Committee No. 7

A dead body comes to the surface three days after drowning. Summer weather often accelerates the rising process. It took Prohibition a little less than three months to come, last week, to the surface of the National Commission on Law Enforcement and Observance.

In Washington, Chairman George Woodward Wickersham announced the formation of eleven committees within his Commission for the study of special crime problems. Ten of them were general: Causes of Crime; Statistics of Criminal Justice; Police; Prosecution; Courts; Penal Institutions; Juvenile Delinquency; Criminal Justice and the Foreign Born; Lawlessness of Governmental Law Enforcing Officers; the Cost of Crime. One was specific--Prohibition, the only law singled out for the Commission's study. Mr. Wickersham made himself chairman of this committee--No. 7--and chose for his associates on it Commissioners Newton Diehl Baker, William Squire Kenyon, Ada Louise Comstock.

President Hoover, in convoking the Commission in May, sedulously avoided specific mention of Prohibition as an object for scrutiny. Drys and Wets alike complained that he was trying to ''submerge" their pet issue in a sea of other criminal problems. The announcement and title of Committee No. 7 thus marked a new stage in the evolution of the Hoover attitude toward the land's most politically perilous topic.

Another angle of Prohibition was to come under the Commission's scrutiny, in the committee on "Lawlessness of Governmental Enforcing Officers." President Hoover was personally credited with the creation of this special study group, composed of Mr. Baker, Judge Kenyon and Judge William Irwin Grubb, which was prepared to spade up the scandals of reckless shootings by dry agents.

The composition of Committee No. 7 set impatient people to forecasting its findings. Chairman Wickersham's letter to Governor Roosevelt, suggesting a modification of the law for Federal "wholesale" control and State "retail" enforcement (TIME, July 29) made him appear liberal if not Wet. Democrat Baker pleaded for the election of Alfred Emanuel Smith and has publicly denounced Prohibition by constitutional amendment. Miss Comstock, President of Radcliffe College, has masked her views on Prohibition, is rated a neutral. The only positive prohibitor on Committee No. 7 is thus U. S. Circuit Court Judge Kenyon of Iowa. As Senator he took the Dry side in many a memorable debate, strove mightily in behalf of the 18th Amendment. Before national Prohibition, he was co-author of the Webb-Kenyon Act which prohibited the interstate shipment of liquor into Dry States.

The Anti-Saloon League was asked to comment on Committee No. 7. It refused, explained that its policy now is to keep its counsel until the conclusion of the Commission's investigation.