Harding Shelved

If President Herbert Hoover ever wants to dedicate the $800,000 tomb of Warren Gamaliel Harding at Marion, Ohio, he will have to go, cap in hand, to the Harding Memorial Association and humbly beg its permission. The association is through importuning him to participate in a ceremony for which he apparently has no stomach.

Last week the association held its annual meeting at Marion. Secretary Hoke Doni-then explained how in 1929 he had asked President Hoover to honor the man who had given him his first Cabinet foothold for the climb to the White House. A Hoover secretary replied that the President was too busy, advised the association to go ahead, dedicate without him. Other attempts to pin President Hoover down to a promise of participation also failed.

Convinced that President Hoover's unwillingness was due to the cloud of political disrepute over Harding's name, the association unanimously voted to postpone all its dedication indefinitely. Up rose at the meeting Harry Micajah Daugherty, Harding's Attorney General, his great & good friend, whose loyalty has never flagged, to declare:

"A belated dedication is not necessarily a reflection upon the dead but a dedication grudgingly extended is a compliment neither to the dead nor to those who participate. . . . Now the American people have never been swayed by the lip of libel or the tongue of slander. . . . The foam of falsehood will soon cease to scare the timid or ambitious. . . . It would cheapen the memory of a man, most deserving, to importune anybody to do his memory a simple justice."* The association re-elected its officers: Calvin Coolidge, honorary president; one-time Senator Joseph Sherman Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, president; Secretary of Treasury Andrew William Mellon, treasurer.

*Last week the Washington Court House, Ohio, sheriff arrested Mr. Daugherty's brother, Mai S. Daugherty and held him for $40,000 bail, in connection with the failure early this year of two local banks, one of them the supposed repository of some of the Ohio Gang's graft.

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