Requiescat

Men from the high plateaus of New Mexico last week trod the unfamiliar pavements of Manhattan's socialite East Seventies. They were drawn there to the home of Mrs. William Bayard Cutting by the most dramatic Senatorial demise since the late Senator Walsh dropped dead two days before his elevation to the Cabinet. If Bronson Murray Cutting had died fortnight ago of prosaic disease in a prosaic bed, instead of meeting violent death in an airplane, his exit from the political stage would still have been dramatic. For like Mercutio he died an early death while the play was but half played.

Such a congregation as heard "The Son of God Goes Forth to War" resound from the roof above Bronson Cutting's copper coffin has seldom sat in one church. There were J. P. Morgan* and A. F. of L.'s William Collins, Walter Lippmann and Nicholas Murray Butler, Colonel House and Hiram Johnson, Sir Ronald Lindsay and Norman Thomas, Alice Longworth and Mrs. August Belmont, Joseph H. Choate Jr. and Senator La Follette, the President's mother and Mrs. Eugene Meyer, Senator Vandenberg and Isabella Greenway, soft-spoken Spanish Americans and nasal-twanged Yankees, stockbrokers who dwell on Long Island and politicians who abominate them. All of them had reason for being there.

The reason of the New Englanders and socialites was simplest. Bronson Cutting was one of them by blood and fortune-- born on Long Island, son of a sugar-refining and railroad-building father, reared in New England, educated at Groton and Harvard. Only an accident, ill health, had taken him away.

The reason for the presence of the New Mexicans was somewhat different. Bronson Cutting's caste marks--a broad Harvard A (he spoke with a slight lisp), clothes cut on English models, interest in such unprofitable subjects as modern music--did not make him one of them. In 1910 he left Harvard where he had been a favorite pupil of Philosopher George Santayana, who called him "Young Aristotle." He went to New Mexico to die of tuberculosis. Instead of dying he recovered and roamed over the State studying its archeology, making friends with its Spanish-speaking citizens. He already spoke fluent French, German, Italian. From New Mexicans he learned Spanish. For the next few years he followed a typical course for a young dilettante with money: bought himself a newspaper, the Sante Fe New Mexican, plunged into Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose movement, went to war and got himself a Captain's Commission.

Bronson Cutting, however, was not a dilettante in New Mexico but a buster of the best-laid plans of politicians. In that machine-ridden State he won a following of Spanish-American voters, of War veterans, of political liberals, all of whose languages he spoke, whose interests he championed. Although a nominal Republican he fought and broke Albert Fall's Republican machine. In 1924 he helped elect a Democratic Senator, Sam Bratton, and in 1926 a Republican Governor, Richard C. Dillon. Following year Governor Dillon named him to a vacancy in the U. S. Senate. As a Republican Senator he fought the Hoover policies in Washington and the Republican machine in New Mexico. Having helped to elect Roosevelt, he broke with Democrats and last autumn fought the Democratic ma-chine of Postmaster Farley.

In the course of this successful career he was accused of vote buying, was daubed with every kind of mud. But he stood head & shoulders over every political figure in New Mexico. Although the Democratic machine won in the 1934 landslide, he himself had kept his office and he finally had the Republican organization in his hands. At 46 he was set to go places politically.

Third group which followed Bronson Cutting to his grave were the liberals of Congress. When he joined them seven years ago, an unassuming young bachelor from New Mexico, he did not seem a promising member of a group which is traditionally composed of the prima donnas of politics. He was neither fire-eater nor spellbinder, but to the liberals he became something more useful. In his quiet way he cemented the bonds between them, often persuaded them to hang together instead of flying off in a dozen individual directions. When the news of Bronson Cutting's death was brought to the Capitol, Bob La Follette burst into tears and would not go on the floor. In the Senate Chamber Norris bowed his head and covered his eyes with his hands, Borah openly wept.

Their sentiment was the stronger because they felt that Cutting had died under persecution. In 1932 Bronson Cutting and Franklin Roosevelt virtually fell into each other's political arms. There was every reason for their doing so; they had in common Groton, Harvard, a back-ground of wealth and a love for forgotten men. By 1934 Franklin Roosevelt was at Bronson Cutting's political throat. The break between them was not spectacular. The beginning of it, though neither of them recognized it. took place before the Roosevelt inauguration when Senator Cutting, independent as always, declined the job of Secretary of the Interior offered him in return for his support of Roosevelt.

Through the 1934 campaign the President did not let Postmaster General Farley fight liberals and progressives of other parties. One striking exception was Cutting, against whom a Democratic wheelhorse, Dennis Chavez, was nominated. After Cutting beat Chavez by 1,284 votes out of 151,000, his victory was contested. Although the liberal-progressive bloc and the New Deal still continued their tacit working agreement, Cutting became the symbol of a basic flaw in that agreement. Then last fortnight, returning from New Mexico where he had been attending to the contest for his seat, Bronson Cutting crashed in Missouri. Franklin Roosevelt had lost his outstanding liberal opponent. Day after the Cutting funeral Democratic Governor Clyde Tingley appointed Dennis Chavez to the Senate, and the President's practical if not moral triumph was complete.

*To many a funeral goes Mr. Morgan with his chauffeur. Last week the New Yorker revealed some intimacies about their motoring. They commute daily from Manhattan to the Morgan home on East Island, L. I. On good days Mr. Morgan rides alone in the rear of an open car. On bad days he uses a closed car, sits up front with his chauffeur. Usually their route is direct. But this, said the New Yorker, is the season of the year when Mr. Morgan & chauffeur make a detour, slow down almost to a stop as they pass through Sea Cliff so they can see a Mr. Young's superb blossoming plum tree.

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