Springfield Spectacle

Springfield Spectacle

Jefferson did not love Hamilton more than Eugene Talmadge and Harold Le Clair Ickes love each other. The Governor of Georgia, a master of Southern invective, and the Secretary of the Interior, who possesses the most sulphurous vocabulary in the New Deal, long ago singled out each other for particular attention. Month ago Secretary Ickes curled his lip and sneered: ''Really, I don't pay much attention to anything his Chain-Gang Excellency says." Governor Talmadge drawled back: "Aw! He's just one of them boon- dogglers."

Last week Springfield's Midday Luncheon Club and Governor Henry Homer of Illinois decided to do an extraordinary honor to the memory of Springfield's greatest citizen, Abraham Lincoln. To Governor Horner's mansion for dinner went a distinguished gathering including Secretary Ickes and Governor Talmadge. They met, shook hands, turned away. Af- terward the members and guests of the Midday Luncheon Club assembled in a high-school auditorium for a special treat. On the platform, a handsome lectern bore a large portrait of Lincoln. Out to the speakers' seats marched Governor Horner, Secretary Ickes, Governor Talmadge, a spectacle which awed the audience and the nation.

As Governor Talmadge spoke, he proved to be in one of his more refined, restrained, grammatical moods. Said he: "In the words of Lincoln, 'We cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow his memory, but we can be dedicated, we can be consecrated to our duty to our country in this time of stress and peril and emulate his example, and not run wild on a dream that the Government owes us a living. . . .

"Lincoln knew that Government was not made for the specific purpose of taxing the people to the point where they were either paupers or thieves. Lincoln knew that patronage was the greatest enemy of all governments. . . . Would that we had a man like Lincoln in the White House today. If we did, he would never allow a brain-trusters' creed to teach the doctrine that you can boondoggle yourself back to prosperity."

Secretary Ickes then took his turn at the lectern, drew his moral from the text of Lincoln's life. Said he: "It appears to have been Abraham Lincoln who scuttled the American Constitution, set up a dictatorship, threw the Supreme Court into the Potomac River and declared a moratorium on Congress. In fact, General George B. McClellan ran against him for President in 1864 on a 'Save-the-Constitution' platform. . . .

"It is only when a President has interested himself in the cause of the plain people, when he is determined to equalize economic opportunities so as to establish a better and happier social order, that the Copperheads, their ancestors and their descendants secrete an extra supply of venom with which to strike down the man who bravely tilts his lance against special privilege and entrenched greed."

There the miracle ended. Photographers approached Georgia's Governor, asked if he would pose shaking hands with the Secretary of the Interior before the Lincoln tomb. He agreed. When they approached Mr. Ickes with the same proposition, that New Dealer roared: "I will not!"

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