Smart Mutter

Candidate Smith in an orphan.

So is Candidate Hoover.

So is President Calvin Coolidge. Indeed Death has taken most parents of living Presidents. Singularly blessed, therefore, is 70-year-old President Michael Hainisch of Austria--for last week a movement to re-elect him for a third term was set on foot by his Mother.

Her age: four score and nine.

Frau und Mutter Marianne Hainisch is no enfeebled wraith, no sit-by-the-stone, no knitter. She continues a leader of Austria's Feminist Party. She was on an educational lecture tour through the Austrian provinces last week. Attentive audiences heard neither quavering nor cackling. Responsible correspondents cabled that the voice of Frau und Mutter Hainisch is clear, resonant, persuasive.

At the close of each of her lectures she added a quiet, candid little speech, saying that her son has been a good president during his two four-year terms, and that she believes the Austrian statute against third terms ought to be waived by Parliament in his favor.

Unorphaned President Hainisch of Austria has not yet personally announced that he will run again. Rival candidates in the offing are Professor Dr. Clemens Pirquet, famed children's specialist, and Professor Richard Wettstein, distinguished scientist.

As every Austrian knows, the possibility of becoming President is this year denied* in Austria to all politicians. No Smith, Hoover, Roosevelt or Lincoln could become President of the Austrian Republic.

Next December a National Council, composed of members of both houses of the Austrian Parliament will quietly elect a President. His duties are only by courtesy executive. The acting Chief Executive is the Prime Minister (Monsignor Ignaz Seipel).

Good President Hainisch, snowy of beard, kindly of eye, fancier of prize cows (TIME, April 2) has little to do except sign bills and graciously conduct state functions. In bygone years Frau und Mutter Hainisch, spouse of a potent industrialist, vigorously directed her son's education at Leipzig and his subsequent career in the courtly civil service of Franz Josef, Austrian Emperor, Hungarian King. But, in order that her son might have two strings to his bow, wise Mutter Hainisch encouraged her Michael to become the erudite and scholarly writer of some 25 volumes on sociology, finance, colonization, ethnology, migration, marriage, and political and social science. Though President Hainisch's hobby is milk cows, he is even now industriously and perhaps dutifully at work upon a new tome, to be entitled The Theory of Competition. Austrians acclaim him the smart son of a smart mutter.

*By a working agreement between the numerous and closely interbalanced political factions.