Country Before Church

9. Finally, we come to the question of foreign policy. Here it is known (a) that on one occasion Smith persuaded the Democratic State convention in New York to adopt a World Court plank, though this was some years back, and (b) that in his reply to the Marshall letter, he said, regarding Mexico. "I recognize the right of no church to ask armed intervention by this country in the affairs of another country, merely for the defense of the rights of a church."

This is definite. But it is not much out of which to build a picture of a foreign policy.

The Ku Klux Klan is sure that Smith's foreign policy would be to deliver the United States into the hands of Rome. There are other observers who cite Smith's refusal to be swept off his feet in the post-war Bolshevist hysteria as proof that if he were elected President he would show foresight liberality, and cool-headedness in his foreign policy, that he would leave this department of the Government largely in the hands of his advisers.

A man who is still young, tireless, and immensely capable--a man who has been loaded down with religious prejudice, the wet issue, and the fragrant memories of Tammany Hall and yet manages to remain politically available despite these handicaps, each one of which is theoretically sufficient to destroy him--a man of experience, wit, city manners and sophistication, who typifies the challenge of a restless urban civilization to the long-continued domination of a thousand Main Streets: this is the man who now bids for the nomination of a party whose strength, ironically enough, lies chiefly in the old aristocracy of the Solid South.

The answer to Smith, in the Democratic party, is a coalition which has not yet found its leader