Scandal?

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For six months the Senate Committee on Public Lands has been delving in and out of the question of the leasing of Government oil reserves, especially that reserve in Wyoming generally known as Teapot Dome. Under the regime of Albert B. Fall as Secretary of the Interior that reserve was leased to the Sinclair Oil interests. There was much conflicting technical testimony about the wisdom of that lease—and some smoke was raised. It was not until last week, when an apparent contradiction in Mr. Fall's declarations was discovered, that the Senate burst into the full flame of oratory.

The point was raised in previous hearings that after being apparently none too prosperous, Mr. Fall had suddenly reached apparent affluence. Mr. Fall before the investigating committee testified that this "affluence" was the result of a loan of $100,000 from Edward B. McLean, Washington newspaper publisher, that he had taken this money to Texas and bought lands with it. Through A. Mitchell Palmer, his attorney, he let it be known that he had lent such a sum to Mr. Fall on a personal note.

Thereafter Senator Walsh of Montana went to Palm Beach and examined Mr. McLean. McLean then admitted that he had given Fall some checks but that in two or three days they were returned uncashed, Fall saying that he had obtained the necessary money elsewhere. Senator Walsh then wrote Mr. Fall about McLean's testimony, and Fall answered: "McLean told the truth." Both Fall and McLean were last week ill in the South.

On these facts Senator Caraway of Arkansas (Democrat) rose in the Senate and delivered a Philippic:

"I ask this question: If there was nothing wrong with the source of the Fall money, why did he not tell the source in the first place? Why did he tell a willful and deliberate falsehood to the committee when he said:

" 'I got this money from the Hon. Edward B. McLean of Washington, and I took it with me in cash.' He did not do that. Why did he say that ?

"For 150 years America has held up as a man beyond whose place of degradation no one could travel, a man known as Benedict Arnold. He was a traitor because he undertook to sell an American fortification to Britain.

"Much more infamous it is to have sold every gallon of our reserve oil than it was for Benedict Arnold who wanted to sell only a rocky fortress on the Hudson River.

"Incidentally, I observe that whenever a man does not want to go before a Grand Jury or other inquisitorial body his health fails. I have known more robust constitutions to be ruined by criminal courts than by all other plagues put together."

From New Orleans Mr. Fall replied by a press interview:

"Senator Caraway of Arkansas, Democrat, who is leading in these senseless attacks, has shot his shaft against me repeatedly in the past, before the oil matter came up. I do not care to dignify it by discussion. But in general terms I will say that the charges by Caraway or anybody else that I received compensation from outside interests for anything I did in my official capacity in serving the country, or any innuendo that, directly or indirectly, I got money or other consideration, or expected to do so, is absolutely false.

The Democratic National Commitee countered by exhuming the fame "Ballinger Case"*

"From the minute Senator Albert Bacon Fall took office as Secretary of the Interior and Edwin Denby was made