Evening Post. THURSDAY, MARCH 19, 1925. MR COOLIDGE'S FIRST DEFEAT

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 65, 19 March 1925, Page 4

Evening Post. THURSDAY, MARCH 19, 1925. MR COOLIDGE'S FIRST DEFEAT

The second round in President Coolidge's fight with the Senate has ended in the disaster which his friends expected, and he has now thrown up the sponge. Last week the Senate refused by 41 votes to 39 to confirm "his appointment of Mr. Charles B. Warren as Attorney-General. The effect of the resubniission, against which the President had been warned by his advisers, is that the nomination has now been rejected by ■16 votes to 39. The distinguished lawyer who has been subjected to this unique humiliation may be entitled to some sympathy, but the business has been so grossly mismanaged from the start that it is impossible to feel that the President has got anything more than he deserved. The right which the Constitution gives the Senate of vetoing the President's nominations to office had remained a dead letter for more than fifty years where appointments to his Cabinet were concerned-.. But in regard to all appointments previous Presidents had avoided the risk of friction and deadlock, or reduced it to a minimum, by a previous informal consultation with the leaders of the Senate. In the case, however, of this appointment, and of some others that were made at the same time, President Coolidge, in his eagerness to celebrate the increased authority which he holds since November as the direct choice of the people, dispensed with this wise precaution. Friends and confidants were as much surprised as opponents by, the important appointments announced at the beginning of the year, and opponents, especially in the Senate, were of course induced to seize so excellent an opportunity for making trouble. For this purpose the AttorneyGeneralship offered by far the best material, but the bitterness of the antagonism aroused is shown by the fact that at the outset a "blanket opposition" was threatened to all Cabinet nominations. But it would have been a gross absurdity for the same -Senate which had confirmed Mr. Kellogg'a appointment as Ambassador to Great Britain to. declare him un-: fit to be Secretary of State. The President was denied the advantage of so grave a tactical blunder on the part of his'critics, and they wisely I'concentrated their attacks on the most vulnerable of the appointments. Mr. Warren is a brilliant lawyer with a good record of public service, but his association with the Sugar Trust provid-/ ed an excellent mark for the President's opponents, and the mark was a much better one than the mere professional association to which we referred last week. During the bitter election warfare of last year Mr. M'Adoo was assailed on account of his professional connection with the oil interests, and the 250,000 dollar retainer, even after he had written it down to 150^000, was doubtless enough to lose him the Democratic nomination. The man who obtained the nomination, and whose high personal character was quite above suspicion—Mr. John W. Davissuffered in a similar way from the professional good fortune which had made him counsel for the J. P. Morgan firm. >When we remember I these examples, the nomination as chief law officer of a lawyer whose professional connection with a great trust was but a small I part of his disqualification is a performance very hard to reconcile with those ideals of circumspection, discretion,'and high principle of which Mr. Coolidge has been represented to be the embodiment.

Even as the attorney for a great sugar combine Mr. "Warren would have been far from a good choice for^ the charge of a Department which is specially concerned with the control and prosecution of trusts. To set even the attorney for a thief to catch a thief would not be good business, and we should have supposed that, even though Mr. Coolidge may not deserve more than ten per cent, of the eulogies that have been passed upon him during the last six months, he would not have regarded it as good politics.. But that Mr. Warren may even have been one of those whom the Department of which the President desired to give him the control ought to have prosecuted is proved by the following citation from-an unimpeachable authority. Says the "Springfield Republican" :—

\ears ago, when E. O. Ilavemeyer testified that the American Sugar Refining' Company, of "which Mr. HsivemevOT was the head, had no connection with tho Michigan Sugar Company, the laets were that the llavemeyer interests owned 55 per cent, of the preferred and 35 per cent, of the common stock of the Michigan Company, and that under cover Mr. Warren was acting as Mr. Havemeyer's trustee. The Michigan bugar _ Company was found guilty of unlawlul conspiracy to restrain trade in 1922, and the Federal Trade Commission has just complained that the company is again practising its bad tricks in violation of the injunction of tha United States Circuit Court. Mr. Warren did not resign as president of the Michigan Sugar Company until three weeks ago.

One might havn supposed that even the most boss-ridden of Fre-

sidents would have shrunk from the odium to which a conflict over the appointment of such a man as Attorney-General must expose him, and that he would therefore have punctiliously observed all the usual precautions and made absolutely sure of his ground before venturing upon the nomination. Yet in violation even of virtues with which opponents have credited him, President Coolidge has attempted a grossly improper appointment in a rash and risky fashion, and a humiliating defeat without a parallel for nearly sixty years is the result. The contrast with the previous appointment to the same office increases the wonder. One of the last official acts of Mr. Stone, whom Mr. Cpolidge himself had' appointed to,, the Attorney-Generalship in succession to Mr. Daugherty, was to prosecute for unlawful trade practices the American Aluminum Company in which the controlling interest is held by the Mellon family of which the Secretary of the Treasury is the chief representative. "Nemo repente fit turpissimus," says the proverb; "nobody becomes very bad. all of a sudden." Yet between these two appointments the President seems •to have fallen all the way from the best to the worst. It seems to be a clear ( case of nemesis.