Religion was a less destructive issue to John Kennedy in 1960 than to Al Smith in 1928 because it was openly discussed this year, according to a political associate of Smith and Franklin Roosevelt.

Herbert Claiborne Pell '06, former Congressman from New York and prominent Democratic campaign organizer, said last night that Smith, unlike Kennedy in 1960, never defended his church-state stand. The smaller amount of subversive anti-Catholic action this fall, he added, indicates that religion has become a more sophisticated issue.

Pell, who was Ambassador to Portugal and later to Hungary under Roosevelt, termed Kennedy "an effective man," but was not sure whether his administration would be a liberal, FDR-type. "I am probably the only person to say 'I don't know what to expect.'"

A major problem facing the President-elect, Pell stated, is the eventual admission of Red China to the United Nations or the fall of the U.N.

Pell said that he hoped to see but did not necessarily expect the Kennedy Administration to cut armaments expenditures in favoring of pressing domestic needs, especially railroads, education, and housing.

A guest of Arthur D. Holcombe '66, Eaton Professor of the Science of Government, Emeritus, Pell spoke informally last night with Holcombe's Dunster House seminar on the American Executive. The Ambassador returned from Europe last Tuesday just in time to rush to the victory party in Providences of his son, who had been elected U.S. Senator from R.I.