Keynoter Fess

On the brink of a quandary, the G.O.P.'s Committee on Arrangements met in Kansas City last week. Besides deciding where the Negro delegates were to be lodged and what "stunts" the parade should perform and how the convention hall should be decorated, they had a delicate question to answer. What Republican, they had to ask themselves, was best qualified to be Temporary Chairman in June? The traditional, and the sole function of a Temporary Chairman is to make a keynote speech which shall put all factions in a happy frame of mind, inspire the country and prelude Victory.

Charles Evans Hughes had made the question harder by declining to keynote. In him the committee would have rejoiced. He had renounced candidacy. Toward all the candidates he had seemed equally impartial. He would have ennobled the occasion. But Mr. Hughes offered his work at the Pan-American Congress as his excuse for eschewing active service for a time.

To escape their dilemma the committee members passed the matter entirely to National Chairman William Morgan Butler, in whose quietly determined mind the decision probably rested anyway. Mr. Butler chose, and the committee unanimously elected, Senator Simeon D. Fess of Ohio.

When the announcement was made, observers were at first shocked by what seemed the inadequacy of Senator Fess as a keynoter. To the casual-minded, he is just a bald, slightly weazened little man with a sapless voice, a sapless personality. He used to teach history at Ohio Northern University and the University of Chicago. He was President of Antioch College from 1907 to 1917. He rustles about in the Senate like a professor in an examination room, reminding heated debaters of the Senate rules, whispering concise answers and directions to his colleagues in the cloakroom. To have such a man sound the party's first clarion would be, thought one hasty commentator, "like having a clerk address the stockholders."

Another school of thought interpreted the Fess appointment as a studied rebuff to Hooverism. The committee members who made the appointment were predominantly un-Hooverish, including New York's Hilles, Connecticut's Roraback, Mrs. Hert of Kentucky and David W. Mulvane of Kansas, besides Chairman Butler. Senator Fess had energetically abetted the anti-Hoover campaign of his dead Ohio colleague, Senator Willis. Now that Senator Willis was gone, the elevation of his oldtime professor and friend seemed more calculated than sentimental.

Again, Senator Fess has ever been a Coolidge man, a "Coolidge-anyway" man. Only once has he endeavored to dispel the impression that he is the Coolidge spokesman in the Senate, and he later confessed that that one endeavor was only a political charade. The object of the "Coolidge-anyway" movement has been to block Candidate Hoover with uninstructed delegates and its aim, according to pessimists, is another "hotel room" nomination. The choice of Keynoter Fess seemed like a peep through the hotel room keyhole.

But respecters of Chairman Butler's political sagacity looked at it this way: Suppose the Hooverites are downhearted now. Suppose Keynoter Fess prepares to extol the Coolidge virtues and record. Then, suppose Candidate Hoover is allowed more and more to inherit the Coolidge virtues, record and support. The effect upon Candidate Hoover might be to make him thoroughly conscious of his party obligations, his privilege. The effect upon his friends might be to fill them with a delight more keenly felt after anxiety. The effect upon the country might be to make the Hoover candidacy seem inevitable, irresistible. Meantime, right up to the moment the balloting begins and "potential" strength is demonstrated, the powers-that-are in the G. O. P. would remain poised upon the Rock of Plymouth, able to "draft" Calvin Coolidge again, if need be, or to dictate his successor to the deadlocked boomers of Hoover and Lowden.

Senators Moses and Gillett, both of them Hooverites, were being talked about for Permanent Chairman by the same committee that selected Keynoter Fess.

P: Farther-sighted than any view--bordering, in fact, upon the visionary--was what Charles J. Thompson of Ohio saw in the elevation of Keynoter Fess. Bereaved backer of Senator Willis, loud admirer of President Coolidge, Mr. Thompson said of Mr. Fess: "All the rascals, high and low, will fade before his presence. They cannot help but respect him. He would make an Executive for the great Republic as wonderful and safe, as good and honest as Mr. Coolidge.

"In my opinion he [Mr. Fess] will be the next President of the United States."

P: The Committee on Arrangements made another decision: one picture and one only shall adorn the convention hall, over the speakers' rostrum--a picture of Calvin Coolidge.

P: A worried woman in Kansas City said she feared "that the men will get in a smoky back room and nominate a President." Chairman Butler's secretary, suave James White, replied: "Rest assured. It won't be done. The committee has assigned all delegates to front rooms."