White-Washed

"I can understand . . . that the Governor [Alfred E. Smith] in casting those votes against those reform bills [touching gambling and the facilities for prostitution] might honestly have felt that the bills were unconstitutional or were not enforceable or infringed on personal liberty or encouraged police blackmail. . . .

"I have never consciously questioned any man's motives and so ... I desire to withdraw the charges formally, in so far as they affect his votes on gambling and prostitution, but not his position as to the saloon. . . .

"Organized, protected prostitution is quickly passing out of American life and that issue is not vital. But vital or not, I could not in good conscience press this issue, realizing that Governor Smith, whom I greatly admire for his many high qualities, feels that my charges question the purity of his motives. . . .

"I never mean to hit below the belt, but I felt that roll-call on prostitution was a bit below. ... So, in all conscience . . . I withdrew. ..."

And so ended the attack of the country editor (Emporia, Kan.) upon the city-bred Nominee. Judges on both sides of the party line awarded the decision to the Nominee, who made no retort to Editor White's exhumation and exegesis of the 1904-1915 record of Smith votes in the New York Assembly (TIME, Aug. 6).

Boarding the S. S. De Grasse, Editor White said: "That's the longest gangplank in the world.* Three seconds after I cross it I'll be 3,000 miles away from the whole mess." Editor White was bound for Paris, with Mrs. White and a "chunk of money." He was going also to Bayreuth, Germany, to "take a big Wagnerian souse in Parsifal to purge myself of all my sins . . . moral and political."

The agent of Editor White's retraction had been Editorial-Writer Walter Lippmann of the Wet-Democratic New York World, to which and to whom Nominee Smith pays close attention and acknowledges many a political debt.

To Chairman Work of the Republican National Committee went a telegram from Representative William Walton Griest, aged "dean" of Pennsylvania Congressmen: "If possible bottle up tight William Allen White and all other hot air artists that may be hovering around national headquarters. Please try your utmost. They are a distinct liability."

The New York Sun (Republican) contrasted the grudging White retraction with the forthright retraction of another Kansas-bred journalist, Editor Gene A. Howe of the Amarillo, Tex., Globe-News, who last week said that he had erred in attributing a "swelled head" to Charles Augustus Lindbergh (see p. 27).

Editor White once called his stout political friend, Nominee Curtis, a "nit wit." Asked, last week, if he was still of that opinion, Editor White said: "I am. Go ahead. They'll probably prove that I beat my wife."

* Referring to the French Line's advertisement: "Longest gangplank in the world--once aboard you are in France."