"The Pied Pipers"

"The Pied Pipers" All last week the nation's attention was held fast by the performance of two politicians, a priest and a onetime plow manufacturer. No public issue of any consequence was involved. No principle was at stake. No precedent was established. No scandal was exposed. Yet the man-in-the-street watched and listened with the same fascination that would make him pause to witness a dog fight. When the fusillade of vilification, obloquy, traducement and backbiting ceased, the chief result seemed to be that Senator Huey Pierce ("Kingfish") Long had received the most thundering mass of publicity that had come to him in his whole lively career.

At the Banquet. The whole row was started by General Hugh S. Johnson. Having written the Blue Eagle's biography for the Saturday Evening Post, he was now about to launch his own in Redbook Magazine, which more than 20 years ago printed stories by Lieut. Hugh Johnson entitled "The Suffragette Sergeant" and "Fate's Fandango." As a send-off for the series, Redbook gave Autobiographer Johnson a banquet at the Waldorf-Astoria in Manhattan. The General paid for his meal with a speech.

Taking as his title "The Pied Pipers," and as his text the anti-Administration outpourings of Rev. Charles Coughlin and Senator Long, Hugh Johnson cried: "You can laugh at Father Coughlin--you can snort at Huey Long--but this country was never under a greater menace. ... It is somebody time for somebody to get up on his hind legs and howl !" Up on his hind legs was precisely where General Johnson got and howl he did at the radio pastor of Detroit's Shrine of the Little Flower: "While I do not for a moment compare Father Coughlin with Talleyrand, it is no exaggeration to say that, through the doorway of his priestly office, covered in his designs by the sanctity of the robe he wears. Father Coughlin, by the cheap strategy of appealing to the envy of those who have nothing for those who have something, has become the active political head of an active political party. ... I think that makes him another bad fish in the net of Holy Church."

As to Father Coughlin's investments in silver on behalf of his Radio League of the Little Flower while he was preaching remonetization, the General stormed: "When a priest vowed to poverty and preaching to the poor flays the faith of a people to advance a monetary interest-- his own or another--you can about conclude that Judas Iscariot was just a poor piker."

Enveloping Huey Long in a verbal flank movement, the General continued: "Of recent months there has been an open alliance between the great Louisiana demagogue and this political padre. . . . These two patriots may have been reading last summer's lurid story about an American Hitler riding into Washington at the head of troops. That would be definite to Huey because he knows what part of the horse he can be. . .

"We expect politics to make strange bedfellows, but if Father Coughlin wants to engage in political bundling with Huey Long, or any other demagogue, it is only a fair first move to take off his Roman cassock. . . .

"Between the team of Huey and the Priest, we have the whole bag of crazy or crafty tricks possessed by any Mad Mullah or dancing dervish who ever incited a tribe or people through illusion to its doom--Peter the Hermit, Napoleon Bonaparte, Sitting Bull, William Hohenzollern, the Mahdi of the Sudan, Hitler, Lenin, Trotsky and the Leatherwood God--here they are--all boiled down to two with the radio and the newsreels to make them effective and if you don't believe they are dangerous . . . you don't know the temper of this country in this continued moment of distress!"

In the Senate. Rare was the Washington radio which was not tuned to Hugh Johnson's address. Senator Long, by his account to his colleagues next afternoon, almost missed it. "While I was about to undertake to throw myself into the arms of Morpheus," he related, "I thought I heard my name being mentioned over the radio in the next room. I listened for a little while, and, lo and behold, I became convinced that perhaps I was being mentioned. . . ."

He then proceeded, with the help of an interview given American Magazine in 1920 by Bernard Mannes Baruch, General Johnson's onetime employer, to "show the Senate that this Bernard M. Baruch and Hugh Johnson, inside and second-story combination of wreckers of Presidents, have been doing this thing so long, and rigging the market for their own individual profits, that the memory of man runneth not to the contrary--and let there be no dispute about it." From Baruch and Johnson, Senator Long progressed to targets closer home, President Roosevelt and Postmaster General Farley, winding up with a fling at Senate Leader Robinson: "I would sound another warning to the Senator from Arkansas. . . . Beware! Beware ! If things go on as they have been going on, you will not be here next year."

