No Salt, No Pepper

Baldish, slight Howard Vincent ("Pat") O'Brien has acquired a high-flown reputation among Chicagoans for his mildly liberal musings on the editorial page of William Franklin Knox's Daily News. Last winter Columnist O'Brien made news by declaring that if his boss were elected President, he would of necessity follow the policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt once he got inside the White House (TIME, Dec. 2). Publisher Knox, then a good-natured candidate for the GOP nomination, was supposed to have been highly amused at this piece of intramural impertinence, let O'Brien's copy go through to press unedited. Last week Vice Presidential Nominee Knox's sense of political humor was put to another and sterner test when Columnist O'Brien indicated in print that he would vote the Roosevelt-Garner ticket next November.

Wrote the Daily News's Howard Vincent O'Brien:

"The fellow who lives next door . . . insists on having his opinions ladled out with no pepper or salt added. So, when he demanded to know whether or not I was for Roosevelt, there wasn't any use wiggling. I had to admit, finally, that when all was said and done, I was 'for' Roosevelt.

"It is hard to explain an answer like that. In the first place, it is an emotional reaction, pure and simple. . . . In the second place, I am by no means 'for' Roosevelt's policies--assuming that he has any. . . .

"Regardless of his platform, his performance and his propagandists, I still think (or, more properly, feel) that Mr. Roosevelt speaks with the voice of prophecy. . . . It seems to me that he understands the great underlying issue of our time--the fact that what mankind is struggling for, whether it knows it or not, is the establishment of an economic democracy on at least as high a level as political democracy has attained.

"In my opinion, all the other issues are transitory and trivial, and all the dispute about technique is irrelevant. . . . After all, the fellow still packs a wallop. And a philosophy of government is more important than a program."

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