Sub-sub-Committee of One

One hot night in June, 1928, a tall, ministerial figure strode upon the national scene and introduced himself in prodigious basso tones as follows: "If anyone has-- any difficulty--in hearing me--in the remotest cor-rners of this hall--do not bla-ame it on Calif-o-ornia--but bla-ame it on Ka-ansas City!" It was great-voiced John L. McNab, San Francisco lawyer, placing his good friend, Herbert Clark Hoover, in nomination for the Presidency of the U. S. Then John L. McNab retired from the national scene.

Last week he reappeared. In the course of getting elected and being the President, Mr. Hoover had many times promised to consolidate the enforcement and prosecuting arms of the Federal Prohibition forces in one Department of the Government. Now, six months after Inauguration, nothing has been done. Congress was too busy last spring. The nine-man Law Enforcement Commission under Lawyer George Woodward Wickersham has been too busy fact-finding. And the 'President had to admit that there is no one now in his administration either free or capable enough to effect the transfer of the Treasury's enforcement bureau to the Department of Justice. So he called again for great-voiced John McNab.

Mr. McNab will be a sub-sub-committee of one, appended to a sub-committee of the Wickersham Commission. Besides reorganizing executive forces, he will study the notorious delays of Federal Court procedure. When his findings are ready perhaps his great voice will intone: "If anyone has any difficulty in hearing me in the remotest corners of this nation, do not blame it on Calif-o-ornia, but bla-ame it on Washington!"

"Sparrowkilling." Unto Chairman Wickersham and his Commission colleague,

Judge William Squire Kenyon, appeared in Washington Brig. -Gen. Smedley Darlington ("Gimlet Eye") Butler, famed marine, recent drier-up Quantico, Va. (but not of Philadelphia, where his strongarm methods were disapproved). For two hours he told them what he thought of Prohibition: "The grossest piece of class legislation in the country's history . . . like using 16-in. guns to kill sparrows."