Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-01-11

One of the most diverting Hoover
cabinet suggestions of the moment Is
that a "Hoovercrat." !. e., Democrat
who voted the Republican ticket last
November, ought to be made member
Of the incoming administration. 1t was
Senator Carter Glass of Virginia who
coined the term "Hoovcrcrat' for Demo-
Gratis who couldn't abide AL Smith.
How many hundreds of thousandS--or
millions-of them there were nobody
knows, but their name was certainty
legion. An unreconciled spokesman OF
the Democratic organization remarked
to this observer that If Hoover is f1iled
with a genuine sense of gratitude he
will recognize" the "Hoovercrats' in
the makeup of his official household.
There aren't many precedents for the
inclusion of a member of Presidents
opposition party in the White House
family. Grover Cleveland made Walter
O. Gresham. of Indiana Secretary OF
State in 1893. Gresham was Mug
wump-a bolter from the G. 0. P. in
1884. Theodore Roosevelt selected a
gold Democrat, Luke E. Wright OF Ten
nessee to fill Taft'S uneXpired term as
Secretary of War in 1908. President
Taft year later appointed Jacob M.
Dickinson, another Tennessean. Secre-
tary of War. despite the latter's Demo-
cratic antecedents. Woodrow Wilson
named cambridge Colby Secretary of
State in 1920, although Colby was one
of the founders of the Bull Moose
party and its candidate for United
States Senator from New York in 1916.
What the pacifist crusaders couldn't
accomplish in Washington this week
the flu has done-knock out Senator
Frederick Hale, Republican, of Maine,
Senate naval affairs chairman in charge
of the cruiser bill He happens to be
stricken with the seasons most fash
ionable malady at the same moment
that his venerable mother, Mrs. Eugene
Hale, has also Succumbed to it. Another
valiant pro-cruiserite in the Senate,
Senator Robert B. Howell, Republican
Progressive, of Nebraska. is horS de
combat. For the past month he has been
at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington
fighting pestiferous attack of phle-
bits. Howell is an Annapolis graduate
class of 1885. He was lieutenant in
the Navy during the Spanish-American
War.
= = = y
Among the pre- presidential per-
| quisites at Herbert Hoover'S disposal is
! one which many of his fellow men envy
him. It's private elevator at his
Washington hotel headquarters, which
| has been set aside for his exclusive use
{ in the most literal sense of the term
When the lift" which is what they
call an elevator in London, where the
PreSident-elect SO long lived, lands him
on his hotel floor, it just sticks around
and waits for him to go down in it.
X y X X
| Perhaps It's Representative E. Hart
| Fenn's editorial training and back
| ground which make him want to blue
pencil the apportionment system under
which the House now exists and revise
it on modern lines. Fem, who has rep
resented the Hartford, Conn, district in
Congress for four terms and was re-
Gently reelected to a fifth, is one of the
old-time newspaper men in Congress.
He became a reporter in the seventies
after leaving Yale, and was later asso-
ciated with the Hartford Post and Hart
ford Courant as city editor, State editor,
special and editorial writer. The Con-
necticut Yankee, who thinks there's a
better chance now to pass a reappor-
tionment bill than at any time during
the past 10 years, is one of the veterans
of the House In point of age. He Is in
his 73d year, but pushing the reappor-
tionment measure with the vigor of a
| House youngster.
| X X X
DR.. Reinhold Niebuhr of the Union
Theological Seminary sprang couple
of neat epigrams at the pacifist BAN
| ouet in Washington on January g. One
of them was, Its better to build friend
ships than battleships." The other was,
THE offensive power of gun is guar
anteed by its manufacturers. But its
defensive value depends upon the psy-
cholcgy of the man on the trigger