Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1924-04-14
BIG STICK FLASHED
IN COOLIDGE NOTE
Observers Say Hebuke to Senate
Second "Roston Police Strike
Message.
WAITED GOOD OPENING
Action Designed to Electrify Coun-
try, Friends Say.
BY FREDERIC WILLIAM VILE.

Calvin Coolidge has written an
other Boston police strike" message.
That is the description the Presidents
friends apply to his letter to the
Senate on the Mellon inquiry. They
say it will be landmark in the Presi-
dents career. comparable only to the
document which gave him national
fame in May. 1919. The Mellon af-
fair, Coolidge's intimates say further,
is exactly the kind of an occasion he
was waiting for to show his quality.
When it arose he struck and struck
hard. 1t is the action by which the
President intended, in his own time,
TO "electrify" the country. The White
House believes that has been it's re-
suit
4 former American ambassador
observed the other day that Calvin
Coolidge's outstanding trait was his
capacity for measuring his distance"
The ex-diplomat. who has known
half dozen Presidents at close
IN the White House who knew as
well as Coolidge when to jump" and
Just how far to jump AS every
, body knows. the President has been
under terrific pressure to jump
since the oil crisis set in three months
ago. Respected and powerful re-
publican leaders, more susceptible to
panic than Coolidge, called incessant
the big stick. They clamored for
Roosevelt stuff. They demanded
presidential pyrotechnics. They said
the country in general and the re-
publican party in particular were on
the rocks. Some of them, as, this
writer can testify. went the length of
recommending cabinet house
cleaning that would have almost
decimated the Presidents official
family.
Coolidge Only Listened.
Coolidge listened eloquently. He
was worried. but he declined to be
stampeded. He soon became conscious
that Daugherty's retention of the
attorney generalship had become i'm
possible, hut the President refused to
sci of republican politicians admitted
y venting their party fears. When
tho President thought he had a de-
ienSible ground for requesting Daugh-
erry'S resignation he acted swiftly.
Coolidge has been under precisely
The same kind of fire to put the Sen
ate in it's place" He was warned
after the resignation of DENLY that
unless he himself removed certain
other cabinet officers their heads
would be demanded, one by one, by
the Senate. That admonition. too.
failed to move the President. He had
already informed the Senate, when
1T passed a resolution suggesting
Denby's decapitation, that he would
Ignore" it. Coolidge determined to
reserve any further ammunition on
that score until he had worth while
target to shoot at. When Jim"
CouzenS proposed to hire a 100000
San Francisco lawyer at his own ex-
pense to delve and pry into the Treas
ury Department the President decided
the hour had come to uulimber his
teen-inch shells. Then he blazed
away.
All this is the psychology" which
has inspired MIR. Coolidge, as his ad-
Inirers and intimate circle narrate IL.
What they make less Of but which
obviously had a good deal to do with
the Presidents blistering note 10 the
Senate, is the amazing record he has
just achieved in the republican pri-
inarieS. AS one organization stall
wart puts it, the CT. .. T. is simply
eating out of Coolidge's hand" No
republican President of memory ever
had more complete command of his
30 silently. The only spectacular
tnins IUut it is the incredibly noise
less manner in which the job has
been accomplished.
maiden message to Congress on
Hrcemner 8, a Lincoln day speech in
New York; semiWeekly conferences
with the newSpapermen at the White
House chiefly notable for their lack
OF news: a letter to the Senate, "lg
Of paugherty-and a clear majority
of the delegates who will sit in the
cleveland convention two months
before it convenes
Then, with that eloquent testi-
monlal Of his party's confidence at
his back, Calvin Coolidge produced a
stick as big, as tough and as deadly
as any club that Grover Cleveland or
Theodore Roosevelt ever welded. He
could, at length, swing it freely. The
President was no longer in doubt
where the republican electorate of
the country stood. 1t was for him,
no matter what it might think of
the republican partys record in Office
since 1921 or of the republican Congress
performances or lack of performances
since December, 1923. G. o. p. mana
gers, of course. assert it is now clear
that the country is for Coolidge. but
democratic leaders, as the big jefferson
day lovefeast in New York proved,
bold very different ideas on that sub
ject.