Gesturers

Sent home by the U. S. Senate because of dubious credentials, Col. Frank Leslie Smith of Illinois last week handed his resignation as a U. S. Senator to Governor Len Small. The gesture was not a humble one but the first half of a defiant one. Twiddling his fingers over another sheet of paper, Governor Small completed the gesture by appointing Col. Smith to succeed himself in the Senate vacancy. Then the gesturers planned to have Col. Smith re-elected next November by the people of Illinois.

In this election, Col. Smith will run as martyr. Presumably, no more moneys from Samuel Insull, public utilities potentate, will be required to send Col. Smith back to Washington to discover whether the Senate's recent treatment of him was a personal censure or an act "outlawing 7,000,000 people" for their approval of the Insull-bolstered Smith campaign in 1926.