"Crucified on the Floor"

For righteous clamor, outraged desk-thumping and shocked eye-rolling, nothing quite equals the U.S. Congress in those ood, occasional moments when it feels that its honor has been impugned. Last week members of the House hit the ceiling so hard that it seemed for a while they would have to be scraped off, en masse. The Congressmen believed they were being accused by one of their own number of being drunks and spies.

New York's Republican Congressman Edwin Arthur Hall, whose district was consolidated five months ago with that of Republican Congressman W. Sterling Cole, was the offender. In campaigning against Cole for survival in Congress, Campaigner Hall, the Binghamton Press reported, made the charge: "I see that my opponent is going to Nevada, ostensibly to witness an atom-bomb explosion. Well, it will probably be another elbow-tipping party . . . When they get these Congressmen a little tipsy, are they spilling out secrets that are going into Russian hands?"

When word of this observation was duly recorded in the Congressional Record, it set off a eulogy of hard-working Sterling "Stubby" Cole that he probably could never have gained by anything so uncomplicated as dying. One by one, colleagues of both parties rose to praise him, his habits, his "fine character," his sobriety, his gentlemanly conduct, his achievements in behalf of his state and the nation. "Never," cried Michigan's Clare Hoffman, "have I smelled liquor on his breath." The entire Republican delegation from New York (with the exception of Hall) joined in sending Cole a letter of praise and commendation.

Meanwhile, the assembled Congressmen breathed scorching blasts at Representative Hall. "I hesitate to dignify him by calling him a gentleman," cried California's Carl Hinshaw. "A dastardly effort to blacken the reputation of a man that cannot be blackened," cried Illinois' Mrs. Marguerite Church.

When this flood of invective washed over teetotaling Congressman Edwin Arthur Hall, he let fly again: "One of the most cowardly attacks in history . . . Perhaps ... [I] hit some guilty consciences and they yelled to high heaven. I was crucified on the House floor . . ." But the House, apparently confident that it had settled the miscreant's hash with one massive swat, did not seem to hear him.

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