LOGIC OF EVENTS

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 141, 16 June 1932, Page 11

LOGIC OF EVENTS

TOWARDS NEW PLANK

REPUBLICAN MOVE

. Events are sweeping the Eepublican party rapidly towards some sort of' a modified prohibition declaration at their Chicago convention, said a Canadian Press message to the "Montreal Star" just before the departure of the last mail for New Zealand. Ono of the most .significant signs was the victory o£ 'wet" candidates in the .primaries in Ohio, cradle, of the Anti-Saloon League. On top of that, Senator David A. Reed, Pennsylvania, one of President Hoover's -close advisers and probable chairman of the platform committee in a statement at Washington advocated a federal liquor control pl-n. President Hoover still remains silent on this increasingly important issue, put the Republican leaders are proceeding on the theory that he will bow to the will of the majority and run on whatover prphibition plank is adopted at Chicago. , .

Prohibition has become the major controversy within the Republican Party. Developments have tumbled over one another to foreshadow a formidable attempt by responsible party leaders, including Cabinet officers, to write a "semi-wet" plank in the Chicago Eepubhean platform. All proposals yet advanced would provide a referendum by a devious route. They represent a compromise with those who would take an out-and-out "wet 1? stand for modification or repeal, and the ardent drys who would have President Hoover run on a bonedry platform.

But any' shift—and it is a very manifest one—is regarded as very significant by the anti-prohibitionists who have been more eneo_uraged just recently than at any time since tho prohibition law was enacted. , - ■

The certainty .that Democrats will nominate an anti-prohibitionist, whether their platform is damp or not, has been responsible for the recent decided change in view among Kepublican leaders. They yet have not won over President Hoover to any public, or even semi-public commitment, " bul their strategy lies in drafting a plank that will attract "wet*'• support, with the belief that President Hoover will accept it. .

Tho referendum plan' being urged upon Hoover by members of his Cabinet .would provide for a special popular election on prohibition if Congress by •majority vo t; e orders1 such an election. Delegates would be chosen at these elections for a national convention which would study all proposals to change tho law. Recommendations of this convention then would go before Congress, where a two-thirds vote would still be necessary for repeal of-the Eighteenth Amendment, with subsequent ratification by three-fourths of the States.

The candidacy of Governor Franklin D. Eoosevelt took another breath, despite the California setback,'with the addition of Arizona, Wyoming, "West Virginia, and Louisiana, only to meet a lively last-minute' boom., on behalf o- another New Yorker, Owen D. Young. Roosevelt's delegate total now is 413, far away in front of any other candidate.

Young, always regarded as a possible "dark horse" and with considerable reserve strength ■ among. Eastern delegations, was pushed to the fore by his declarations for Federal unemployment relief, and for .the equalisation' fee principle of farm relief so,loved by the West and so unpopular in the East. : --. :

His pronouncements, considered quite liberal for .one. of his predilections, dove-tailed with subsequent announcement of a similar programme by Senator Joseph T. Kobinson, Democratic -floor leader and 1924 running-mate of Alfred E. Smith. ........

Alfred E. Smith and Chairman John J. Easkob, of the Democratic National Committee, are seen in the background of the Young .boom. Young's programme is similar, to that advanced during the last few-months by Smith. '