Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1928-09-23
"Whispering Campaign" Is
Screaming and Roaring

more than Hoover can possibly be ex-
pected to control Protestant hysteria in
the United States.
X 4 X
What is then chiefly noted here is
that the religious question proceeds to
merge into the question OF prohibition
and into questions of race with an auto
matte momentum which again no indi-
| vidual can prevent.
Smith is not in the slightest degree
responsible for the fact that the pro-
portion of prohibitioniStS Is much
smaller among Catholics than among
Protestants. Catholics are not given to
the inventing of new moralities. There
is nothing about prohibition in the
ancient tenetS of the original Christian
Church. There is plenty about divorce,
and against it. If divorce were an
issue in this campaign the Catholics
would be virtually unanimously on what
would be called the moral" side.
Prohibition being the issue, they are
mostly on what is regarded by the gen.
eral run of extreme Professionals as the
immoral side. This further confirms
the extreme Professionals, in their multi
tudinouS publications, in regarding
Catholicism as wicked" thing, and it
|
| Catholics are going to vote for Smith
because he is Catholic"
The truth is that large numbers of
Catholics are going to vote for Smith,
not at all because he is a Catholic but
becGuse he is wet" and that when
Catholics are dry" they tend frequently
to b2 against Smith. There is the case,
for instance, of Father p. j. O'Cal-
laghan, president of the Catholic Total
Abstinence Union of America, which.
along with the Catholic Clergy Prohi-
bltlon League, constitutes the Catholic
contribution to the long list of anti
liquor organizations in the Anti-Saloon
League Year Book. Father O'Callaghan,
IN harmony with many other Catholic
"drys." is for Hoover
Again, our foreign born" voters are
largely wet" and they will in great
masses vote for Smith for that reason,
They are thereupon charged with vot-
ing Tor him because they are foreign
born" just as wet" Catholics are
charged with voting for him because
they are Catholics.
This sort of thing results in SEEM
ing to set off our native Protestant
stock" against our foreign born Cath
Ole stock" Prohibition has accen-
tuated the religious question and has
also expanded it into a race question.
x X X
l The last touch to this dismal devel-
opment is furnished by the political
situation of the negroes. Thinking
themselves Sighted and even aban-
doned by the Republican party, they
have turned by scores of thousands
land under notable leadership toward
the Democratic party. Just this week
IN Washington the local president of
the National Association for the Adj
vancement of Colored People has
declared:
abandoned by the Republicans
Wnom we have loved and trusted and
Kept IN power, where they have made
tnelr billions, what other course is
open to thinking black men than to
go TO our former foe, the Democrats.
and sue for peace?"
throughout the North. and even in
some parts OF the South, the Demo-
cTats are actively granting that peace. "
IL means simply that for the first time
SINCE the war between the States both
partles are eagerly soliciting the COL
ored vote in all doubtful" States and
cues; and the negro race question.
IKE the alien race question, is thrown
INTO the fire OF contending hatreds,
rms campaign, as seen from the
Feoerai city, is not so much a contest
III polltlcS as an unsealing of great
Underground rivers of social conflict
Whlch from now forward must flow on
the surface till they are evaporated bv
the sunshine Of frank scrutiny and of
common American patriotism.
copyright, 1927