Morality Lecture

Settling back in his chair at Hyde Park, Franklin Roosevelt, master politician, last week delivered to the press a lecture on political morality. It was "immoral," he said, for some 20,000 Republicans in Idaho to have voted in the Democratic primary to nominate Representative D. Worth Clark over New Dealish Senator James P. Pope (TIME, Aug. 22). Such crossing of party lines, he said, defeated the purpose of the primary system, because members of one party could pick puny opponents for their own party's candidates to beat. As in Idaho, it would be "immoral" for Republicans in Maryland to help his enemy Senator Tydings defeat his friend Representative Lewis;--* and for Republicans in Georgia to help his enemy Senator George defeat his friend Lawrence Sabyllia Camp.

Several professional politicians were politely cynical over Mr. Roosevelt's moralizing. Republican National Chairman John D. M. Hamilton remembered occasions upon which Mr. Roosevelt had been glad to see parties scrambled: in Minnesota two years ago when the Democratic nominees for Governor and Senator were withdrawn by Jim Farley to let the Farmer-Labor candidates beat the Republicans; in Nebraska two years ago when Mr. Roosevelt, a Democrat, urged the re-election of Senator Norris, an Independent Republican, over a Democrat; in. Michigan, when Republican aid was sought in the primary to nominate Frank Murphy for Governor.

Senator Prentiss Brown of Michigan, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, agreed in principle with his President but cheerfully recalled how Michigan Democrats, in their weakened condition prior to 1928, used to vote in the Republican primaries as a matter of course. "In the Southern States," observed Senator Brown, "it is about the only way the [Republican] minority can express itself."

In spite of Mr. Roosevelt's sincere concern for the purity of primaries, citizens were puzzled when they recalled how he had urged, in effect, that the terms "Republican" and "Democrat" be superseded by "Conservative" and "Liberal." In which case party membership as now known means nothing.

P: In the course of his "morality" lecture, the President let fly a few shafts at the "Tory" press. In response to a question, he estimated that 85% of U. S. newspapers are "Tory." When told that in a recent poll, 300 out of 800 newspapers showed pro-New Deal, he said he did not believe it. Sitting in on this press conference was Editor-Publisher Joseph Medill Patterson of the huge, warmly pro-Roosevelt tabloid New York Daily News. The President said he believed Mr. Patterson's paper was the only one with a large circulation that was for him or the New Deal.

P: President Roosevelt took his guests, including Mayor LaGuardia of New York City and Representative Caroline O'Day of New York, to see how his "dream house" is coming along. The fieldstone walls were all up, the roof was going on. Secret Service men looked skeptical when the President declared that in his new hideaway there would be no telephone, no radio, no guards except an electric eye to fire a gun if any intruder came too close.

P: To talk "Purge," Mr. Roosevelt summoned Democratic National Chairman Jim Farley to Hyde Park--first time they had talked since Mr. Roosevelt's excursion into the primary States and Mr. Farley's trip to make peace in States where primaries were over. For one whole afternoon they rode around the Presidential estate, talking without danger of being overheard. Although Mr. Farley was against the Purge early in the summer and was reported still to view Mr. Roosevelt's recently renewed Purge with alarm, when they came back from the ride it was understood that their differences were reconciled. It was soon afterward announced that Mr. Roosevelt would go into Maryland--to Denton on Sept. 5--to belabor anti-New Deal Senator Tydings, who last week seemed to be leading New Dealer Lewis.

P: As scheduled, Dr. Roswell Magill, called to the Treasury last year as a tax expert, handed the President his resignation as Under Secretary, to return to his teaching and book-writing at Columbia University.

P: Unscheduled, but no surprise, was the resignation last week of Adolf Augustus Berle Jr. as Assistant Secretary of State. In his memorandum to the Monopoly Investigation Committee last fortnight, Mr. Berle had made plain what was no secret: that, as one of the earliest Brain Trusters, he does not see eye to eye with some of the President's present economic advisers. The parting, however, was highly amicable. Mr. Berle cited his understanding with the President that when "certain work was got forward" he might go home. Last week's report was that this "certain work was an Anglo-American trade treaty.

P: From Paris last week came word that Germany, angered by President Roosevelt's and Secretary Hull's speeches against autarchy (TIME, Aug. 29), had declined to negotiate with U. S. Director George Rublee of the Intergovernmental Refugee Bureau. In Berlin, applications by German and Austrian Jews for admission to the U. S. still swamped the U. S. Embassy. The quota is 27,370 per annum. Jews can take only 8% of their wealth out of Germany. Until the President and Mr. Hull sounded off, they had hoped that Director Rublee and his negotiators could up this to 50%.

P: Franklin Roosevelt tried to sound hearty about the withdrawal last week, three days before the vote, of State Senator Edgar Brown from the primary race for U. S. Senator "Cotton Ed" Smith's seat from South Carolina. Mr. Roosevelt said it "clarified the issue" and he urged the voters to swing in behind Governor Olin D. Johnston, his agent to "purge" Senator Smith. Mr. Brown ruined the effect of this appeal by blasting Candidate Johnston as an insolent Huey Longster.

--*Mr. Roosevelt evidently forgot that in Maryland, and most other States, it is legally impossible at this late date for registered Republicans to vote in Democratic primaries.

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