The Sun TUESDAY, JUNE 26, 1928 Al TORRID CAMPAIGN

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 390, 26 June 1928, Page 8

The Sun TUESDAY, JUNE 26, 1928 Al TORRID CAMPAIGN

IT is not likely that the Democrats of the United States of * America will provide the next President from their national convention at Houston, Texas, but they certainly will get a lot of fun out of the assembly. The elans have gathered on the plains, and already (to quote a competent reporter) the “halfgrown, torrid little city is gibbering with excitement.” Even to politicians and their ardent followers, however, Nature is kind. Though there are hot winds from the Gulf of Mexico, though the golden Southwest is overwhelmingly dry in its sentiment and support for Prohibition, Houston is famous for its watermelons, also for its ripe figs for breakfast, and for the finest tarpon in the world. Fish, figs and watermelons: surely a feast fit for the world’s greatest democrats. And yet the man upon whom the hopes of American Democrats are pinned in exuberant faith is undeniably wet. Governor “Al” Smith, of New York, lias no time, for the Eighteenth Amendment and has the courage to say so in the vernacular of the sidewalks —a downright serviceable prose which can be as harsh and penetrating as rye whisky. Moreover, Mr. Smith is a Roman Catholic, while the greater part of the solid Democratic South is not only Protestant, but is almost fanatical in its hostility to the Catholic Church. These facts which, in a perfect world, would not b'e allowed to confuse politics at all, invest the Democratic National Convention at Houston with singular incongruities; and these, in turn, make political confusion worse confounded for a great party. Indeed, the Democrats who are gathered together among figs and watermelons are confronted with an ironic, even a cruel dilemma. It has been said quite fairly that, to the majority of the American electorate, Governor Smith’s most serious defect is his religion. This, of course, will not be challenged with open candour because of the vaunted fact that America, in theory, is a land that knows nothing of religious disabilities and would not brook them in politics. That, of course, is American eyewash, but in order “to put it across” themselves, the opposition to a powerful aspirant to the Presidency will be directed against his uncompromising hostility to national Prohibition. The mood and embarrassment of the delegates to the convention are disclosed plainly in the piquant story to-day from Houston. The scribe, who may also be a political Pharisee, explains with one side of his mouth that when Texan delegates asked a Tammanyite from New York to outline the party’s platform the man from Babylon replied: “Hell! Simth is a platform in himself”; then with the other side of a grinning mouth the chronicler tells the world that a group of ardent Prohibitionists spent two days in church at prayer. So we have all the elements for a torrid campaign in a torrid city. Though “Al” Smith cannot avoid the unloosing of a torrent of religious passion over his candidature he is the only Democrat in sight with the essential character and strong sagacity for the post of President. If the Democrats condemn the man for his faith and his principles they also will be condemning their party to political extinction. By all the laws and rules of politics the Democrats should hold the greater advantages. The Republicans are smeared with oil scandals and soiled with political corruption. But honesty is not always the best policy in politics. Since 1860, when the first Republican President was elected, only two Democrats have occupied the White House —Governor Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson. From a distance one does not foresee Governor Alfred E. Smith, the greatest Democrat of them all to-day, reclining in the Presidential chair. MELODRAMA AT SEA MR. DALE COLLINS in his novel “Ordeal,” pictured for us a thrilling episode in the voyage of a pleasure yacht on which a sinister steward took command of the entire vessel and had the whole of the passengers in thrall. From a radio message sent by the Kylsant liner Jervis Bay, the reading public was led to believe that some equally sinister incident was in progress on the high seas. The original message from the captain asked for the whereabouts of the nearest warship and mentioned that there had been trouble on board with desperate stowaways; also that mutineers threatened to fire the ship—admittedly a titbit for the imaginative to feed upon. Later there was a silence which was construed as “ominous,” and whispers of an overpowered wireless-operator, of armed Communists and sabotage. A story unconfirmed can grow to unbelievable dimensions. The mystery deepened when the captain wirelessed: “Contradict statements as to crew: these absolutely false.” There have been so many incidents, of recent date, of strained temper at sea that the public may be pardoned for having placed the worst construction on such mystifying messages. Sea-captains, it was universally agreed, do not send alarmist messages. The mystery is solved to-day. It now appears that eight stowaways flatly declined to work, set bedding ablaze, used abusive language and molested women passengers. Captain Daniel acted with the traditional coolness and efficiency of shipcommanders and the crew, it should be noted, not only assisted in the arrest of these unpleasant fellows, but roundly condemned their disgusting behaviour. The eight desperadoes have been taken ashore at Colombo where, it is to be hoped, they will receive the punishment they richly deserve—and the curtain descends on a story as rich in sensational possibilities as the richest of Drury Lane melodramas.