Imperial Valley Press

PRESIDENT NOT
TO CHANGE ON
LIQUOR ISSUE

Hoover Unwilling To Throw Down Dry Support Given Him In 1928.

By RAYMOND CLAPPER
United Press Staff Correspondent

(Copyright, 1932, By United Press)

WASHINGTON, March 9. (U.P.)

The most authoritative information available represents President Hoover as holding his dry views, despite a pronounced desire among some Republican leaders to resubmit the prohibition issue to the country.

Renewed activity over the prohibition question has led to many attempts to elicit from Mr. Hoover some public statement of his attitude on what position the party should take this year. He has declined to make one. The information herein comes from other sources. It is to the effect that he has indicated privately that he intends to stand by the position he took when he ran for President before—which was for retention of the 18th amendment. On modification, he said that to permit that which the constitution forbids would be nullification and that this would not be countenanced by the American people.

Further, he is represented as feeling that he has an obligation to those who supported him on prohibition in 1928 and that to yield to the anti-prohibition wing of the party now would be a desertion of thousands of loyal friends, with no ground other than expediency to justify it.

His policy is to discourage discussion of prohibition as a party question. Feeling on both sides is so strong that there is fear of provoking a serious split by agitation prior to the convention. This accounts for the scarcity of statements on the subject from Republican sources. Contrary to the practice of their Democratic opponents, the more troublesome a question becomes, the less Republicans talk about it publicly.

Party Split

The Republican party is as badly split over prohibition as the Democratic party. The managers want to gather in as many votes as possible from both sides. Therefore many of the modificationists and those who, more cautious, want merely a referendum plank, favor going ahead without consulting the President. They expect that if any reasonable plank calling for a rejudgment of the questions were inserted in the platform, Mr. Hoover would not object. They realize he would be seriously embarrassed if they tried to change his position, so they cultivate the doctrine that the candidate has nothing to do with shaping the platform—that being the work of the convention—and that therefore there is no reason to bring Mr. Hoover into the controversy.