National Affairs: Mercy! Mercy!

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With his friend Will Rogers, Father Flanagan called on the Governor, who had previously declared that "the chief executive would be derelict in his duty if he undertook to transfer his responsibilities to an agency in another State." But the additional pressure of Washington's united Press, Pulpit and American Legion made Father Flanagan hopeful of success.

Bomber. Accustomed to excoriation by his own city's newspapers, Mayor James John ("Jimmy") Walker of New York was disagreeably surprised to find himself peppered with hot linotype metal from the Press of California and particularly of San Francisco, where he arrived last week to agitate "as a private citizen" for a pardon for Thomas Mooney. As he got off the Oakland ferry, Mayor Angelo Rossi and Mayor Walker's old friend Governor James ("Sunny Jim") Rolph Jr. seemed glad enough to see him. A band perched in a truck played "The Sidewalks of New York" and the Governor's jaunty theme song "Happy Days Are Here Again."Noisy crowds shouted cheerful impertinences. Mrs. Mary Mooney, 80, mother of Prisoner Mooney who was convicted along with Warren K. Billings of bombing San Francisco's 1916 Preparedness Day Parade, clasped the dapper Mayor in her arms. He visited her son at San Quentin, inspected the scene of the bombing, developed a nasty cold.

From all this much-traveled Mayor Walker might have gathered that his errand of mercy was looked upon with favor in California. Such, however, was far from the case. "Impropriety . . ." grumbled the Fresno Bee. "Easier than attempting to clean up the Augean stench of Gotham!" sneered the Stockton Record. "PUBLICITY SPECTACLE . . . PROPAGANDA HIPPODROME . . . BALLYHOO!" screamed the San Francisco Chronicle.

Settled with his party in a suite at the fashionable St. Francis Hotel, with two Rolls-Royces at his beck and adjoining rooms for the newspaper boys, Mayor Walker pondered the uncomfortable predicament in which he had placed his friend Sunny Jim. If the Governor should pardon Thomas Mooney after 15 years in jail, people could say that it took the interference of a gaudy outsider to bring justice into the golden State. If he decided not to pardon him, the same people could say that the Governor had been frightened out of seeing justice done because of the bitter feeling his New York crony had stirred up. Bolstered with counsel, including John McNab, "The Man Who Nominated Hoover in 1928," California's chief executive awaited with little satisfaction the hour of the hearing.

Patriot. Fortnight ago in Philadelphia, one Orlandi Spartaco, 26, jumped on the running board of a car carrying Dino Grandi, Fascist Italy's visiting Foreign Minister. Jabbering, "Down with Grandi! Down with Fascism!" Anti-Fascist Spartaco was dragged off to jail, sentenced to two riot." To years Governor imprisonment Gifford for Pinchot "inciting to last week sleek, smiling, politic Minister Grandi wired : "I have not the slightest intention of interfering with the administration of justice in this country, but I feel that I could make a personal appeal to you to take into consideration the possibility of an act of clemency. Please consider this appeal not as coming from me in the capacity of Minister of Foreign Affairs but as a friend and a guest of the American nation."