President-Reject

Alone with a microphone, after all the crowds, the shouts, the flaring lights, Alf Landon spoke in a voice surprisingly calm and deep. It grew ever quieter, slower, more halting as he reached the close of his election eve broadcast, last speech of his campaign. "Our healing . . . will be revealed by the still small voice--that speaks to the conscience--and the heart --prompting us to a wider--and wiser-- humanity." On came the voice of the announcer, reverent and tender, as if speaking the epilog of a sad and stirring drama: "And so, quiet falls over the study in Topeka, Kansas." Three hours later the Sunflower Special chuffed out of Topeka on its last trip, taking the Republican Nominee back to his home town of Independence to vote. Some 5,000 of his neighbors were down at the Santa Fe station at 8 a. m. to cheer him, give him a 19-gun salute.

"Where's your high hat, Alf?" cried one.

"I don't have one," replied the Nominee. "And my head's still the same size."

At the polling place, where he was registered as "A. M. Landon, oil and gas business," Alf Landon & wife cast blank ballot after blank ballot for the photographers. On the way to the two-room office with "Alf M. Landon" on the doors of the Citizens National Bank Building, the Nominee had to stop time & again to shake hands with old friends. Most of them called him "Alf" or "Governor," but a few addressed him as "Mr. President."

Late in the afternoon Nominee Landon returned to Topeka for a quiet dinner with his family and a few close friends. Other friends began dropping in at the big, yellow and white Executive Mansion. The radio was on full blast. Out in the garage, press tickers clattered busily. The gloom which had hung over the Landon campaign train in all its travels about the country began to settle over the Landon parlor as the radio announcers kept shouting monotonously: "Roosevelt ahead in New York, Roosevelt has lead in Pennsylvania, Roosevelt has 2-to-1 lead in. . . ." As he had on his train, Alf Landon, smiling, joking, puffing at an old briar pipe, did his best to brighten things up. About 9 p. m. the Florists' Telegraph Association sent in a six-foot composition sunflower as tribute to his "Americanism." "Come on, Theo," cried he to Mrs. Landon, "let's get our picture took while we still have a chance." Theo Landon was brave, too. A big, red-white-&-blue "Landon Victory Cake" lay untouched on the sideboard. "Maybe," said she as the returns kept coming in, "just maybe we've waited too long to cut it. But however it turns out," she continued, eyeing her husband, "I'm proud of him."

Sixty newshawks were invited in from the garage for coffee and doughnuts. Alf Landon chatted with them about returns from familiar Kansas precincts until one tactlessly asked how the national figures looked to him. "I'm not sure," he grinned. "I've been talking with people around the house and haven't kept up with the later returns."

By 11 p. m. the guests had gone and Alf Landon went up to bed. He had told reporters he would have no statement until morning. About midnight, however, Ross Bartley, the Landon publicity man, appeared at the Jayhawk Hotel to hand out copies of the Republican Nominee's telegram of congratulations to Franklin Roosevelt (see col. 1). Already in the Jayhawk they were discussing Alf Landon's chances of getting elected U. S. Senator in 1938, the job his friends really had in mind for him when they began booming him for the Presidency year ago.

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