National Affairs: The Brown Derby

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Mrs. Katie Dunn Smith, honestly, defenselessly her Oliver Street self, will undoubtedly alienate many women's votes but unless the campaigning is even more uncivil than it promises to be, that issue will be tacitly lumped with the undeniable private properties of the Candidate himself—spittoons, chewed cigars, damp shirtsleeves, profanity. These are properties of masses, perhaps, but not of the mass advertisements, so potent in the U. S.

Finally there is Tammany. Traditions live long and are easily magnified into a country of few traditions. Corruption is already on the fire and the public nose is perhaps dull enough to confuse an old stench with a new one. If the political fathers who sired him should come as ghosts to cause his ruin, that would be a great irony upon them and "Al" Smith. If they should stay buried and let ancestor-cursing go the way of ancestor-worship, that would be more interesting, whether Smith wins or loses.