The Indianapolis times., 1928-08-27
Henry and Bill
Team Tits
With Al
BY N. D. COCHRAN

TT isn't safe to judge any man
by looking at him from the
angle. There's William Allen White,
for illustration. White was a marked
success as a journalist. He started
off by writing an editorial in his
Kansas paper entitled Whats the
Matter with KanSas?" Almost
overnight he won fame. Then for
years he kept adding to it by
mighty clever writing.
1t appears now that White wasn't
so big as he appeared. If he had
been he wouldn't have permitted
professional politicians to tempt
him to make a monkey of himself.
And that's just what he has done.
Anybody who knows anything
about the political game as the
professionals play it knew well
enough that when White let Off
that blast against AL Smith on the
eve of his departure for Europe he
wasn't acting on his own initiative.
White isn't built that way He let
himself be used.
COMEBODY in the Republican
~ camp figured that the smart
way to fight Smith was to tie him
up to Tammany and then harp on
Tweed, Croker and Murphy, hoping
to visit the sins of these Tammany
bosses on Smith. There wasn't any,
thing in Smiths record as a four
term Governor OF New York to
criticise. So it wsc decided, evi-
IDENTIFY, that the smart game to play
was to hark back to the earlier
and rottener record of Tammany
and smear that all over Smith.
So the record of Smith as a young
legislator was handed to White and
the poor nut was fool enough to
spill it. After it had been given
out for publication, some friend of
White called attention to his mis-
takes and just before he took the
boat poor Bill skinned back his
accusations in part, particularly as
to Smiths legislative friendship for
gambling and prostitution. That
was White himself, who wanted to
play fair
But that didn't suit the partisan
strategists, Whites punch had
been pulled. Then they got at poor
little Henry Allen, formerly Gov
ernor of Kansas and a pal of Bill
White. Allen hasn't much brains
and never started with much.
He made a spectacle Of himself
while Governor Of Kansas by try
ing to solve the labor problem by
making, through legislation, indus
trial slaves Of workingmen. He
wound up his gubernatorial career
in one wild splash of mud and
incompetency,
GIVING more than due stress to
NJ the popularity Of the firm Of
White and Allen, the G. o. P. ma
tionaI strategists made Allen direc-
tor of publicity. And Henry pro-
ceeded as fast as he could to spill
the beans all over the place.
Evidently he cabled Bill White
that his retraction of his charges
against Smith didn't suit the pur-
poses Of the phoney strategists Of
the G. o. P. national committee,
so Bill cabled right back a retrac-
tion of his retraction and gave
Smith opportunity to make monkeys
Of both White and Allen.
Then the weak and incompetent
director of publicity made matters
worse by giving out a statement
tina it was all a mistake for his
publicity committee to give out
Whites cable of retraction because
it was private cable and not in
tended for publicity purposes.
Then Smith cut loose and showed
up both White and Allen for what
they were all the time, not only
poor politicians, but nothing to brag
about as journalists.
If the GO. P. committee has the
brains of microbe it will now send
Henry Allen to Europe on a vaca-
ton and tell him and White to stay
there until after the votes are
counted in Noymber