No, Thanks

Edward M. Queeny, Monsanto Chemical Co. president and G.O.P. contributor, had an idea. The Missouri delegation that supported Wendell Willkie at the 1940 Convention had long since soured on Mr.Willkie's outspoken internationalism. Why not draft a set of have-you-stopped-beating-your-wife questions and demand that Willkie answer them in writing? In St. Louis, Queeny drew up nine questions, gave Willkie a ten-day deadline for his answers. Samples:

"If you favor a World State, what would you do about nations that refuse to come in?

"Do you believe that it is desirable for America to permit flooding our country with alien individuals and alien ideas?"

Willkie was vacationing in Maine when the questions arrived, knew nothing about them until the ten days were nearly up. By then the story had leaked to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and the anti-Willkie press was gleefully asking Willkie to put up or shut up. He returned home to discover an ultimatum that the letter would be made public if the questions went unanswered. Snorted Willkie: "They aren't going to put me on a spot." He telephoned that he would be glad to go to St. Louis next week to talk things over but that he could not hope to write answers to the nine questions without producing another book. The Missouri Republicans replied that next week was too soon. Willkie then announced that he will speak in St. Louis on Oct. 12, but on his own subject.

Editorialized the St. Louis Post-Dis patch, which backed Franklin Roosevelt in 1940: "Messrs. Dewey, Bricker, Taft, Vandenberg and other Republican hopefuls have been silent, ambiguous or restrained. . . . Yet no Missouri questionnaire goes out. . . . Is Willkie running so far ahead of the field for the 1944 nomination that Missouri Republican leaders . . . feel he must be killed off politically before that time?"

In Look magazine his week Wendell Willkie plainly answers five questions. For one, he says: "If the Republican Party intends to drive for liberal objectives, I shall give it my complete service, as the nominee or as a worker in the ranks."

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