Carping

Last week the New York World, no friend of the Republican Administration, printed the following quotation from the speech delivered by President Coolidge last fornight at Hammond, Ind. (TIME, June 20).

"The making of parks is not a new idea in the world. We can trace it back to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the practice of the early Egyptians from whence it leads down through all the Old World history."

With this quotation, the World printed the following extract from the New International Encyclopedia (p. 723, Vol. XIII):

"The practice of reserving public parks for the use and delight of the people seems to be as old as civilization. The Egyptians had parks from the earliest times."

Sophisticated, the World did not assume that the President plagiarized the encyclopedia, left the responsibility in the hands of whoever supplied the data for the speech.