Notes

Senator Reed Smoot of Utah was at pains, last week, to deny a rumor that he was about to resign his seat in the Senate to become head of the Mormon Church. Heber J. Grant, present head of the Church, is ill; but even if he should die, Rudger Clawson is senior to Mr. Smoot among the Mormon elders.

In its final report on the national election last fall, the special Senate Committee on Campaign Expenditures, headed by Mr. Borah, gave the following totals for the several parties:

COLLECTED EXPENDED

Republicans .$4,360,478.32 $4,270,469.01

Democrats .. 821,037.05 903,908.21

LaFollette .. 221,837.21 221,977.58

The Tennessee House of Representatives, after an acute discussion, tabled and refused to act on a bill to prohibit the employment of public school teachers who "do not believe in God and the Deity of His Son, Jesus Christ."

In the Connecticut Legislature, a bill was killed which would have placed an annual tax of $1.00 on torn cats and $10.00 on tabby cats. The most telling argument against it was that one pair of rats, if allowed to multiply, could have 359,000,000 descendants in three years.

General Charles G. Dawes was distressed to find that he had too many friends--too many friends, at any rate, to accommodate at the inauguration on Mar. 4. He is allotted 18 tickets in the Senate Chamber for his own inauguration and ten in the review stand for the President's. His friends are numbered in multiples of these figures.

A Committee of Congress was informed that phonographers paid $100,000 to obtain a satisfactory record of Nearer, My God, to Thee. The items of expense were: one church, one organ, one expert, ten years' effort. These facts were used as an argument against any change in the copyright laws which would permit composers to demand larger royalties.

A long unknown fact became public last week. The coat of arms of West Point Military Academy, borne for many a year, was discovered to have been adopted with a number of wretched errors in heraldry. It consists of a helmet, pierced by a sword pointing diagonally downward, imposed upon a vertically striped shield. The whole is surmounted by an eagle. The direction of the sword was from upper right to lower left, the same as the "bar" or, more correctly, the "bend-sinister" (denoting illegitimacy). The eagle faced to the right so that, when carried on a banner, it faced away from the staff--and away from the enemy. Two years ago, the error was discovered and the entire coat of arms has been reversed on new insignia, with as little public attention as possible.

Major General Robert Lee Bullard, recently retired (TIME, Jan. 26), was elected President of the National Security League, self-assertive guardian of American institutions.

Because of a shortage of funds and hence of police, the Chief of Detectives of St. Petersburg, Fla., accepted an offer of the Ku Klux Klan to furnish patrols gratis, sans robes, sans masks.

Imprisoned for three days for speeding was Hal Donahey, 18-year-old son of Governor A. Vic Donahey of Ohio, eminent Democratic hero of last November's elections. His father refused to intercede in his behalf.

Said the Governor: "Let the law take its course."

Said Mrs. Donahey: "We may drop in at the prison Sunday to see him."

Said Hal: "It's food I crave."