At last we contemplate a candidate who is frank and honest, sensible and unafraid," wrote critic H. L. Mencken of New York's Democratic Governor, Alfred Emanuel Smith, regarding his candidacy in the 1928 presidential elections. Smith was a Democrat from birth, born in 1873 to a poor Irish immigrant family on New York City's East Side. At the age of 18, he was granted a minor city clerkship and soon impressed Tammany Hall's leaders as an able, outgoing newcomer. a New York State assemblyman (1904-15) and later speaker (1913-15), he became increasingly reform-minded, and in 1918 he won the first of four terms as governor of New York. Though narrowly defeated in the Republican sweep of 1920, he was reelected in 1922, 1924 and 1926, earning a national reputation for his progressive programs in such areas as state parks, housing, improved working conditions, child welfare and care of the insane. The favourite son of urban Democrats at the 1924 presidential convention-where he was nominated as the "happy warrior of the political battlefield" by Franklin D. Roosevelt-Smith lost the chance to run for president to John W. Davis. But he proved unbeatable at the 1928 convention. The first Catholic ever to win a major party nomination, he launched a hard-hitting national campaign that made his ever-present derby, wellchewed cigar and broad New York accent known throughout the United States. But Smith's admirable candour, his Catholicism and the countr y's widespread economic prosperity-which was generally attributed to the rule of his Republican party opponents-combined to deny him election to the Presidency in 1928. It is important to note that Smith did win 41% of the popular vote carrying the nation's 12 largest cities. After losing the presidential nomination to Roosevelt in 1932, Smith abandoned political life for private business. He still remained active in social causes and helped found the American Urban League in 1935. He died in New York in 1944. Literature: Family Limtcyclojaedem o/ American History, published by Reader's Digest Association, New York, ? 1975, page 1034. A similar watch islllustrated in Le Temps de Cartier, by Jader Barracca, Giampiero Negretti and Franco Nencini, p. 56.