Something about a Soldier

It was long past midnight. In his Wardman Park Hotel apartment, Senator Arthur Hendrick Vandenberg of Michigan sat sunk in an easy chair with a biography of George Washington in his lap. Piled beside him were other biographies: lives of Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt. The Senator's broad dome nodded drowsily. His cigar was out.

Gradually he became aware of a brass band playing faintly in the distance. He could not make out the tune. Then, in the corridor outside his apartment, he heard a muffled clomping. Opening the door, he beheld a large and handsome White Horse. "Yes?" said the Senator. The White Horse made no reply. Instead, drawing a watch from its vest pocket, it muttered, "Oh dear, I shall be too late," stepped into an open elevator shaft, and disappeared. Unhesitatingly the Senator followed.

Down, down, down he fell, and when he landed gently he was on the platform of a great hall in 1944. Before him a rousing parade was in progress. At its head, astride the White Horse, rode Representative Hamilton Fish, magnificent in khaki and gold braid. The White Horse was walking backward. Next came Colonel McCormick, Captain Patterson and "Cissie" Patterson, dressed as the Spirit of '76 with drums and fife abeat and asqueal. They were followed by rank on rank of portly male and female Delegates, all dressed like Grand Marshal Fish, all on similar white horses, each flaunting a khaki banner blazoned with four silver stars. The rear was brought up by a swarm of lovable little Mugwumps, ringing cowbells and whirling clackers. The galleries were a mass of waving U.S. flags, a dozen bands were playing, and now, even above the roar, Senator Vandenberg could plainly make out the tune. It was: There's Something about a Soldier.

A gavel pounded, and the nominating roll call began. Alabama and Arizona passed. Then a voice bellowed from the loudspeakers: "Arkansas yields to Wisconsin." A man from Wisconsin stepped forward to the microphone and began talking about Valley Forge. The Senator looked excitedly at his watch. . . .

Last week Senator Vandenberg's close friend, Washington Correspondent Jay Hayden of the Detroit News, revealed that a serious version of this dream is now very much on the Senator's mind. Launching a carefully drafted trial balloon in his column, Hayden reported that an "active movement" to make General Douglas MacArthur the Republican Presidential nominee in 1944 is now under way, that its unofficial headquarters is Vandenberg's office. His desk is littered with MacArthur biographies, his favorite being Bob Considine's MacArthur the Magnificent. Politicos by the score come to discuss the General's availability, and Vandenberg in turn is talking MacArthur to everyone he sees.

His argument is simple. Neither John Bricker nor any other reliable Republican wheel horse can beat Roosevelt in wartime. But "the people will really be voting for a Commander in Chief rather than for a President, and there are no credentials equal to Mac Arthur's upon that score." Clincher is the Washington-Jackson-Har-rison-Taylor-Grant-T. Roosevelt tradition of soldier heroes who have been swept to the White House on crests of military glory. Vandenberg is prudently holding his tongue in public "until the proper time."

But his imagination, leaping forward, has already devised the strategy by which Arkansas, MacArthur's native state, will yield to Wisconsin, which the General still claims as home, when the nominating roll call begins. "Can't you visualize the war whoop," he cries, "when Arkansas, third state on the roll call, rises to yield to Wisconsin!" Representative Fish, who shares with the McCormick-Patterson family his enthusiasm for MacArthur as an anti-New Deal candidate, has introduced a bill to repeal the Army ban on the political candidacies of men in active service.

In Australia, meantime, General MacArthur continues to ignore his self-appointed backers. Last week, with characteristic, deep-purple eloquence, he commemorated the first anniversary of the surrender of Corregidor:

"Until we claim again the ghastly remnants of its last gaunt garrison, we can but stand humble supplicants before Almighty God.

"There lies our Holy Grail."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.