Education: Electoral Expert

The morning plane from Miami settled down to a landing in Havana and out stepped a bespectacled, rumple-haired man who once was called "the best known North American in Central and South America." It was not because he was president of Princeton University that the Cuban Government had sent a hurry call for Harold Willis Dodds. The Government had on its hands an electoral tangle which had caused Cuba's Presidential election to be postponed three times in a year.

Before he became Princeton's president. Dr. Dodds was forever making trips to Latin-American capitals. His first big job was straightening out Nicaragua's messy election system in 1922. In 1925 he was technical adviser to General Pershing on the Tacna-Arica Plebiscitary Commission. The Princeton Survey of the New Jersey State government was conducted by Dr. Dodds with 20 assistants in 1932.

Clutching a hastily packed suitcase, Expert Dodds hurried last week to the palace of Cuba's Provisional President Carlos Mendieta. Since 1928 Cuba has had six Presidents but no elections. Up to last month President Mendieta's long promised elections were scheduled for Dec. 15. No. 1 candidate was Miguel Mariano Gomez, officially supported by two parties including Mendieta's Nationalists. No. 2 candidate was goateed, onetime President Mario Garcia Menocal. A victory of the Gomez coalition over the Menocalistas depended, however, on its receiving the votes of a rebellious wing of the Liberal Party, whose official nominee is the No. 3 candidate.

Last month the Supreme Electoral Tribunal upset the coalition cart by ruling that electors must vote for the nominee of their party. Thus the rebellious Liberal wing could not join the Gomez coalition and foxy old Menocal would probably win. With the coalition threatening to withdraw from the election if the ruling stood, and the Menocalistas threatening to withdraw if the ruling was disregarded, President Mendieta again postponed the election, called in Dr. Dodds.

It took Expert Dodds four days to work out a plan. He was safely back in Miami before it was made public. In effect the Dodds Plan reversed the Electoral Tribunal by providing that party electors in each province should decide among themselves whether to support the party nominee or another. The Government, happy to be back where it was a month ago, accepted the plan, set Jan. 10 as Election Day. To the Menocalistas, who cared not a whit for the abstract justice of the Dodds Plan, it looked as if the Government was merely calling in another U. S. adviser to justify its disregard of the law. Promptly they withdrew from the election.