Tombstone

Last week was farewell week in the Senate. Maryland's bumbling Bruce gave a curse for his valedictory (see p. 14). Missouri's ruddy-cheeked, silver crested, indignant Reed, read George Washington's Farewell Address, in splendid voice, and then offered the senate a political tombstone.

Not a tombstone for Reed but a tombstone by Reed was his 37,000 word report on his special committee's long-drawn investigation of the manner in which William S. Vare of Philadelphia got nominated for and elected to the Senate in 1926.

Yet, in a sense, it was a tombstone for Reed after all, because hardly anyone bothered to read the report and almost no one remained in the chamber to hear the Senator dilate and expatiate and ejaculate upon it. It was an old, oft-told story and much though they used to like Senator Reed, his colleagues could not bear to hear him go all through the Vare iniquities again.

The report told, and Senator Reed rehearsed, how Mr. Vare, whom the late Boies Penrose of Pennsylvania used to call "the ashcart statesman" because he once hauled ashes and garbage in Philadelphia, spent colossal sums to wrest the nomination from Gifford Pinchot and George Wharton Pepper (who both used colossal sums themselves).

Since Senator Vare was in Florida, still recuperating from the paralytic stroke which he suffered last summer and which, according to his physicians, made it impossible for him to appear and defend himself, the committee in its report merely recommended his final rejection but presented no ouster resolution. To the grim-jawed, vindictive Reed was left the honor and the glory of demanding, one last time, the Senator-Suspect's rejection.

But no one remained to listen. The Senators had decided among themselves to give Boss Vare another hearing when he gets well--which he doubtless will do soon after Missouri's Reed's term expires on March 4.

Knowing this, and angered by the Senate Chamber's emptiness, Senator Reed darkly hinted that he would filibuster. This news brought a frown to the tired forehead of the Senate's other Reed-- slim, stooping young David Aiken Reed of Pennsylvania, protege of Andrew Mellon.

Thus the situation at the closing of Congress two years ago duplicated and reversed.