509 to 157

Senate warriors last week stacked their arms and gave themselves over to quarreling as to who was to blame because the Tariff Battle did not move along more briskly. Republican Generalissimo Reed Smoot cried to his cohorts that it was "preposterous" to hold them at fault and that Freebooter Borah was "more than unfair" in so charging. Brigadier Borah thereupon crossed the lines to remark: "Senator Smoot is overworked and perhaps feels irritable. . . . No man in his calmer moments could have supposed that such a bill could have passed without a prolonged fight."

Generalissimo Smoot, methodical old warrior that he is, commenced to count shots (pages in the Congressional Record) fired so far. Triumphantly he announced that 666 rounds had been discharged (including canister, grape, minie-balls, buckshot and BB) from both sides of the lines. Of those, 509 had come from the Democratic and Insurgent opposition, whereas the valiant Republican troops, husbanding their ammunition, had fired only 157.

Brigadier Hiram Johnson, fidgeting for the fray, demanded longer battle hours, suggested night fighting for a change. Suddenly, as if to dispel any notion that they were employing the famed desultory tactics of Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus ("Cunctator"), the Insurgents with almost the entire Democratic army, executed a quick flank movement. With Freebooter Norris taking command and uttering blood-thirsty cries, the opposition Senator-soldiers marched toward the farm lowlands. In a fierce three-hour assault they pushed headlong into this neutral territory, laying behind them a long pipe line stretching from the U. S. Treasury marked Export Debenture.

The pipe was secondhand. The same troops, in fighting over the same terrain last spring in the War of Farm Relief, had laid it down as a means of pumping U. S. cash to the farmers. When they were driven out of the lowlands, they carried their Export Debenture pipe along with them in retreat. Now it was down again, by a larger vote than ever before (42 to 34).

Generalissimo Smoot permitted his regular Republican troops to make a strategic retreat under this assault, rather than waste time attempting to hold the lowlands line. His purpose was to straighten out this bad bulge in his tariff line later with the aid of armored tanks and Republican robots from the House.