Feathered Fowl

Luscious verbiage, hanging from heavily laden political boughs, began to fall into the inviting laps of stalwart citizens. The harvest season of election was not yet at hand, but the overburdened limb of speech no longer could sustain its fruit.

So George Wharton Pepper, Senator from Pennsylvania, traveling to one of America's 48 Arcadias, sounded a keynote in the eager ears of Maine men:

"In endeavoring to inflict injury exclusively upon the Republican Party, they have, in fact, succeeded in discrediting both the great parties to such an extent that an irresponsible and highly dangerous third party is actually suggesting itself to some extremists as a practical possibility. In other words, the Democrats have aimed at us and hit America.

"The appointment of Forbes as head of the Veterans' Bureau and Fall as Secretary of the Interior have proved to be terrible mistakes; while the selection of Mr. Daugherty as Attorney General seems to me to have been a grave error in judgment.

"When I say this I am speaking of the mistakes not of the living but of the dead; of the mistakes of a beloved leader whose virtues were many and whose lapses were few--of a leader who left behind him a long catalogue of notable achievements and who gave his life for you and for me as truly as any soldier who ever died in battle. When any man for campaign purposes or to gain a partisan advantage undertakes to disturb the repose of that leader, I brand him as a political ghoul and declare him to 'be unfit for the society of decent people."

Nicholas Longworth, Republican Floor Leader in the House, travelled pensively to Pennsylvania to exclaim:

"Judged by its conduct in the past few years, it seems to me that the title of the Democratic Party to its emblem, the rooster, so far less noble than the eagle, at least endowed with courage and the love of fair play, is decidedly shaky. It has been standing for obstruction, destruction and disturbance. Of late it has been reveling in abuse, calumny and slander of the dead as well as of the living, so its own skirts have proved to be less clean than those of the party it has been attacking. It seems to me that a fitting emblem for the Democrats in the next campaign would be the buzzard.

"I do not want to be construed as criticizing the United States Senate as a legislative body. It is a great legislative body when it condescends to legislate. I think that the time has come when that great body should cease scavenging and get down to legislating."

These two unburdenings could not but invite more. Senator Joseph T. Robinson of Arkansas, Minority Leader in the Senate, rose before his colleagues. Speaking of the late President Harding, he thundered:

"I did not seek to hide behind him. I did not characterize as ghouls those who would say he had made terrible mistakes. I have not and I never had the slightest disposition to speak disrespectfully of the late Senator Harding. As most Senators know, he was my intimate personal friend."

Turning to the discussion of Mr. Longworth, he added:

"His statement is that the emblem of the Democratic Party should be changed from the rooster to the buzzard--a very undignified expression. If I were to descend to the level which he occupies, I might inquire what kind of a bird he thinks he is, a cock robin or a stud sparrow."

And Representative Stevenson of South Carolina told the House:

"I am glad to have an admission from the high titular leader of this House that the Republican party is dead and has begun to smell.

"Nobody ever has accused the buzzard of being anything but a scavenger and he never gets anything until it is dead long enough to do like Lazarus in the grave-begin to stink."

To the swelling chorus, Harry Daugherty, onetime Attorney General, added his sonorous voice:

"I have read with amazement Senator Pepper's so-called keynote speech. ... A few more keynote speeches of this character would sound the death knell of Republican success in the coming election.

"While he affects to denounce as 'ghouls' those who would attack the memory of President Harding, yet in his speech, in its intended and inevitable implication, he asks that the Republican party defend itself in the coming campaign by the cowardly cry, 'Blame it on Harding.'"