OVER THE BIER

The short term, "lame duck" Congress has at last fluttered to its long rest, and nothing in its term was more characteristic than the leaving of it. In the midst of Saturday afternoon's flurry in the House, legislation was again brought to a standstill by the refusal of Acting Speaker Campbell and Mr. Mondell to take up the Nitrates Bill. The joy of hilbustering is evidently infectious, for from the House it spread to the Senates where Senator Heflin, stemming the flood of some fifty House bills yet to be passed, arose and began a sympathetic strike. Fortunately the legislative jam was cleared up and once more the bills poured through the Congressional hopper.

The final two hours on Sunday morning were eminently characteristic of the temper of the two bodies. In the House, the scene of prize-fights and vaudeville repartee, Republican made love to Democrat and vice versa, while the Marine Band played and various members rendered vocal selections. The Senate was--the Senate. To the very end partisan, snapped at partisan and the body finally disbanded without even the usual vote of thanks to the presiding officers. So died the Sixty-seventh Congress, just as it had lived.

Its record will not be written in golden characters on the tablets of Time. Although Senator Robinson is a democrat, his statement that "no important legislative achievement except bills of a non-partisan nature and except the Fordney-McCumber tariff act can be awarded the Sixty-seventh Congress" is no exaggeration. The passage of the Fordney tariff was not greeted with a universally joyous acclaim. Certain pledges made by Republicans for the creation of a soldiers' bonus have been repudiated along with President Harding's mellifluent promise of an association of nations. The settlement of the British Debt problem, although a step of great importance, was distinctly of a non-partisan nature, while the two most important partisan measures, sponsored by the President himself, the Ship Subsidy and the Hague Court participation were smothered to death by his own confederates.

To a great mass of our people who have become weary and a little ashamed of seeing the United States bury its head in the sand while storms are brewing across the water, the President's proposal of joining the World Court has come as a bright ray of hope. The Republican Senators have turned their backs on the proposal. Public sentiment may, be next December, be strong enough to force Senatorial approval. In any case new senators, unskilled in the "art of doing nothing", will come into office to form a new legislative body. Meanwhile, of the old one: "We come to bury Congress, not to praise it."