Smith is endowed with a talent for condensation, and I cheerfully quote the result of his cogitations on the platforms and the speeches of the candidates. “The Republican senators screamed for reservations, but when Hiram Johnson showed symptoms of kicking out of the traces they pretended that they never wanted the league at all. But to save their faces they said maybe some time when the sky was high and they were feeling good they would shuffle the deck and try a new deal. Cox is for playing the game right through on the present layout. If you’re keen for the League of Nations, your best chance of ever seeing America sign up is to stand on Cox’s side of the table.” Other Smiths, not satisfied with his analysis, and groping in the dark, may be grateful for the leading hand of Mr. Taft. The former President was, in his own words, “one of the small group who, in 1915, began the movement in this country for the League of Nations and the participation of the United States therein.” Continuing, he said, in the Philadelphia _Ledger_ of August 1: Had I been in the Senate, I would have voted for the league and treaty as submitted; and I advocated its ratification accordingly. I did not think and do not now think that anything in the League Covenant as sent to the Senate would violate the Constitution of the United States, or would involve us in wars which it would not be to the highest interest of the world and this country to suppress by universal boycott and, if need be, by military force. In response to a question whether, this being his feeling, he would not support Mr. Cox, Mr. Taft made this reply: No such issue as the ratification of the League of Nations as submitted can possibly be settled in the coming election. Only one-third of the Senate is to be elected, and but fifteen Republican senators out of forty-nine can be changed. There remain in the Senate, whatever the result of the election, thirty-three Republicans who have twice voted against the ratification of the league without the Lodge reservations. Of the fifteen retiring Republicans, many are certain of re-election. Thirty-three votes will defeat the league. Smith, placidly fishing, made the point that a man who believed in a thing would vote for it even though it was a sure loser, and asked where a Democratic landslide would leave Mr. Taft. When I reminded him that he had drifted out of the pellucid waters of political discussion and snagged the boat on a moral question, he became peevish and refused to fish any more that day.