SECTARIANISM.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 22, 27 January 1928, Page 7

SECTARIANISM.

IN US. PRESIDENCY.

Candidate's Marriage Secret

Divulged.

STARTLING DISCLOSURE.

(By Cable.—Press Association.—Copyright.)

(Received 1.30 p.m.)

NEW YORK, January 26.

Probably one of the most unusual and important aspects of the Presidential campaign is just disclosed in a San Francisco dispatch to the "New York Sun."

This states that Mr. and Mrs. H. C. Hoover were married at Monterey, California, by a Catholic priest after receiving special permission from the bishop of that diocese.

This disclosure, in view of the intense feeling raised by the Republicans owing to the fact that Mr. Al. Smith, leading Democrat candidate, was a Roman Catholic, and the fact that Mr. Hoover has become the most prominent aspirant for Republican Presidential honours, promises to make both the Republican and Democratic Conventions next June the centres of the most heated dispute.

Moreover, for several months now, there has been an underground current within the Republican circles themselves against Mr. Hoover's candidacy. Messrs. Smith and Hoover are unquestionably the strongest figures in both parties, but by that very reason they may well be eliminated at the Conventions because it is an inherent tendency in American partisan politics to always choose a neutral figure for Presidential honours.

Above all, it is now very clear that the religious issue will be a dominant and possibly a very disturbing factor in the ensuing campaign.