Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-03-27

President Hoover must be filled with
rather mixed emotions over the Anglo
Canadian-American incident which mas
arisen in connection with the sinking
of the I'm Alone off the Louisiana
coast On the very day-March 40
that the Coast Guard began its two
day battle" with the British rum
runner, Mr.. Hoover was issuing his now
celebrated dry manifesto at the White
House. 1t was to the effect that ne
projects mo drastic or dramatic Drive
to enforce prohibition. By the relent-
less irony of fate, about the most drastic
and dramatic drive ever launched by
our high seas prohibition enforcement
patrol was at that very moment IN
progress. We're not going to war with
John Bull over the I'm Alone affair
even though Representative La Guardia,
wet. of New York, tremendously l1KenS
it to the situation which caused the
war of 1912. But it's dollars to dough-
nuts that the episode will cause all
concerned henceforWard to watch their
step-British rum runners and Amer
can Coast Guardsmen alike. with the
freedom of the seas the outstanding
bone of Anglo American contention,
two governments have the ilVellesV m
terest in seeing that there is no silly
Secretary Mellon probably relishes the
opportunity of Squaring himself with the
ultra -drys by nobly upholding the Coast
Guard In the I'm Alone business. For
the first five or six years Mellon was
at the Treasury the prohibition people
did not place the Pittsburgher in the
same class as Caesars wife, as far as
enforcement was concerned. They re-
membered his earlier career in the dis
tillery industry and were skeptical about
his Volsteadian zeal. Latterly Melons
stock has risen among the devotees of
the Anti-Saloon League. When asked
about him nowadays, the usual re-
joinder is, "Uncle Andy's all right"
They confidently expected that his en-
forcement vigor would increase under
Hoover, because Coolidge was never re-
garded a 100 per cent believer in the
arid cause. Secretary Mellon greatly
reyeres the Coast Guard. He eulogized it
in eloquent terms at Arlington year
ago. when he dedicated the handsome
bronze pyramid created there in honor
of the Guards heroic dead.
X X X y
French Strother, who has been named
as the Presidents literary and research
man at the White House, comes into an
important job. Men who've held 1t in
the past had the reputation of writing
Presidents speeches. but Herbert Hoover
is not addicted to ghost writer's" and
Strother is not at all likely to be his
masters voice. The principal work he'll
be called upon to do will be to dig up
material for the speeches Hoover has to
write, generally of historical or statis-
ticaI nature. In other words, facts
and figures, not ideas, Is what the
present President will call for. In adj
dition, the White House literary and
research" secretary will be on constant
draft for the preparation of the more
or less stereotyped letters, kilograms
and other communications which the
Chief Executive is asked or required to
dispatch on recurring occasions, grave
or CAV, Strother Yields an accomplish
ed pen and is considered an ideal APP
poirltment. He is a Missourian by
origin.
DR.. c. C. WI, newly accredited Chi
! nese Minister to the United States, per-
| formed what he called an act OF tilial
piety in Washington on March 70, just
| an hour or two before presenting his
peared on the platform of the Richards
Study Club, where, he said, his father,
| the late WI Ting-fang. had stood ex-
| actly 20 years before, to speak infor-
mally to men and women of the Capital
At the outset of his mission in America,
DR.. WI explained, he desired, in that
spirit of ancestral devotion which char
acterizes his people, to tread in the
footsteps of the elder WI, who served
so long and with so much distinction IS
China's envoy in Washington. The first
Minister of Nationalist China adjured
! his audience to remember that his
country was trying to evolve in as
many decades the civilization which 1t
had taken the West centuries to
achieve"
* X X
April IS will be Wisconsin day be-
meath the dome of the United States
Capitol. The occasion is the formal
dedication of the marble statue of
Fighting Bob" La Toilette, which has
] been presented to the Nation by the
late Senator's Badger fellow citizens.