In Maine

In Washington D. C., even the street-cleaners felt that something momentous was about to happen. They saw a man in a derby swagger up to a man in a flopping, broad-brimmed, black hat and grip his hand magnificently; they heard two unimportant-looking old gentlemen discussing something terrifically important. "Why all this ho-kum?" they asked one another, laying down their shovels. Alert citizens would have told them that Congress reconvenes on Dec. 6 and that lawmakers often arrive early.

Republican Senators, ill particular, had many vexing items to dis cuss--not the least of which was the status of Arthur R. Gould, the pride of Aroostook County, Maine. Mr. Gould was the Republican nominee for Senator to succeed the late Senator Bert M. Fernald, and was expected to win the special election last week without a murmur. But, one week before election, noxious charges against him began to pop up. His Democratic opponent, Fulton J. Redman, produced records of a Canadian investigation of 1918 in which Mr. Gould admitted under oath paying $100,000 to one-time Premier J. K. Fleming of New Brunswick in connection with a railway negotiation, which was later found by Canadian courts to be an "act of bribery."

Four days later, Ralph O. Brewster, big-mouthed Republican Governor of Maine, broke from his party strings and charged Mr. Gould with excessive use of slush in his primary campaign.* Said the Governor:

"The moral issue of illegal primary expenditures seems to have be come the paramount issue in this present campaign. It seems necessary to determine whether the people of Maine have developed a moral conscience as blunted as that of Pennsylvania or Illinois, or whether they are still mindful of the traditions and heritage of idealism and moral courage that have made the Republican Party great."

Republicans sneered at the unsubstantiated charges of Governor Brewster, reminded the voters that he was a friend of the Ku Klux Klan. Whereupon, the Governor replied :

"It is perhaps now time to repeat my annual statement that I am not, and never have been, a member of any secret fraternity other than the college fraternity [Delta Kappa Epsilon] that I joined at Bowdoin."

Evidently, the Maine electorate preferred the alleged sins of Re publicanism to the alleged sins of Governor Brewster and of the Democratic nominee who spends much of his time in New Jersey. Mr. Gould was elected Senator by a majority of some 50,000. Governor Brewster was rebuked.

Senator-elect Gould is entitled to take his seat on Dec. 6 in the 69th Congress, and continue to serve through the 70th Congress. Thus, the slim Republican control Of the next Senate is still safe. However, Mr. Redman threatens to fight to unseat Mr. Gould, while at the same time, the Democrats are contesting the seats of Senators-elect Vare of Penn sylvania and Smith of Illinois.

*The legal limit in Maine is $1,500.