Chicago Picnic

George E. Brennan who took the Illinois vote east to the Democratic National Convention in Manhattan 15 months ago, last week took the Governor of New York west to Chicago. He arrived in a private car with 15 backers and carried Al Smith off for a day in Chicago and a big Democratic picnic. "We asked him to come because we liked him," said Mr. Brennan affably.

They too kthe Governor from the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago where they first lodged him and carried him by automobile some 20 or 25 miles out of Chicago to the Beverly Hills forest preserve. Newspaper men trooped along-- some Manhattan papers going so far as to send men on for the event--because they were sure it was going to be a great picnic, and because they were sure it was going to be the beginning of the "Smith for President in 1928" movement.

It was a great picnic. Nearly 100,000 of Boss Brennan's followers met on a great hillside pasture, but the fireworks failed to materialize. Mr. Smith said it was too much to expect states to reduce their expenses as much as the Federal Government had done, because the states had no war expenses to clean away. From then on he did not touch on another national issue--not Prohibition, nor the Ku Klax Klan. The crowd applauded but it did not go wild.

Mr. Brennan must have sighed a little in distress when Al Smith was driven off to catch a train back home, having made a speech, but not the speech that was to set the west wild.