Political Notes

Leaving Congress does not necessarily mean leaving the Capitol. Senator Gilbert M. Hitchcock of Nebraska walked out of the Senate chamber at the last session, but will re-enter in December through the door of the press gallery. As correspondent of his newspaper, The Omaha World-Herald, he will report the debates in which he will no longer participate. The Democratic National Committee has its lighter moments. In an official bulletin for the week of March 24 it commented on the prospective Republican campaign in 1924: "Charles D. Hillis, of New York, is reported to be in high favor for Chairman of the Republican National Committee in the event of Mr. Harding's renomination. Mr. Hillis, it will be remembered, is the Republican National Chairman who carried Utah and Vermont for Mr. Taft in 1912. The next time, it is thought, he may do equally as well--unless he shall lose Utah." The committee evidently does not know its opponents too well. "Mr. Hillis" who--besides being former Chairman of the Republican National Committee--was Secretary to the President in the last two years of Mr. Taft's incumbency, invariably spells his name "Hilles." "The United States has never sent a more eminent American to a South American diplomatic post," say the polished Peruvians in anticipation of the arrival of Miles Poindexter. Senator Poindexter, who sails on April 5, will find other Americans to welcome him at Lima--an American naval mission which has been there for two years, and Dr. W. W. Cumberland, of the State Department, who is head of the Peruvian Reserve Bank. "The roster of Democratic candidates for 1924 includes Senator Underwood -- too conservative for the West; W. G. McAdoo -- too much railroaded for the East; Governor Smith--too wet for the West; James M. Cox and Mr. Bryan--too shopworn for the country at large." So think "party leaders," according to Washington correspondence of last week. The same political leaders are also reported to be looking askance at certain ranks and files who favor "a mild-mannered man in the flivver rampant." Secretary of War Weeks, Newton D. Baker and Henry L. Stimson, his predecessors, and Will H. Hays, Senator Brookhart, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., and Secretary of the Interior work are in one respect all in the same category. They are reserve officers. Incidentally, the present Secretary of War is a Rear Admiral in the Naval Reserve. All the others are members of the Army Reserve Corps.

Former Senator Chauncey M. Depew, who lived in Washington for twelve years, vouches for this incident:

" I was present once at a dinner in the White House when a new Senator delayed the dinner a long time and caused much discussion because he refused to take in to dinner the lady to whom he was assigned. He loudly declared: ' When I eat I eat alongside my wife, or I don't eat at all!'"

At the Vice President's left, in the fourth row in the Senate chamber, used to sit a man who in 1920 was elected to the Presidency of the United States. In 1924 the occupant of that seat will be Senator Hiram Johnson of California--who also has Presidential aspirations. William Jennings Bryan named his presidential candidate for 1924. He is William A. Ayres, a lawyer of Wichita, Kansas, elected last fall to be the only Democratic Congressman from his state. In addition to his other qualifications, Mr. Ayres is a Wilsonite, pro-Leaguer, prohibitionist.

" If," says Mr. Bryan, " the Democrats were as well supplied with newspapers as the Republicans are, a man like Congressman Ayres could soon be made known to the entire nation!"

A life on the rolling deep includes such experiences as arrest by a naval patrol. Representatives Albert B. Rossdale and Andrew N. Peterson discovered this when they went ashore after the fleet maneuvers at Balboa, Canal Zone, dressed in sailors' uniforms. A naval patrol arrested them at a cabaret for being ashore after 11 P. M. They were held until wireless explanations came from the battleship New York.

"The self-starting candidate, William Gibbs McAdoo, halted at El Paso and addressed the cattle men in convention assembled. . . . "His appearance was the occasion of a real ovation--until he spoke! ... His assault on the Federal Reserve Board was a 'flivver,' and when he attempted to defend his railroad management record the assembly blew up. . . Mr. McAdoo may be able to have the self-starter looked over by an expert political mechanic, but to us the case does not look hopeful for son-in-law."--From an editorial in The New Orleans Times-Picayune. A national party convention does more than nominate a candidate and draw up a platform--it advertises the city at which it is held. Cleveland, St. Louis, Chicago, Minneapolis and San Francisco are already in the field for either or both of the conventions. "If 100,000 people give $5 now and $5 on January 1 next they will contribute $1,000,000"--these are calculations of the Democratic National Committee. For the campaign of 1924 it has ordered the formation of "Victory Clubs" of 20 members each in 5,000 communities--"the greatest army of organized Democrats ever mobilized."