Little Egypt's Dry

The southern nib of Illinois, rimmed by the Nile-broad rivers Ohio and Mississippi, and containing places called Cairo, Thebes. Joppa, has long been known as Little Egypt. Hard-working Little Egyptian farmers, yearning for oldtime cooling beer and warming whiskey, in 1926 voted wet in a statewide liquor referendum. But Congressman Edward Everett Denison, for 14 years Little Egypt's Representative, is an exemplary legislative dry. He voted for the 18th Amendment, the Volstead Act. the Jones Law.

Last week Little Egypt's wet-voting farmers were amused, Little Egypt's righteous Drys were shocked when a District of Columbia Grand Jury indicted Congressman Denison for the possession of 18 bottles of Scotch whiskey, six bottles of gin, six bottles of "assorted intoxicants." Last January Federal Prohibition officers came upon a dripping, odorous suitcase in Washington's Union Station baggage room. It was addressed to Room No. 411, House Office Building. In it they found a dozen bottles of liquor, many broken. Investigating Room No. 411. that of Representative Denison, they pried open a trunk addressed to "Layne, care of E. E. Denison," found 24 neatly packed bottles of whiskey and gin. Not until three weeks ago, after Senator Brookhart had flayed "Wall Street booze parties," was U. S. District Attorney Leo Aloysius Rover apprized of the liquor seizure in Room No. 411. Representative Denison hastily set out from his Marion, 111., home for Washington to fight his indictment. He stated that he had told the trunk-breaking agents that the baggage was not his. He said they were "entirely satisfied" with his explanation, had told him there would be "nothing more to it." He was "completely surprised." The procrastinating Prohibition officers told a different story. They said that when they visited Room No. 411 Congressman Denison told them there were dishes in the trunk, promised that he would get the trunk key. When they returned that evening the name B. B. Dawson had mysteriously appeared on the trunk top. The Congressman's key would not fit. When they jimmied open the lock and disclosed the liquor, Representative Denison pleaded with them to save him from political ruination by keeping the incident secret. The agents did not explain their delay of more than nine months in reporting the seizure.

The Denison case will be tried not in a Washington police court, the usual place for a "possession case," but in the District of Columbia Supreme Court. Representative Denison hinted at two of his defensive parries: 1) that offices in the House Office Building can only be searched on a warrant authorized by the President of the U. S. and served by the Sergeant-at-Arms of the House of Representatives; 2) that the liquor-laden luggage belonged to Charles Lane, the Congressman's nephew, who had accompanied his uncle on a Central American junket.

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