gentlemen who had most to do with shaping this plank—Mr. Brown, the Postmaster General and Mr. Mills, the Secretary of the Treasury—were openly and uncompromisingly for Repeal. “. . . This platform has one definite, unmistakable proposition and that is the Repeal of the 18th Amendment. . . . Having permitted the sale and manufacture of intoxicating liquor and having referred the matter back to the States to deal with, there would be absolutely nothing left of the 18th Amendment. . . . The affirmative principle of it is gone. . . . This plan is nothing but legalized secession. It permits us to have a Constitution applying to one part of the country and not applying to another. It is a constitutionalmonstrosity. . . . Once we restore liquor to the avenue of local trade, the national Government has surrendered its power. There is no possible way by which it can control the method, manner and place of its being sold. . . . “I openly and avowedly reject this provision of the platform. … A quietus cannot be put upon this question by adopting resolutions in the political convention. We will go back to the people and see whether there is a desire to let it go up or down.” Senator Lewis: The distinguished Senator did much to make possible the election of the present President. I should like to ask him how he stands now since he has discovered the platform of his party works nullification. Will he now support President Hoover as an advocate of the 18th Amendment or as a nullifier? Senator Borah: The Senator asks whether I would support the President on this platform? Senator Lewis: I did. Senator Borah: I will not. These three words momentarily electrified Washington. Commentators exclaimed that the Hoover campaign had suffered a heavy loss. Democrats chortled with delight. But political wiseacres were too familiar with the Idaho Senator’s pre-election behavior in the past to be altogether convinced. Possibly Nominee Hoover would say something ambiguous about Prohibition in the campaign which would open the way for Senator Borah to tip-toe back to the President’s support not on the platform. Indiana’s sage old Senator Watson summed up: “Senator Borah in the campaign will be where he always has been—supporting the Republican ticket.”