Morrow v. Frelinghuysen

As the S. S. Leviathan plowed westward to the U. S. last week, it bore Dwight Whitney Morrow away from the Naval conference at London where he had been a U. S. delegate back to Republican politics in New Jersey where he was a candidate for Senatorial nomination in the June primary. Confronting him were two questions: 1) When should he resign as U. S. Ambassador to Mexico and take the Senate seat to which he had been temporarily appointed? 2) How should he stand on Prohibition? If he went immediately into the Senate, he would have six weeks to give to his primary campaign, though his managers were advising him to stick close to his new duties at Washington, leave to them the stumping. Likewise he could assist President Hoover in getting the London treaty ratified.

Prohibition was a no less troublesome problem for Mr. Morrow, because his chief adversary in the primary, Joseph Sherman Frelinghuysen, last week flopped from Dry to Wet. If Mr. Morrow should weasle on this issue out of deference to President Hoover's policy, Mr. Morrow knew that he would put himself at a distinct political disadvantage at home.

Already Mrs. Morrow was out on a chatty, homey campaign for her husband. She addressed women at the Jersey City Y. W. C. A, told of her fear of tripping in her court dress before Britain's Queen Mary, admired Her Majesty's courage for putting a pocket in her velvet brocaded gown, marveled that Funnyman Will Rogers had adopted one of her own jokes.* At Newark to a large Republican audience including Governor Morgan Foster Larsen, she detailed a trans-Atlantic telephone conversation with her husband as follows:

Operator: Mr. Morrow calling from London.

Mr. Morrow: Hello, Hello! Betty? I'm sailing Wednesday on the Leviathan. How are you?

Mrs. Morrow: Fine.

Mr. Morrow: How are the children?

Mrs. Morrow: Fine.

Mr. Morrow: How's Dwight Jr.?

Mrs. Morrow: Fine. I've been to Amherst to see him.

Mr. Morrow: And how's Anne [Lindbergh] after that terrible flight from California to New York?

Mrs. Morrow: Anne's all right too.

Mr. Morrow: How's Jersey?

Mrs. Morrow: Jersey's all right too.

Mr. Morrow: Well, goodbye, I'll see you next Thursday.

Mrs. Morrow then told the Newark audience: "If he'd spoken to me after a luncheon like this, the telephone bill would have been a great deal bigger for I would have gone into more detail as to just how all right Jersey is!"

As Mr. Morrow approached New Jersey, he heard that Mr. Frelinghuysen's change on Prohibition was the big local news of the week. For six years (1917-23) Mr. Frelinghuysen was a New Jersey Senator. He voted for the 18th Amendment, helped to override the Wilson veto of the Volstead Act. As a Dry possessed of a famed wine cellar, he declared in 1921:

"Awakening from the dull phlegmatic sleep of centuries, America determined to take up arms against a more arrogant, more cruel foe than Kaiserism and break the shackles that enslaved a nation--the tyranny of intemperance, the despotism of drink." It was still as a Dry that he was retired from the Senate in 1923 by Edward Irving Edwards, Democrat, who claimed to be (and was) "as wet as the Atlantic Ocean."

But times have changed in New Jersey as elsewhere. From latest reports the state is the wettest in the Union. Last week Candidate Frelinghuysen changed to meet the changing times with the following pronouncements:

"Ten years of experience have modified my views. While the law has destroyed the open saloon, it has developed new and grave evils . . . is difficult, if not impossible to enforce. . . . The policy of Prohibition must be modified. . . . Those who desire to use alcoholic beverages should be allowed to do so under conditions of national control."

Another factor in the Jersey race was the question of party endorsement. Here Ambassador Morrow had a marked advantage over Mr. Frelinghuysen. He had the implicit backing of President Hoover who had sent him to London as a U. S. delegate. He had the explicit backing of Calvin Coolidge, who had written testimonials to his public usefulness, had specifically stated that he (Morrow) could do more in the Senate than he (Coolidge) could. Wide had been the publicity given these Coolidge statements by the Morrow forces in New Jersey.

Candidate Frelinghuysen could point to no such encomiums on himself. White-haired, boyish, big-framed, he had a merry time as a Senator in Washington. A man of large inherited wealth vested in the insurance business, he took a big house on fashionable 16th St., entertained lavishly. In the Senate he became the close great and good friend of a Senator from Ohio named Warren Gamaliel Harding. They played golf together, motored together, shared amusements.

Than Senator Frelinghuysen, no Senator was more personally pleased when Senator Harding became President Harding. On the July day in 1921 when the Senate adopted the Knox resolution officially ending the War between the U. S. and Germany, President & Mrs. Harding, Senators Kellogg of Minnesota, Hale of Maine, Speaker of the House Gillett and others were week-end guests at the Frelinghuysen estate near Raritan, N. J. Suddenly from Washington arrived a White House messenger ("Doc" Smithers) " bearing the Knox Resolution for Presidential signature. Senator Frelinghuysen, thinking the moment might be historic, summoned his wife, his children and his guests, arranged them close about the drawing room table as President Harding sat down to end the war-to-end-war. Mrs. Harding, upstairs resting, missed the great scene.

Soon thereafter Senator Frelinghuysen had the "Peace Treaty" group memorialized in an oil painting by Artist Percy Wilbur Muncy who also executed a smaller identical picture which the Senator presented to Mrs. Harding (it now hangs in the empty Harding home at Marion, Ohio). The Senator carried his historic painting to Washington, hung it in his front hall for all guests and friends to see. Great grew the picture's social fame in Washington. When the Harding era passed, Mr. Frelinghuysen sent his trophy back to Raritan.

Here again times have changed and with them the popular feeling toward President Harding. Candidate Frelinghuysen, aware of this shift, cannot put to the fore of his campaign his close personal relationship with the late President. Once the name of Harding would have worked magic for any Jersey candidate. Now Mr. Frelinghuysen knows it would be a liability, hopes voters will forget it. "Not that I have changed in my loyalty to Warren," he said last week, "but you know how women are!"

* Mrs. Morrow had remarked that if she continued to eat so much at the Conference dinners she would return to the U. S. representing "Global Tonnage." Rogers printed it (with acknowledgment).

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