Evening star., 1939-04-16

with his audience because his sincerity
is so unmistakable. That is a factor of
great importance on the air, Mr. Smith
holds, the sincerity of the speaker.
In his own broadcasts, and the pres
ent national series is no exception, Mr..
Smith is highly informal. He usually
begins with greeting such as this one
which prefaced his sixth broadcast:
"Kinsmen in Texas, neighbors in Illinois,
friends in Alabama; men and women of
America; greetings from Washington"
He intersperses his talks with homely
stories and poetry which is often of his
own improvising. The following taken
from Smiths reply to Taft on the issue
OF States rights is typical:
I'VE Democrats love the States, love
them too much not to help save both
their solvency and their dignity. I
would not myself know what to do with
out my States: my Illinois, the State of
Abraham Lincoln, and my Texas, the
Lone Star State of Sam Houston, that
mighty Samson of the Southwest!
These States are to me, as yours to you,
frelghted with great memories. I'd SIM
ply not be me without them. Would you
be you without your background"
Rarely in Close Combat.
IT only by contrast Senator Taft's ad-
dresses are serious, earnest, larded with
references to law and the Constitution
and documented with figures. Rarely
do these two adversaries square off di-
rectly at each other, although occa-
sionally there are oblique shafts. In the
middle of the series Mr.. Smith an
nounced that he had not yet been able
to understand what his opponent meant
to show" But his dislikes are now
abundantly manifest" he added. In dis
cussing the cult of constitutionalism,
Mr.. Smith made crack that was OBJ
viously intended for the Ohio Senator:
1T is bad thing for a growing Ma
ton to discourage creative constitutional
work. The pathos of it is that conserva-
tives do just this with the most stodgy
honesty-an honesty that lacks only one
thing to make it magnificent, the imag-
ination to see others as others feel them
selves to be-"
While he is too polite to say it out
right, one can tell that this Is Mr..
Smiths real objection to what Senator
Taft stands for-the conservatism of his
background which shuts him away from
the experience of the common man and
woman. He respects many things in
Senator Taft. He goes so far as to say
that in his opinion the democratic ira
ditions, the country, would be safe with
Senator Taft in the White House.
But stodginess, lack of imagination. is
the sin which Mr.. Smith cannot forgive
the conservative. This same insistance
on the Importance of the faculty of
imagination runs through his philo-
sophie writings. Perhaps it goes back to
the richness of his boyhood experience.
Here is how he has described that expe-
rience in the course of an essay on his
own philosophic beliefs:
The metaphysical views of our
American fathers were held by them to
be true, indeed to be gospel truth; for
the most sustained speculation in Amer
lea has, OF course. been theological. At
the tail end of this theological tradition
grew up, vivifying In my youthful mind
its major features. Let there be no mis-
take about what mean. I speak Of
fundamentalism in its deepest dye"
Educated in Texas.
Life in Blanket, Tex, was stern. But
nevertheless he managed to get out of
it what he wanted, which was a formal
education. 1t took little longer be-
cause he had to earn it for himself. In
1915 when he was Is years old he got
a B. A. degree from the University of
Texas. For three years he taught at
Texas Christian University, and then
for three more years at the State Uni
versity. BY the end of that time he had
managed to obtain his Phi. D. degree at
the University of Chicago. Since 1928
he has been teaching at Chicago, rising
to the rank of professor of philosophy.
His teaching, as might be surmised,
has been far from orthodox. Prof, Smith
has never concealed his contempt for
those who run from life to books and