• U.S.

National Affairs: Suppressed

7 minute read
TIME

It is a well-known maxim in the publishing world that to suppress a book is to make it popular. It is much the same with a political speech. A fortnight ago, Senator Bruce, Maryland Democrat, made a speech in the Senate attacking the prospect of Government operation of Muscle Shoals because it would be an infringement of state rights, attacking the Democratic Party for cooperating with Republican insurgents in such a scheme (TIME, Jan. 12). Senator Bruce was in turn attacked by his Democratic colleagues. He held his ground and his speech is likely soon to be forgotten. Not so a speech by Senator Dial.

A few days after Senator Bruce’s remarks, Nathaniel B. Dial, South Carolina Democrat, delivered another speech, much the same in tenor.*Now Mr. Dial took office as Senator in 1919, having served three terms in the office of Mayor of Laurens, S. C., his birth place, and having won the esteem of his fellow-townsmen as a lawyer interested in a number of enterprises including banking, glass, cotton goods, cotton seed products and the development of waterpower. But, last summer, when he went back to his state, he was defeated for renomination by Cole Blease, onetime Governor (TIME, Sept. 8). So Mr. Dial is a “lame duck,” must retire from the Senate in March.

Some of his opponents were not above hinting that he was motivated in his speech by hope of securing a Federal appointment from Mr. Coolidge.

At any rate, a few days later, Mr. Dial rose in the Senate to ask that some corrections be made in his speech.

“Yesterday,” he explained, “I received a request for some copies of the speech I made in the Senate last Saturday, and last night I thought I would read the speech as printed, and, to my astonishment, found some words had been omitted and I was shown to have stated that the Democratic Party lost because it ought to have lost. I did not say that, nor did I intend to say it. What I said was that we lost because the people thought we ought to have lost.

“I am so antagonistic to paternalistic legislation that, perhaps, my remarks were a little severe.”

Then fire sprang from the Democratic ranks. Senator Caraway began it; Senator Neely continued it; then Senator Robinson, the Democratic leader, exclaimed: “It is a manly thing, when one gives offense, whether intentionally or unintentionally, to make a frank and manly apology . . . If the Senator desires to apologize and to withdraw what appears to have been a deliberate affront and befouling of his own nest, a discrediting of his constituency, he will have to withdraw the vital parts of his address, in which he charged himself and his colleagues with deliberately committing crimes against the Government and violating moral as well as political principles.

“It is a pitiable sight and is beyond the power of the human mind to conceive or the tongue to characterize that a man should be worthy of a seat in this body and should, after several days’ deliberation, take the halfway course of volunteering a half-hearted apology for an offense which he has neither the courage nor the intelligence to justify or withdraw.”

Finally, Senator Ellison D. Smith, colleague of Mr. Dial, eloquently declared: “I could not believe, when I read the speech, that Nat Dial was the author. He and I come from that little storm-centre of the United States which has given to the nation some of its brightest and purest lights in the political arena, and during the turmoil and strife of war we maintained and kept the faith of pure and unadulterated democracy. The old party was our pillar of fire by night and cloud by day. When the hosts of rapine were threatening to engulf us, the Democratic Party was the point around which the beleaguered white people of the South rallied and looked for aid, and it is to the everlasting credit of the Republican Party that one of its Presidents saw the evil and came to our assistance. . . . I ask my colleague to withdraw the entire speech.”

Mr. Dial bowed to the force of Senatorial opinion: “Not having made the speech with any intent to offend anybody, I withdraw it from the record.”*

“Thank God for the expression he has made,” cried Mr. Smith.

Then matters calmed down on the floor. The speech no longer “existed.” To be sure, many copies of the Congressional Record had been printed carrying it. Many press accounts had gone out.

But demands for copies of the speech began to come to Senators, many from the South. They were obliged in most cases to say that copies could not be had, which was true. But such answers were not likely to appease their constituents who may have suspected that the Senators wished to suppress the document. The National Republican, organ of the Republican Party, printed the speech almost in full. It was reported that the Republicans were planning to print and distribute a million copies of the document. The result is likely to be a much greater hearing for Mr. Dial’s withdrawn remarks than ever they would have received in the ordinary course of events.

* Extracts from the speech as printed before suppression in the Congressional Record:

“It is time for us Democrats here to be facing the music. There is no sense or manhood or sportsmanship in trying to find excuses and explanations, in whimpering that the people have been deceived or bought; that the organization of the Republicans is invincible; that what worn and stale stump-speech slang calls ‘the interests’ are too strong or our foes too cunning for us, or in raking about for stray scraps of comfort or loose fragments of rainbow hopes here and there—mostly there. We have been beaten in two successive general elections by huge and increasing majorities. Either the people are wrong or we Democrats here in Congress who have made the record for our party the last four years are wrong. From that direct issue there is no escape. For one, I confess myself deeply shamed and moved to searching of my own conscience and review of my own conduct here and diligent study of the course of the Democrats of the two Houses when I read in the newspapers constantly that customers are rushing to Wall Street to buy stocks, feeling assured of safety and prosperity by the fact that the Democratic Party has been beaten by 7,000,000 majority; that throughout the country business men are rejoicing in promise of a great year ahead following our overwhelming rebuff and rebuke. … If we do not see it and know it, we have less understanding and perception than the ostrich, the strategy of which bird is not considered to be sagacious.

“It is a mortifying, bitter truth that the quiet and close thinker in the White House, just elected President as the Republican nominee, is a better Democrat in many essentials, more in accord with the foundation principles of the Democratic Party, than many men who have obtained high and honorable places as ostensible Democrats.

“I, for one, believe the same ethics and rules of honor we observe in our personal conduct should govern us in politics. Some of us on this side of the Chamber have been abetting and urging sabotage and apparently expecting the admiration and applause of the American people for the brilliancy of the performance. The people have neither applauded nor approved. We have incurred along with the sting of defeat the more bitter sting of contempt.”

* By this request, the speech was withdrawn from the official minutes. To be sure, these minutes (i.e., the Congressional Record) had already been printed. In the official copy kept by the Senate the speech will be deleted, and in all reprints of the Record the speech will not appear.

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