For three or four days Wood has been re-hashing on the floor of Congress and elsewhere in the backstairs gossip of Washington. His ugly insinuations have been directed at some of the most conspicuous men in public life and some of the most honored and trusted, so his belated modesty and reserve could not have impressed anyone. Certainly the committee was not impressed, for it insisted that Wood should go on with his story.
So he did, dragging in this time the secretary to the President. Even Wood admitted his "evidence" was mere gossip, and declared that as to some of it he had been so little impressed by the personality of his informant he did not even remember the man's name. Notwithstanding the character of the charges and of those who make them, every allegation now should be probed to the bottom. If Mr. Tumulty, as Wood says he has heard, is guilty of having betrayed the confidence of the President and of the nation, he should be driven forthwith from public life. He insists that the investigation proceed, and that Wood, Gardner, and their associates he allowed every opportunity and facility to make their insinuations good. If Mr. Tumulty is innocent, as he proclaims and is in the absence of proof, the country will believe. Wood should be exiled from the House by the scorn and contempt of its members. 