Cavalry Commissioner

Washington is governed by three commissioners, appointed by the President and answerable only to him. By law one is an Army engineer, charged with municipal construction, street paving, water, sewer plants and the like. By tradition and law the other two are civilian residents of the District. What set the city's voteless populace to lamenting the prospect of military dictatorship was President Hoover's announcement last week that he would appoint Major General Herbert Ball Crosby, now chief of cavalry at the War Department, to one of the non-military District Commissionships. General Crosby's appointment is believed to be legal because of a Department of Justice ruling that, upon retirement, he will become a civilian.

The Washington Board of Trade protested to the President at the loss of local self-government. Lawyers scanned Supreme Court decisions to prove that President Hoover had used a technicality to effect this appointment, that a retired Army officer still had a military status under the law. Even plain citizens could see that General Crosby would create a military majority, in fact if not in law, on the D. C. Commission.

What lay behind the appointment was President Hoover's desire to make Washington "a model city," to answer repeated Congressional charges that liquor flowed unchecked, that narcotics were peddled under the shadow of the Capitol, that gambling joints and brothels ran wide open, all because the D. C. police were lax and corrupt. Declared President Hoover:

"General Crosby will have under his direction the police, the fire and the traffic services. . . . His headship of those departments will be a guarantee to both the official and unofficial residents of the District and especially to the nation at large, that the capital of the nation will be free of organized crime."

A strict disciplinarian, General Crosby prepared to carry "military methods" into his new job. A West Pointer (1893), a veteran campaigner in the Philippines, Mexico and France, he announced: "If there were no problems to overcome, there would be no job." When he said he would treat Prohibition like any other law to be enforced, everyone knew that he was saying exactly what the White House wanted him to say on an. issue President Hoover thinks has been unduly exaggerated. Bewailing the Hoover policy of "putting outsiders" in charge of local government, Washington citizens recalled the spectacular efforts of another military man, Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, U. S. M. C., to use "military methods" in policing Philadelphia and his 100% failure.

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