Again, Heffling

At a Brockton, Mass., Ku Klux Klan meeting last month where Senator James Thomas ("Tom-Tom") Heflin of Alabama, who mortally hates and fears the Roman Pope, was making his customary speech for hire against the Roman Catholic Church, somebody threw a bottle. It missed the Senator but hit and cut his police bodyguard.

Last week Senator Heflin tried, at length, to heffle the Senate into adopting a resolution condemning the nameless bottle-thrower and charging him, in effect, with attempted murder of a U. S. Senator. Religious debate again rocked the Senate chamber.

When Indiana's Watson, the Republican leader, tried to tell Senator Heflin that the Senate could not properly pass his resolution, the Alabaman, with bellowing surprise, asked if Watson wasn't the "finest old he-horse of the Klan." Senator Watson puffed and protested. Senator Borah rebuked Senator Heflin for bigotry, only to have the Democratic leader, Robinson of Arkansas, who has more than once rebuked Senator Heflin similarly, retort: "The Senator [Borah] can now speak of religious liberty, but you never heard him make such an eloquent appeal during the campaign. Then he was as dumb as an oyster on the overshadowing issue."

The episode passed off as just another of the periodic Heflin exhibitions, with this difference: this time, in the State which has become identified with its senior Senator, the Alabama Women's League for White Supremacy promised to try to terminate the Heflin Senatorial career at next year's election.