Red Wattles

Washington newspaper men, wrote Mark Sullivan, one of them, are amused at the "nagging and snapping" between Secretary Mellon and Senator Couzens (TIME, Mar. 16).

He diagnosed: "For 30 years Lodge was called 'the scholar in politics,' and doubtless got a good deal of quiet pleasure when he read that phrase in the newspapers or heard the toastmaster roll it out at banquets. Then came Wilson out of Princeton University to the Presidency, and people began to call him 'the scholar in politics.' Thus was a rivalry staged.

"We may be tolerant and amiable toward all the world, but let a rival strut toward our especial throne of unique distinction and our neck-feathers rise, our wattles* redden.

"Mellon and Couzens are both very rich men. They are the richest two men in active political life. Each is the case of a man able to command any form of leisure or diversion known to wealth, but foregoing all that and actually working harder at the public business than the most driven laborer. . . ."

*A fleshy, usually highly-colored process of the skin hanging from the chin or throat of a bird or reptile.