Writer Ruhl

Republicans were surprised, Democrats pleased, non-partisans filled with admiration when, last week, the New York Herald Tribune, outstanding G. 0. P. organ in the East, published a "piece" about Nominee Smith written by Arthur Brown Ruhl, a correspondent seasoned by a quarter-century of political writing in the U. S. and abroad. It was not a "piece" calculated to help Hoover beat Smith. It was an honest effort by Writer Ruhl to report on Nominee Smith as he saw him. Excerpts: "There is something intensely real about 'Al' Smith . . . something alive, dynamic, go-ahead-reality in a spiritual sense. . . . "The late President Harding, let us say, presented a fac,ade which was suave and winning. . . . But once touched or pierced it too often turned out to be but a fac,ade and little more. . " 'Al' Smith's fac,ade, the grin, cocked derby and half-chewed cigar . . . has little to do with the sort of 'reality' one has in mind here. . . . Underneath ... is something else--something taut and eager, quickly sensitive; something that boils and struggles in there, that answers and leaps. Touch or pierce that roughneck fac,ade, ever so lightly, and that other something starts, flames, comes leaping back. "There is about him a touch of that agelessness that goes with genius. . . . "... One gets an impression of exceptional force, of honesty, intelligence and absence of flubdub and pretense. . . . ". . . Potentialities of responsive and responsible leadership." The potent Scripps-Howard chain of newspapers, 26 strong, last week published an editorial saying: "An independent newspaper is not a party organ. In supporting Hoover, we will not align ourselves as the enemy or traducer of the good and able man who is his opponent. "We want to see Hoover in the White House. But, excepting Hoover, we would rather see Alfred E. Smith than any man since Woodrow Wilson."