Animadversion

It was more than a month ago (TIME, Dec. 8), that the Republican Senatorial Caucus read out of its ranks four insurgents who had opposed the Republican National ticket in the campaign preceding the November election. The four--Senators LaFollette, Brookhart, Ladd, Frazier--accepted their exclusion with comparative silence. It was not a great deprivation. Another Senator, Mr. Borah, makes a practice of absenting himself from caucus meetings, although his action is purely voluntary.

Since the ousting, however, the four have also been excluded by the President 1) from patronage; 2) from invitations to White House breakfasts.

Last week, there came retorts from two of the expelled men--Messrs. Frazier and Ladd. Mr. Frazier declared:

"It did hurt my feelings when I was barred from the broad breakfast table at the White House, where we were served buckwheat from Ohio, with maple syrup from Vermont and sausages from Maryland or the Chicago stockyards, I don't know which."

Mr. Ladd, however, made a frontal attack:

"If the election of a Republican as President, with a reliable working majority in Congress, means nothing more than an extension for four years of an unlimited license to plunder the American people, then I cannot be a Republican.

"If the transfer of billions of capital values from the farms and producers of America, to the swollen fortunes of monopoly, within three weeks' time, is a triumph of the Republican Party, then indeed, is the party of Lincoln doomed.

"The Government by the people that was Lincoln's ideal," continued the North Dakota Senator, "was transformed into a Government of the masses by the classes forming less than five percent of all the people who have, under Republican legislation and administration acquired possession of practically three-fourths of all the wealth accumulated by the labor of five generations of Americans. . . .

"The entire motive behind the 'cabal,' now the caucus, has been the frustration of every social interest--of truth itself, whenever it threatens to interfere with special interest. It has the motive of the Camorra, the Black Hand, the Fascismo, to prevent the expression of ideas that question the infallibility of special judgments, regardless of their conformity with the facts of life or the laws and principles embedded in the nature of things, social, economic and industrial."