It's an Issue?

Nicholas Murray Butler, Wet, made a speech a few weeks ago to an institute of arts and sciences at Columbia University, of which he is the hearty, eloquent president. Institutes of arts and sciences are gatherings at which subjects like Assyrian pottery, television, marine fossils or pure poetry may appropriately be discussed, on their artistic or scientific merits.

President Butler's subject for the evening was "The Lost Art of Thinking." He soon made mental mince-meat of people who cannot read Kant and Aristotle. Equally effective was his onslaught upon "the office-holding and office-seeking class" in the U. S.; that is, the politicians. What politicians were doing any morally courageous thinking? Which of them had labored to ensure against a repetition of the World War? Which of them had solved the farmer's problem? What politician had declared any reasoned convictions on Prohibition?

Said President Butler of Columbia University: "We are approaching a national election and already there is abundant evidence that individuals, groups and interests are maneuvering for position. There would appear to be an almost concerted effort to creep up to the Presidential office under the cover of glittering generalities and personal friendships."

On the heels of Wet President Butler's speech came a public statement by Dry Senator William Edgar Borah of Idaho, followed last fortnight by a speech and last week by another speech and several press statements from Senator Borah.

In a letter to a Mrs. Samuel Bens of Manhattan, Senator Borah said: ". . . It is clear that both political parties propose to avoid anything in the way of a commitment to the upholding and maintaining of the Constitution of the United States, except perhaps an insipid, meaningless generality to the effect that they believe in law and order. They might just as well say they believe in the Ten Commandments. . . ."

In a speech to the New York Women's Committee for Law Enforcement, Senator Borah said: "Everybody, except the deaf & dumb and the candidates, will be discussing it. . . . Under proper leadership the people of the United States will enforce any law which they are willing to repeal. Under proper leadership they will repeal any law which they are unwilling to enforce. Let us not play the game below the intelligence and the courage and the character of the people." In a speech last week to the National Grange convention at Cleveland, Senator Borah said: "You know perfectly well that a political party which will not declare for the enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment, will not enforce it.

"And you know, furthermore, perfectly well that if the party machinery is against enforcement, it cannot be enforced. "I do not want to be misunderstood in this fight, although it seems difficult not to be misunderstood. I am against the liquor traffic. In that respect I take my Republicanism direct from Abraham Lincoln, who denounced the liquor traffic as the second curse of mankind.

"I want to see it controlled. . . .

"But I think more of constitutional government than I do about the liquor traffic. I think that democratic institutions are passing through as severe a test as they have ever had or will have. Fascism on the one hand, communism on the other and a vast drove of timid souls in between make a pretty hard fight for democratic institutions.

"I favor, therefore, the mobilizing of every ounce of power and political efficiency that we have to enforce this amendment. I would not compromise upon the subject in any way, shape or form.

"But if the time ever comes when it is apparent that the people, as a people do not propose to enforce it, then I venture to say they will take it out of the Constitution, and they ought to. No provision of this Constitution ought to be permitted to stand indefinitely against the will of the American people."

Academic applause had greeted President Butler's speech on "The Lost Art of Thinking." Political cartoons--a far surer sign that something may have happened--greeted Senator Borah's salvos. He was pictured dragging a shuddering elephant to a water trough. He was shown pointing at a chained elephant with angry little eyes, and shouting: "From now on you're a camel!"

Republican leaders were concerned, disturbed, even vexed by the Borah statements. He is a Republican of much influence. Lately intimate with the strategically potent insurgent Senators (Nye, Norris, McMaster, Brookhart, et al.), Senator Borah even looms, not as a candidate, but as a possible disputant of the G. O. P.'s presidential choice. G. O. P. leaders muttered that Prohibition will not be in the party platform. They wished Senator Borah would stop talking.

Dry enthusiasts were jubilant. Bold Senator Borah was on their side. Wets, too, were pleased. "To get the Prohibition issue out into the open," they said, "is the first step toward solving it."

But persons long acquainted with U. S. politics withheld prediction. A speech is only a speech, they said, and thinking is only thinking. Lost arts, they said, are discussed at institutes of arts and sciences, but they remain, .after all, lost arts. U. S. politics remain U. S. politics. It is far too soon to say whether Senator Borah or any one else can transform the topic about which U. S. citizens think and feel the most, from the great Hush-Hush of the politicians in both parties to the one real issue of the campaign.