Word Wanglers

The "most expensive cry" ever enjoyed by Mrs. Mabel Elizabeth Walker Willebrandt, deep-eyed, retired Assistant U. S. Attorney-General, was when she telephoned from Washington to California for moral support after she had been lampooned last summer as a religious incendiary (TIME, Aug. 12). So she revealed in the first of a now-it-can-be-told series of articles for a newspaper syndicate headed by the New York Times. In the same article she discussed, revealed something about the "much-heralded" speech to Methodists, at Springfield, Ohio, which brought the lampooning upon her.

Crescendo of that Hooverizing speech was: "There are 2,000 pastors here. You have in your churches more than 600,000 members of the Methodist Church in Ohio alone. That is enough to swing the election. The 600,000 have friends in other States. Write to them. Every day and every ounce of your energy are needed to rouse the friends of Prohibition. . . ."

The new Willebrandt revelation:

"The simple truth is that over my own protest I was urged by the Republican National Committee in two telegrams to make that speech. The week before it was delivered every word of it was carefully edited by James Francis Burke, a Catholic, and counsel of the committee. He did this at committee headquarters. . . .

". . . When criticized I had to choose whether to disclose the telegrams and actually embarrass the Committee or keep still and take punishment. Good sportsmanship dictated the latter course. . . ."

For 33 years Mr. Burke has been associated with the G. O. P. Committee. The post of General Counsel was especially created for him. Throughout the campaign he sat just outside Candidate Hoover's door. President Hoover took him along to the White House where he serves as the President's chief political adviser.

Last week Mr. Burke left his White House desk a while to ponder a reply to Mrs. Willebrandt's statement. She had transferred the odium of her Springfield address direct to him and his Republican National client. Careful not to contradict Mrs. Willebrandt in any major particular, Mr. Burke responded:

"Ordinarily I pay no attention to campaign canards. . . . In the interest of truth I am compelled to deny that I ever urged or suggested that Mrs. Willebrandt discuss any man's religion . . . nor did I ever insert any religious comment in any speech she ever made, nor was any manuscript of hers containing any attack on any man's religion or raising the religious issue ever submitted to or scrutinized by me, nor did any manuscript of her Springfield speech which came to headquarters contain any such expression as 'Go back to your pulpits and preach this doctrine' or anything akin to it."

As all good journalists and most smart politicians know, "Go back to your pulpits and preach this doctrine" was a paraphrase of Mrs. Willebrandt's theme, not a report of her actual words, published within a few hours of the Springfield speech and often requoted afterwards by Democrats, Catholics and Wet Republicans with or without knowledge of its verbatim inaccuracy but with resentment of the effect it accurately expressed. In denying that he sponsored the phrase, smart Politician Burke was thus weaseling and word-wangling with great vigor. What he did not and apparently could not deny was Mrs. Willebrandt's prime statement: that she harangued the Springfield Methodists under protest, under orders.