Nation: G. O. P.

Oh yes, said Senator Fess, who is to keynote at the Republican convention, President Coolidge would accept the nomination if, to escape deadlock, the convention should draft him.

Oh yes, said Vermont, the Vermont delegates were not merely uninstructed but reserved for President Coolidge.

Oh yes, said Connecticut, the Connecticut delegation would go uninstructed.

In Chicago, the Coolidge movement was permitted to continue at the Mayor William Hale Thompson headquarters. In Manhattan, the same movement was kept alive in a suaver fashion by G. O. Politicians Charles Dewey Hilles and George Morris.

And then, the primary in Massachusetts approached. The same thing that was happening elsewhere began to happen in Massachusetts. This time President Coolidge wrote a note to Chairman Francis Prescott of the Republican State Committee and to him said: "Report has come to me that some persons in Massachusetts are proposing to write in my name as a candidate for President at the primaries on April 24. Such action would be most embarrassing to me and, while appreciating the compliment that is intended, I request that it not be done.

"My name is being used in other States in a way that is contrary to my wishes. I have heard that in New York it has gone so far as to be claimed such use is with my tacit consent.

"In my own State to give any countenance to such a movement would tend to compromise me and lend color to the misrepresentations that apparently are being made in other States.

"I am, therefore, sending you this public declaration of my position and requesting that such attempts be discontinued."

Mr. Prescott and many another read the note, read it again.

It referred specifically only to New York. Would that mean an answer to the report that Wall Street is definitely assured of the ultimate Coolidge acceptance in case of a locked convention (TIME,

April 16)? No, because like all other Coolidge statements on the subject it omitted the final renunciation, the I-will-not-accept. Then it must mean simply a quietus to the Messrs. Hilles and Morris of New York.

His Massachusetts note, said most observers, was simply a repetition of his original choice, coupled with a patient request to the G. O. P. not to come running to him before it had gotten hurt. His silence beyond this seemed to assure the party—and no statesman's silence was ever more eloquent—that if the party was really about to get hurt, he would be there, of course.

Apropos the resurgence of Coolidge-Anyway, on the very morning that President Coolidge's note to Massachusetts was released, the New York World, whose interest in Democrat Smith might be expected to make it help the nomination of the least formidable Republican candidate, published one of its bold uncompromising editorials, entitled "The Candidacy of Mr. Hoover." The World said:

". . . The Republican leaders know that as against Gov. Smith their local tickets in the cities all the way from Boston to Chicago are going to be dangerously threatened. Naturally they are looking for a Presidential candidate who looks as if he might avert this danger.