"Contemptible Liar!"

" 'Smith was a rotten Governor. I did not know it until I got into the governorship myself.' "

This remark, attributed to Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt of New York about Alfred Emanuel Smith, was published as gossip fortnight ago in Collier's in an article by "The Gentleman at the Keyhole." When newsmen at Albany last week asked Governor Roosevelt if he had ever made such a statement, that usually placid gentleman angrily exclaimed:

"Any man who circulates a story of that kind is not only a liar but a contemptible liar!"

He knew, the Governor intimated, the identity of "The Gentleman at the Keyhole" and would expect "almost anything" from him.

Most newsmen in Washington also believed they knew this keyhole commentator to be Clinton Wallace Gilbert, shrewd, able correspondent of the New York Evening Post. Their belief in his identity was strengthened when earlier this month he used almost identically the same story in a despatch, to his newspaper. Governor Roosevelt was circumstantially placed at last year's Governors' Conference at French Lick, Ind., and in conversation with "a distinguished Middle Western Democrat" (generally supposed to be James Middleton Cox) saying:

"Of course Smith is against me. But I don't care anything about Smith's opposition. You know Smith was a fake Governor. I didn't realize it until I became Governor myself. But I have done more constructive work for the State in a few months than Smith did in all his term of office.''

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