Lucas, Norris et al.

Hollow-eyed old Senator Norris of Nebraska received a greeting card week from plump young Robert H. Lucas, executive director of the Republican National Committee, wishing him "a bright and happy Christmas." But Senator Norris knew that Mr. Lucas did not really wish him any such thing. The card had gone out along with cards to all other names on Mr. Lucas' list of potent Republicans. Mr. Lucas had meant to cross Senator Norris off the list, opinion had been exposed that Senator Norris, who supported Alfred Emanuel Smith in 1928, was not a Republican but a Democrat; also exposed was the fact that Mr. Lucas secretly fought the Senator's re-election in November by circulating a barroom cartoon and other literature which he paid for covertly with his own money (TIME, Dec. 29). Pushed into the open by Senator Nye's campaign investigating committee, Mr. Lucas blurted out his full feelings and declared, just about the time Senator Norris was reading his Christmas card, that there was "a growing cancer in the vitals of the Republican party" which should be excised. He meant, of course, Senator Norris and all his insurgent ilk. Insurgent Chorus. If exposure of Mr. Lucas' somewhat shady political trick had been provocative, this "cancer" remark was even more so. Near Senator Norris, and like him dependent upon the Republican party for preferred position in the Republican-organized Senate, sits insurgent Senator Borah. "Let them get out of the party, those who have disgraced it!" boomed Senator Borah. "I don't know what our [insurgent] group will do about voting with the Democrats, but I know I won't. . . . Who can read any one out of the party? I've been read out off and on for 30 years!" Insurgent Senator Brookhart of Iowa erupted:

"Mr. Robert H. Lucas says there is a cancer in the Republican party and that it must be cut out. He is right, but doesn't recognize the cancerous part. The personal head of this cancerous growth is Andrew W. Mellon. Robert H.

Lucas is only a little malignant wart under the toenail of this big personality. . . ." Insurgent Senator Howell, Nebraskan colleague of Senator Norris, repeated his cry of the week before: "Propriety, ethics, common sense, the good of the Republican party demand that Mr. Lucas step down and out!" Insurgent Senator Cutting of New Mexico declared: "Mr. Lucas ... is merely an employe of the Republican National Committee. The responsibility for actions lies higher up. "The trouble with the gentlemen whom Mr. Lucas represents is that they fail to remember that the Republican party does not belong to the President of the United States, the national chairman and a few dozen members of the National Committee. It belongs to the Republican voters. . . . "This [attack on Norris] constitutes political thuggery. The decent element m the Republican party believed that this sort of thing had ended with the Harding regime. . . ." Great Distinction. So much outcry moved Executive Director Lucas to attempt a conciliatory answer. "There is the greatest distinction in the world between Senator Borah and Senator Norris," said he. "Senator Borah has ably and consistently supported Republican nominees for President; Senator Norris has opposed them. And this is exactly the basis of my opposition to Senator Norris. 1 have no quarrel with . . . any other Senator who affiliates himself with the Republican party. With the exception of Senator Norris they all supported the Republican party and its nominees in 1928."

To this overture the Insurgents remained cold. And the Lucas-Insurgent exchanges were only one phase of the week-long furor of statement and counterstatement. "Demagog!" Another phase opened when Representative Will Wood of Indiana, the withered little chairman of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, emerged from a consultation with President Hoover and declared: "Norris is not a Republican. He is not even a Democrat! He is a consummate demagog! He is nothing but a wolf in sheep's clothing! We have been palliating and petting these fellows like Norris long enough!"

Ferocity. In all the vocabulary of politics, no epithet so enrages most politicians as calling them "demagogs." And in national politics, a statement issued by an Administration man on the steps of the White House is commonly construed as voicing the President's sentiments. Hence it was with a loose-worded ferocity seldom exhibited by the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee that Senator Norris retorted to Mr. Wood by accusing President, Hoover of personally approving the "conspiracy." "Cowardly . . . underhanded . . . disreputable ..." were some of the epithets the ghosty Nebraskan spat out in the direction of the White House. "I was fighting for the Republican party and its upbuilding and puri- fication when Mr. Hoover himself was a resident and voter of Great Britain. . . . When he came to this country from Great Britain he became a Democrat. . . . He remained a Democrat until he secured a public office under a Republican Administration. ... I concede he has a right to change his politics as often as he changes office if he wants to, but I haven't found it necessary to do that myself." Third Party? Replies by the Messrs. Wood and Lucas divesting President Hoover of any part or position in the Norris affair were obscured by the next development: talk of a Third Party. With Congress not sitting and little other news being made during the holidays, the press gave great space to an "invitation" to Senator Norris from much-respected old Philosopher John Dewey of Columbia University to form and lead a new national political party which would offer "social planning and social control" in opposition to the "rugged individualism" of the Republicans and indistinguishable doctrine of the Democrats. This new party should put a Presidential candidate in the field for 1932, said Mr.

Dewey, and by 1940 it ought to be in control of the nation.

Sudden Silence. Puzzling to many citizens must have been the sudden quiet that fell upon the Insurgent and Regular combatants immediately after Philosopher Dewey's exhortation. Senator Norris softly passed the matter off by saying, "Isn't that funny?" He promised to pro pose a Constitutional amendment doing away with the Electoral College, letting the People elect their President directly. Only thus, said he, would an independent have a chance. He also railed gently against Owen D. Young as the candidate of what is called the Power Trust and plunked mildly for New York's Governor Roosevelt as a "progressive" Democrat who would probably "appeal most" to himself & friends. Republican regulars said nothing. Executive Director Lucas rested quietly in the bosom of his family at Louisville. At the White House not even a political mouse stirred. The Significance. Third-party talk is a sobering thing, especially when a real split in a party has become visible.

Split already on Prohibition, the Republican regulars last week had real cause to wonder what they would do if the Insurgents should decline to vote with them in organizing the next Congress, where the Republican majorities are paper-thin already. Worse, what if those thin majorities and this widening breach were replicas of what happened in the years 1910 and 1912? Then the G. O. P. lost Congress, split at its presidential nominating convention, allowed the Presidency to fall between the stools of Taft and Roosevelt into the lap of Woodrow Wilson. To professionally political Insurgents, thought of a third party was sobering for other reasons. The time to bring forth a new political organism is obviously right after, not long before, the two old parties have published their platforms and nominated their men for a Presidential election. And while the Regulars are kept in a state of anxious uncertainty, much fruitful threatening, much boring-from-within may be accomplished; so much, indeed, ,that to Insurgent leaders like Norris and Borah, who could be sure in any showdown of retaining their satisfying Senate committee chairmanships, the formation of a new party may seem unnecessary after all.

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