Warm Lands, Warm Words

Warm Lands, Warm Words

Heading south, last fortnight, President-Reject Alfred Emanuel Smith paused at Savannah, Ga., to slide down a brass pole and thereby amuse southern firemen. Last week at Sarasota, Fla., winter headquarters of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus, he fed loaves of bread to the elephants and said: "Mr. Ringling--John--you have proven yourself a public benefactor of the highest possible type." At Miami Beach, behind a speeding motorcycle escort he passed within sight of Belle Isle where President-Elect Hoover was sunning, but did not immediately visit. He played golf, went swimming, established himself in two suites at the Miami-Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables. Meanwhile, Republican newspaper editors were flaying with indignation a statement made by Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt that the reaction to Mr. Smith's defeat "can only be compared to that which followed the theft of the Presidency in the case of Mr. Tilden ."

"Bigotry," said Governor Roosevelt, "ignorance of Democratic principles; the spread by unspeakable and un-American methods of the most atrocious falsehoods; unfair and improper pressure brought to bear upon workers in specially favored Republican industries, false claims for the prosperity of the country and kindred propaganda, cheated, so my correspondents feel, our party out of the Presidency." The arch-Republican New York Herald Tribune replied: "If Governor Roosevelt and his correspondents have any evidence of illegal attempts to influence the 1928 election, that evidence ought to go to the legislature or the courts. Even then the reference to the Tilden case would remain mysterious. Tilden drew no indictment against the voters and made no complaint about their mental operations. He merely contended that he had received more electoral votes than Hayes did."