Capitol reporters who knew his mettle and had heard him off the record had long marveled at the patience with which "Joe" Robinson had borne for two years the antics of the senior Senator from Louisiana. That patience now came abruptly to an end. Sticking out his pugnacious chin, Senator Robinson rose and bellowed his rage:

"The Senate and the galleries have just witnessed a demonstration. Egotism, arrogance and ignorance are seldom displayed in the Senate of the United States. They require a measure of talent possessed only by the Senator from Louisiana. . . . Mr. President, it ill becomes a Member of this body to attempt to bulldoze his fellow Senators. . . . "I am perfectly content that General Johnson and the Senator from Louisiana may have their fight out in any form they choose. I think it would be rather in good taste ... if they should use the good old- fashioned way of settling personal controversies, rather than bringing them into the Senate. ... It is regrettable that this should be the forum for the display of such disposition as the Senator from Louisiana has exemplified in this body today. I do not know what his end will be. ... Has he no power to look into the future, except with the hope of rousing hatred, animosity and wants that he knows cannot be supplied? "Month after month the Senator from Louisiana has disgusted this body with repeated attacks upon men who are superior to him . . . now it is about time that the manhood in the Senate should assert itself. ... I have spoken earnestly, and I realize that there are those who are listening to me who will say, 'Why pay attention to the ravings of one who anywhere else than in the Senate would be called a madman?' "

When he had finished his address, Senator Robinson's fellow-members went climbing over their desks to pump his hand in congratulation for a deed many of them had long lacked the nerve to do. But the price to be paid for trading parliamentary mud with the "Kingfish" was soon exacted. Returning to the fray, the button-nosed Louisianian accused Senator Robinson of double-crossing him on patronage, asserted that President Roosevelt had told him [Long] to keep Senator Robinson "in trouble," revealed that Senator Robinson had made his brother-in-law Federal Rice Administrator in Louisiana. "Threatening to campaign against Senator Robinson's re-election in 1936, Huey Long declared: "I am going to Arkansas next year and I am going to ask for some of that pie." The "Kingfish" also raked from the past an incident which the Senator from Arkansas would much rather have forgotten: his assault on a golfer at the Chevy Chase (Md.) Club in 1924. "The Senator suggested that General Johnson and I have a fist fight," drawled the "Kingfish." "That is bad advice from the Senator."

Still a glutton for parliamentary punishment, Senator Robinson told the Senate next afternoon: "I do not know whether my colleagues care whether I come back or not. But I am prepared to say now that if I have to continue to look at the Senator from Louisiana every day, if I have to hear him speak three or four times a day ... I think it would be a Godsend to me if in some way I got out of the Senate!"

"I did not know whether I would run for governor of Louisiana or whether I would run for the Senate." grinned the "Kingfish." "But I now announce that I will run for re-election to the Senate."

"God save the Senate!" cried Senator Robinson.

On the Air. Three weeks before. Huey Long had spurred his attack on the Administration by demanding an investigation of its most vulnerable member. Postmaster General Farley. Charges hurled against "General" Farley by "Kingfish" Long were that he gave away free stamps (TIME, Jan. 21), was interested in a race track wire service, had accepted party funds from a man about to be tried for using the mails to defraud, had intervened to save a Kansas City gangster and a banking group, which included Ambassador-at-Large Norman Davis and his brother, from Federal prosecution, had personally profited from PWA contracts. Just after Senator Long's running fight with Senator Robinson in the Senate last week, the Post Offices & Post Roads Committee quietly announced that it found insufficient evidence for an investigation of the Postmaster General.

