THE GENIE IN THE OIL-CAN

Higher and higher has led the trail of corruption originating in the Senatorial investigation into the Teapot Dome scandal. As Professor Hart pointed out in his interview in yesterday's Crimson, the collaboration of prominent men was necessary to the scheme, and the searchers finally reached the summit when Senator Nye, chairman of the committee, announced that the estate of the late Warren G. Harding would be investigated for traces of the missing Continental Oil Company bonds which were part of Sinclair's contribution to the campaign fund. The fact that a president of the United States should be suspected of receiving bribes shows the extent to which dishonesty had spread in the administration of that time. Even if the president himself was not implicated, it is apparent that he made no effort to prevent it.

In their elation at finding such an issue for the coming campaign, the Democrats at once found Coolidge, Mellon, Hughes and Hoover full of the sin of omission, for the kept silence about conditions when they must have been aware of them. For a counter-attack the best the Republicans have been able to do is to make an ineffectual attempt to implicate Al Smith in the mesh, at the same time maintaining that none of the guilty ones are in the party at present and that they are not liable for the sins of their predecessors. But the genie in the bottle has escaped, and none can tell how large he may grow.