Fashions In Silence

It was an unusual trio--Andrew William Mellon, William Morgan Butler and Will H. Hays--whom Inquisitor Walsh assembled one morning last week for examination. In 1923, Mr. Hays had tried to pass some of Harry Ford Sinclair's oily bonds to Mr. Mellon and Mr. Butler, in return for cash for the G. O. P. deficit. They had declined. But in the four subsequent years, long after all knew of Sinclair's crockery and all during the Senate's efforts to unearth it, none of the trio had breathed a word of the sly Hays plan.

Mr. Mellon explained: "I have plenty of troubles of my own."

Mr. Butler said: "I had no responsibility whatever."

Mr. Hays wriggled and said: "Let us not get technical about it."

Mr. Mellon and Mr. Butler were absolved by Inquisitor Walsh of anything nefarious, though citizens still wondered at their silent sheltering of Mr. Hays.

In the Senate, Mr. Hays was flayed as a "fence" (purveyor of stolen goods). Mr. Butler, as present chairman of the Republican National Committee, was asked by Senator Borah if the party might not at once pay back to Harry Ford Sinclair the sums it had taken from him.

"As I see it," replied Mr. Butler, "the obligation, if any, for restitution is upon those who conducted the transaction."

Senator Borah thereupon announced that, as he saw it, the G. O. P. is a continuing institution. A change of management is not a change of entity. Senator Borah called for conscience money from Republicans ashamed for their party.

Money began trickling in slowly, and Senator Borah was variously applauded and deplored. Many observers credited him as of old with having "Honor," "political decency," "civic conscience." In Boston, where Chairman Butler lives, the Transcript sneered at "The Puritan first-page virtue of Hon. William E. Borah of Idaho."

Many citizens, realizing that the President of the U. S. is traditionally regarded as the head of the party which puts him in power, wondered if President Coolidge would make any comment on Senator Borah's "shame fund" and Chairman Butler's refusal to accept it for the party. Chairman Butler visited the White House, staying quite a while. But when he came out, he said nothing and President Coolidge, too, held his peace. . . .

After a visit to Chicago, boyish Senator Nye, of the investigating committee, announced that he and Senator Norbeck had unearthed fresh oil evidence, which, if valid, would "rock the country." Senator Nye said: "If reports given to our committee are true, a name is involved that it would be criminal to mention until further investigation of the basis of the charges is made."

Later in the week Inquisitor Nye's committee announced that it would examine the papers of the late President Harding, particularly those concerning the sale of his Marion Star for the large sum of $380,000. On the floor of the Senate, that same afternoon, campaign funds were on a dozen lashing tongues. Pat Harrison of Mississippi, Democrat, told of a Republican dinner in Chicago in 1920 where Vice President Coolidge made "a rip snorting speech" before "the big fat fellows from all over the country, who had more money than they knew what to do with." Senator Borah made another plea for his Republican retribution fund:* "I believe the [Sinclair] conspiracy was formed in the city of Chicago at the convention in 1920 by a few men unbeknown to the party itself, unbeknown to the rank and file, but by men who under cover of party protection were consummating a crime."

Senator Robinson of Indiana, Republican, not wishing to be left out of the wordfest, said that Mr. Sinclair had also contributed to the campaign fund of Governor Alfred Emanuel Smith of New York, in 1920. In that campaign, Governor Smith met his only popular defeat at the hands of Nathan L. Miller, who was later an attorney for Sinclair-partner Harry M. Blackmer.

*To which Theodore Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy in the Harding Administration, last week contributed $100.