That was Huey Long's cue to howl that the Administration had now decided to "turn on the heat from all sides" against him. From National Broadcasting Co. he asked for 45 minutes instead of a half-hour radio time on a coast-to-coast hookup. "I'll cover Johnson's case from Hell to breakfast!" cried he. "There will be 25,000,000 people listening to me tonight. Give me 15 more minutes and I'll have the whole world listening!"

Out across the nation rolled the nasal, back-country accents of the "Kingfish." "It has been publicly announced that the White House orders of the Roosevelt Administration have declared a war." cried he. "The lately-lamented, pampered, ex-Crown Prince, General Hugh S. Johnson, one of those satellites loaned by Wall Street to run the Government . . . was apparently selected to make the lead-off speech. . . . What is the trouble with this Administration? . . . They think that Huey Long is the cause of all their worry. They go gunning for me, but am I the cause of their misery? Well, they are like old David Crockett who went out to hunt a possum. . . . Soon he discovered that it was not a possum at all that he saw in the top of the tree; it was a louse in his own eyebrow. . . ."

There were further reflections on the "gum'ment" and "Franklin De-lah-no Rosy-felt," but as his speech continued Senator Long's reputation for political shrewdness began to become more understandable. With the nation at its loudspeaker eager for another session of name-calling, with every important newspaper in the land primed to print his speech the next morning, Senator Long devoted the first five minutes to his enemies and the remaining 40 to propagandizing his Share-The-Wealth Plan. For his plan to make "every man a king" by limiting personal capital to $4,000,000, by guaranteeing at least $5,000 for a homestead and a $2,000 to $2,500 annual income to every family in the nation, the "Kingfish" claimed a galaxy of precedent:

"You will find that what I am advocating is the cornerstone on which nearly every religion since the beginning of man has been founded. You will find that it was urged by Lord Bacon, by Milton, by Shakespeare in England; by Socrates, by Plato, by Diogenes and the other wisest of the philosophers of ancient Greece; by Pope Pius XI in the Vatican; by the world's greatest inventor, Marconi, in Italy; Daniel Webster, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, William Jennings Bryan and Theodore Roosevelt in the United States, as well as by nearly all of the thousands of great men whose names are mentioned in history, and the only great man who ever came forth to dispute these things from the Bible down is this marvelous General Hugh S. Johnson, who labels himself a soldier and a lawyer."

Final fusillade in last week's radio lampooning came from Father Coughlin who took 45 min. on the air to call General Johnson a "flush Bourbon," a "cracked phonograph record," a "political corpse," a "prince of bombast." "The money changers whom the priest of priests drove from the temple of Jerusalem," cried he, "have marshaled their forces behind the leadership of a chocolate soldier forthe purpose of driving the priest out of public affairs. . . . You compare me to Judas Iscariot as a piker, the same Judas who betrayed his Lord and Master. Oh, it is not my province to classify myself with the eleven faithful Apostles. I am content to leave that to the justice of history and to the judgment of God. ... I rejoice that never once have I sold Jesus Christ nor did I ever betray the brothers of Jesus Christ. Can you say as much, General Johnson?" Chiding his accuser for ''vomiting your venom on me," he declared that he disdained to use a report on the General's private life which had been presented to him by some of the onetime NRAdministrator's "fair weather friends."

With throbbing voice and unctuous Christian charity he thumped for the National Union for Social Justice, his organization for ''restoring America to the Americans." After roasting Bernard Mannes Baruch and the "lories of high finance," he declared: "I am characterized as a revolutionary for raising my voice. . . . With the logic of a braggart I have been challenged to divest myself of my priestly vocation if I wish to participate in national affairs. Does our conception of Americanism . . . cling to the outworn theory of the divine right of kings by which is implied that the affairs of good government . . . must be surrendered into the hands of professional politicians?'' When General Johnson had heard the speech he exclaimed: "Pious flubdub."

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