AMERICAN POLITICS

Evening Star, Issue 19776, 28 January 1928, Page 6

AMERICAN POLITICS

THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN TRYING TO DISCREDIT MR HOOVER Press Association- -By Telegraph—Copyright NEW YORK, January 26. Probably one 1 of the most unusual and important aspects of the Presidential campaign has just been disclosed in a. San Francisco despatch to the ‘New.York Sun,’ stating that Mr Hoover and Mrs Hoover were married at Monterey, California, by a Roman Catholic priest, after receiving special permission from the bishop of that diocese. This disclosure, in view of the intense feeling over Governor A.l Smith’s Catholicism and the fact that Mr Hoover has become a most prominent aspirant for Republican honors, promises to make both the Republican and the Democratic conventions next June centres of the most intense dispute. Moreover, for several months now there has been an underground current within. Republican circles themselves against Mr Hoover’s candidacy. Governor Smith and Mr Hoover are unquestionably the strongest figures in both parties, hut for that_ very reason they may well be eliminated at the conventions, because it is an inherent tendency for American partisan politics always to choose a neutral figure for Presidential nomination. But, above all, it is now a, dominant and possibly a. very disturbing factor in the ensuing campaign. Mr Hoover is a Quaker and Mrs Hoover was an Episcopalian, hut is now of the same faith as her bushand. One report states that the priest was a close personal friend of Mrs Hoover, while another has it thatMr Hoover was on the point of sailing for China, and the only official in the neighborhood capable of performing the marriage, ceremony was a Roman Catholic priest, who officiated in a. manner similar to that of a justice of the peace.