Change Guard

Selden Palmer Spencer, Republican, and junior U. S. Senator from Missouri, died suddenly in Washington, D. C, after an apparently successful operation for hernia.

The Nation remembered him as an irreconcilable opponent of Woodrow Wilson, as chief defender of Truman H. Newberry, who was eventually driven from the Senate, as a leading apologist for the Teapot Dome Lease.

But he meant much more to Missouri. Two years after he had received his diploma from Yale, he went to live in St. Louis and, as Professor of Medical Jurisprudence, associated himself with the Missouri Medical College in the early days of that institution. When only 34, he became a judge, speedily earned a sobriquet of honor: "Iron Judge." In his post-judicial days, he put iron into the feeble Republican Party and was at least partly responsible for Missouri's voting for Republican Presidents in '04, '08, '20, '24. He was one of the few Republicans elected to the Senate from Missouri, and he held his seat (1918-25) longer than any Republican predecessor.

Assistant Secretary of War Dwight F. Davis was considered likely to succeed to the Senate seat by appointment. Mr. Davis' association with international tennis is typical of a new cosmopolitanism in politics. He is not of the Old, but of the Coolidge "New Guard."