National Affairs: Mud Pie

For Nominee Smith, last week, famed chefs prepared a mud pie.

One chef was the Rev. John Roach Straton, blatant Manhattan pulpiteer, who characterized Governor Smith, last fortnight, as “the deadliest foe in America today of the forces of moral progress and true political wisdom.” Challenged to debate the charge in his own Calvary Baptist Church (TIME, Aug. 20), Pulpiteer Straton weasled, tried to shift the scene to local amphitheatres. But Nominee Smith declined to make a public show. He wrote: “The answer to my request to appear in your church before your parishioners … is yes or no.” Pulpiteer Straton answered: “Emphatically and unchangeably yes.” But he meant “no,” he would not debate in his church. And the incident was closed with a few parting, typically Stratonian epithets: “Bluffer . . . Tammany trickster . . . coward. . . .”

Another chef was the wayfaring Editor William Allen White of the Emporia (Kan.) Gazette. Far at sea, Editor White heard that his “withdrawal” of charges against Nominee Smith had been interpreted as a “retraction.” No retractor, Editor White cabled his fellow Kansan, Henry Justin Allen, national publicity chief for Hooverism: “On the prostitution issue I proved my case, got a conviction and suspended the sentence. I only did this because I felt that a debate on the subject of harlotry was not worthy of a presidential campaign.”

To publicitiman Allen, the nonretracting cable about Harlotry did not seem worthy of careful guardianship. The cable was broadcast throughout the land. It was Publicitiman Allen’s turn to weasle: “I showed it to a newspaperman … in my personal capacity. … In some unexplained way it went to our publicity deportment.”

Tired of concocting, weasling. Nominee Smith suddenly turned on the famed chefs, told them to eat their own mud pie. He issued a lengthy statement. He explained his every vote as a New York Assemblyman on bills connected with prostitution, gambling, the saloon. He said:

Mud Pie: “I denounce as unfair, unmanly and un-American this slanderous attack upon me and my record. I am glad to have this matter taken out of the whispering stage and put into the open.”

Prostitution: “Mr. William Allen White sailed for Europe with a happy and contented mind. I hope, and I would not disturb it by attempting to describe to him the heavy weight that he laid upon my family when he accused me of being a friend of prostitution. . . . My record as an opponent of immorality is fixed and secure. Publicly and by many letters in my possession, the late Rev. Canon John P. Peters, when chairman of the Committee of Fourteen, the leading anti-vice society of New York, repeatedly thanked me for my co-operation with that organization. No one in all the 25 years of my public life has ever dared to make the vile suggestions which emanated from Mr. White, with the approval of Henry J. Allen, publicity director of the Republican National Committee.

Saloon: “My critics seem to take the position that every amendment to the former New York excise law which apparently made it stricter was a good bill. If they had studied the question they would have come to the same conclusion which the Committee of Fourteen expressed : ‘Very frequently the most obvious correction is found to conflict with the purposes of those interested in the law in another way.’ “

Nominee Smith cited chapter and verse of his votes on liquor bills, washed his hands of the mud pie: “I shall refuse to be drawn into any further discussion of these matters.”