Evening star., 1932-05-09

! President Hoover has had the hap
piest week end he's enjoyed In the last
! two and 3 half years. 1t was due to the
deskful of telegrams and letters Of COM
mendation and coagratulation that have
piled up at the White House since he
began lambasting Congress last week.
/ The messages reaching Washington
| aren't all addressed to the President
| Members Of both House and Senate are
hearing copiously from back home since
MIR. Hoover shelled the congressional
, trenches. The Overwhelming burden of
the song from the States is that the
i people believe the President is on the
/ right track, and Representatives and
Senators are urged to stand by him in
| his fight for a speedily balanced budget
| These congressional letters and tele-
grams in many cases demand recon-
| sideration of the sales tax. Admins
trationists are confident that Mr..
Hoover has struck a strong blow for his
own prestige. and that it was particu-
| larlv well timed. If Congress now pro-
ceeds, with minimum of delay, to en-
! act revenue and economy legislation. 1t
will be dif1cult for political foes to deny
| the President the glory of ending the
sessions chaos, with its devastating ef-
fects on business, national credit and
the country's nervous system.
X x
Senator James Hamilton Lewis. DEM
| ocrat, OF Illinois totally disagrees with
the theory that Hoover fortunes have
been revived by the Presidents be
! lated dive into T. RS old bag of
| tricks" The silver-tcngued posse ;sor
, Of Washington's most CO orful whiskers
declares that far from gaining advan-
tage, Mr.. Hoover has laid himself
! wide open to attack" by melting Con-
gress to expose, as Lewis says it's sure
to do, just what caused the mess
| which has aroused the Presidents
righteous but tardy indignation" This
is the Illinoisan's version of the fracas:
"All that Mr.. Hoover has done is to
prove that there's nothing new under
the sun. Most Of our contemporary
Presidents have pulled the same kind
OF stuff on the eve of q national elec-
tion. Roosevelt did It, Taft did it.
Wilron cid it. Now Hoover does it.
This time, however, the 'blame-Con-
gress' gag won't work. All Congress
has to do is to show, as it so easily
can, that the conditions at which the
President rails have grown up. prac-
his party, in full control of the Gov
ernment, stood by, mute and in
gloriouc."
After-dinner speaking, which went
into a slump with the enactment of
prohibition, is supposed to be lost art.
Saturday nights banquet Of the Ameri-
can Law institute produced some ef-
fective evidence in rebuttal of that
theory. 1t was supplied by Dr. Gordon
Jennings Lsing. professor Of Latin at
the University CT Chicago and dean Of
its Graduate School of Arts and Liter
ature. DR.. Latng delivered the wittiest
talk this spesch-5urfcited community
mas listened to In many a moon. He
revived memories of Chauncey Depew,
joseph Fl. Choate and Mark Twain, all
rolled into one, as satire, humor and
anecdote flowed from his eloquent
tongue in an endless stream. His osten-
sible subject was Education for the
Law" end he kept United States Su-
preme Court, State Supreme Court and
Federal judges and host of other legal
,unlinaries rocking with laughter as he
to.-ed with 1t. Incidentally, Dr. Laing
exploded the notion that wit Is the
monopoly Of the American branch of
the English-speaktng race. He's a Ca
madam.
Lafayette College. at Easton, Pa, OBJ
serves its centennial today, under the
presidency Of q former Washingtonian.
DR.. william Mather Lewis Just 100
years age. on May 8. 1892, a boy blew
a horn on the steps Of the little college
building which the students had built
The blast called them, 43 in number.
from the fields where they were work.