The Trumpets Blow

The Republican National Convention opened in an atmosphere of finality. All over the U. S., prophecies were heard that, unless the Republican Party chose the right man and the right platform, it would disappear in a clap of political thunder.

But as the Convention opened in Philadelphia, one fact stood out from its wild pre-Convention week, its spirited opening days. That fact was that the Republican Party was not going to disappear, no matter what wrong man it chose, what platform it shied away from. The conflicts, hesitancies, choices were not going to end abruptly when the gavel fell to mark its final adjournment. Weaknesses the Party showed -- many a Republican politico fell into a panic when Republicans Knox and Stimson were appointed to the Roosevelt Cabinet (see p. 11); the Committee on Resolutions pondered for countless tormented hours over how to weasel a foreign-policy plank -- and such weaknesses could not be dissolved by the magic of nominating speeches.

It was plain that if Franklin Roosevelt could create such consternation on the eve of the Convention, he would doubtless find other traps to spring during the campaign. It was plain that if Hitler victories made it difficult for Republicans to agree on U. S. foreign policy, future Hitler victories were not likely to make their task easier, before or after the election. But, as every political commentator noted, something like a revolution had swept Republican ranks. When America was sung at the opening session, the nomination was still wide open. The 1,000 delegates were unbossed, maverick-wild. Amateur enthusiasts had swept into town, breaking down long-laid plans, outmoding deals, making all estimates wild guesses.

If Republican weakness was certain to show up when the big show was over, so was this new Republican strength.

Shenanigans. Conventional convention excitement blurred the more exciting fact that the struggle would go on after the Convention had ended. Philadelphia was full of political comedy : Candidate Willkie walking down Broad Street, attended by a cheering crowd of somebody else's delegates; bands playing everywhere, always, and coming at delegates from all directions; 1,900 U. S. flags hoisted by the city of Philadelphia; a reading clerk, tuned up for the hurly-burly by practicing 30 minutes daily in a soundproof garage, reading Elaine's oration on Garfield; Boss Joe Pew saying, "I am for Governor James until hell freezes over or until we reach the 252nd ballot" -- interpreted as meaning that he had switched to Willkie, Dewey, or Taft; Candidate Taft three hours late for his first press conference (Was he making a deal? Had he simply overslept?); Candidate Dewey denying that any deal would be made (Had he joined with Taft to stop Willkie?).

> Keynoter Harold Stassen began with a thought of his own: "Our forefathers erected here a great lighthouse of liberty," ended with Washington's: "Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair. The event is in the hands of God."

> Long before the Convention opened, it was prophesied that Herbert Hoover's second-night address might direct its current. For it he had prepared a powerful opening: "We are here faced with the task of saving America for free men." He analyzed the stupefying world situation in which European nations, after struggling for freedom for 150 years before World War I, had given way to totalitarianism in 20 years. He compared the New Deal to the postwar European governments whose ineptitude and false economic policies paved the way for totalitarianism. He ended with the Psalmist's question: "What is man?" . . . "Does he possess the right from his creator to plan his own life, to dare his own adventure, to earn his own reward so long as he does no harm to his fellows? Or must he submerge his life, his liberties and his independent personality in an omnipotent government? "If man is merely one of the herd, running with the pack, Stalin is right, Hitler is right, and God help us for our follies and our greeds, the New Deal is right.

"Republicans! You go into battle for the greatest cause entrusted to the government of mankind. . . . You can defend this nation. You can demonstrate that self-governing free people can solve the problems imposed by the industrial revolutions. . . . You can make this a classless country devoted to equal opportunity for all. . . .

"Are you prepared to fight?" First Tests. But long before the speeches began, basic Republican dilemmas had been outlined:

> John Lewis, neatly dressed in blue, his dark brown mane a little greyer than it was when he plugged for the New Deal, growled and roared before 4O-odd members of the Resolutions Committee and many spectators, as he reverted to the be lief he held in 1924 when Calvin Coolidge wanted to make him Secretary of Labor: "I say that if the Republican Party is to be restored to power, it must evolve a platform and a program that will get the confidence of the common people. . . .

Labor cannot eat platitudes. . . . The greatest menace to America is not the foreign agent or the fanatic . . . not the Fascist, the totalitarian or the Communist . . . [but] the shrunken bellies of one-half of the population who are not getting enough to eat. . . . What are you going to do about it?" John Lewis damned the New Deal and old-line Republicans ("Don't forget that you Republicans . . . left an army of 12,000,000 men out of jobs"). He was listened to. But when he damned President Roosevelt's conscription plan ("a fantastic suggestion from a mind in full intellectual retreat"), he was cheered to the rafters.

> For eight days the foreign-policy sub committee under Alf Landon sweated and stewed, held one 14-hour session, made no secret of its uneasiness, hesitancy, evasiveness, perplexity, confusion, uncertainty and other attributes not ordinarily associated with leadership. Its problem: to write a keep-out-of-war plank that would not offend those determined to aid the Allies. Concerning the results, H. L. Mencken quipped: "It is so written that it will fit both the triumph of democracy and the collapse of democracy, and approve both sending arms to England or sending only flowers."

> But greatest evidence of Republican confusion emerged when word of the Knox-Stimson appointments reached Philadelphia, spread consternation and distress. Chairman John Hamilton issued an aggrieved statement: "The action which has been taken by Colonel Knox and Mr. Stimson ... is purely personal on their part. . . . As members of the President's Cabinet, they owe their allegiance to the President and hereafter will speak and act in that capacity. . . . [Their] desire for American intervention in European affairs is so well known that their appointment speaks for itself."

Quickly other Republicans tried to cover up Chairman Hamilton's toplofty condemnation, pointed out that these distinguished Republicans had strengthened the Cabinet. Said the Baltimore Sun: "[Republican reasoning] runs like this: Mr. Stimson and Mr. Knox are able and patriotic men whose opinions were entitled to every consideration within the Republican Party. But these able and patriotic men as members of Mr. Roosevelt's Cabinet become reprobates and menaces. ... As menaces, they compel the Republicans to veer again toward the policy of isolation which has been proved to be a peril to this country. More asinine reasoning is seldom encountered, even in politics. ... Is the Republican Party to make reprobates of such men because their answer to a call of duty may incidentally have given Mr. Roosevelt a certain advantage? Is that the level on which the Republican Party intends to approach a people whose common mind is patriotically concentrated on defense of the nation?"

No Alibi. Not altogether good-natured was the wisecrack that the two biggest men at the Convention were Adolf Hitler & Franklin Roosevelt: it was based on the observation that too much U. S. thinking was dominated by considerations of what somebody else might do.

In a last pre-Convention blast Walter Lippmann condemned as sleepwalkers Republican politicos who would not face the issues of Hitler's victory. But every commentator agreed that professional politicians had less influence in 1940's Convention than at any in recent U. S. political history, that rank-&-file Republicans had more voice, that the Convention was a truer cross section of U. S. life. Whoever the man, whatever the platform, the U. S. had no alibi for either.

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