A POLITICAL HOME RUN

Politics, like baseball, depends upon the unusual. When the logical candidate wins, interest flags. A dark horse, however, enjoys the same popularity, at least with the reading public, as a pinchhitter in the ninth inning. In the primary fight in Pennsylvania, a dark horse has poled out a home run that will probably carry him into the senate.

Representative Vare, who comes from the City of Brotherly Love, where politicians cannot afford to be brothers, has decisively defeated George Wharton Pepper and Gifford Pinchot for the Republican nomination for Senator from Pennsylvania. Mr. Pepper was commonly considered to be the Coolidge candidate, being backed heavily by the Mellon interests, and Mr. Pinchot in the gubernatorial chair in Harrisburg had enjoyed four years of unbroken popularity, especially with the miners of the western part of the state. The Democratic nominee is still to be considered, even in Pennsylvania, but Senator Pepper and Governor Pinchot seem headed for the sticks.

The major significance except to Pennsylvania, of Representative Vare's surprising triumph is the degree to which it serves as a national political barometer. A growing sense of opposition to Administration policies and a marked swing of feeling against Prohibition have both been read into the result. It is true that the winner is a minority victor and that consequently too great importance may be attached to his triumph. On the other hand, the result is sufficiently surprising to provide copy for political dopesters for some time to come.

That the result can be understood as a vote of lack of confidence in the Coolidge faction which Senator Pepper represented is perhaps dubitable. Although the Secretary of the Treasury backed the Senator, Mr. Coolidge held off his official support until the last moment. The insurgent Republicans have never been strong in the Keystone State and whatever reaction exists can probably be interpreted as the traditional mid-term anti-administration threat.

The Prohibition issue, however, is by no means so easily disposed of. By no means every Pennsylvanian is a Smedley Butler in his attitude toward the Volstead Act. Indeed it is Philadelphia which gave Representative Vare most of his support. The race was heralded beforehand as the first direct expression of popular opinion since the recent airing of views in Washington, and, three-cornered as it was, it seems inevitable that some of Mr. Vare's political prestige is recruited from the wet faction.

The Prohibition question has come before the public at what seems a particularly opportune time. Such midterm elections as that which has just been practically decided in Pennsylvania should do much to crystallize what is at present a most inchoate public opinion. By the time when Prohibition may be expected to figure in a Presidential election, it should bear more of the ear-marks of an issue than have many planks in our recent party platforms.