Willkie on the Overland Limited

Wendell Willkie began in earnest the long, uphill fight to win the GOPresidential nomination. His special car, so ancient a Pullman that the Union Pacific refused to hitch it to the super-streamlined City of San Francisco, rumbled west from Chicago behind the Overland Limited.

This was no feverish campaign special. Four reporters were aboard, but no brain-trusters. There were no mammoth prearranged parades or bunting-draped cities. Like the other passengers, Willkie took his meals in the diner, spent most of his spare hours at his favorite pastime-- talking and arguing with a few friends.

At Grand Island, Neb., a small cluster of people spied the candidate through the train window. Said Willkie's aide-decamp, boyishly exuberant Lem Jones, "They're waving at you." Willkie, engrossed in his talk, gave the platform crowd an absent jerk of the head, a quick flip of the hand--and went on talking. Newsmen thought of the Big Hello which Franklin Roosevelt would have given.

At Salt Lake City Willkie made a minor boner. Newsmen, with Utah mining and cattlemen in mind, asked Willkie his position on high tariffs. Said Wendell Willkie: obviously, he was against them. Then he added: "Asking me that is like asking me if I favor sin." Around high-tariff-minded, sin-conscious Utah went word that Willkie thought all tariffs and sin synonymous.

The Great Thaw. Wendell Willkie had two purposes in the West: 1) to meet & greet GOParty workers by the hundreds; 2) to urge the nation to unity, both in & out of the Republican Party.

The first purpose was accomplished at luncheons, dinners and off-the-record conferences in Salt Lake City's Newhouse Hotel, Boise's Hotel Boise, Seattle's Masonic Temple, Tacoma's American Legion Hall and Portland's Multnomah Hotel. Newsmen, recalling the hostility-charged Willkie confabs in St. Louis and Washington last year, noted a great thaw all along the line. In Boise, the 300 tickets for the Willkie luncheon sold in 20 minutes; in Seattle, Willkie shook 2,000 hands in 40 minutes. Party workers flocked to see and hear the candidate who, only the week before, was supposed to be poison.

This comparative enthusiasm did not mean that Willkie had suddenly captured the Northwest. Many a G.O.P. worker grumbled about Willkie's endorsement of the Federal ballot for soldiers: Was this not another "me too" manifestation? Then there was his New York tax speech: Did that mean that he wanted to go twice as far as the New Deal?

But the warm Willkie personality, the straight-from-the-shoulder talk obviously changed or troubled the minds of some anti-Willkie GOPartisans. Most significant: Idaho's Governor Clarence A. Bottolfsen, who previously had publicly endorsed Tom Dewey. The enthusiasm had its effect on Willkie. At a train stop at Baker, Ore., he blurted: "Confidentially, I am going to be nominated."

Who's Disunited? Willkie warmed up to his second objective--unity within the G.O.P. and in the nation--in a press conference at Seattle's Washington Athletic Club. Did the fact that Wendell Willkie often disagreed with Republicans in Congress mean that the G.O.P. is hopelessly divided? Said Wendell Willkie:

"The Democratic Party is in power. Its leader has the prestige of the Presidency. Yet repeatedly and on consequential measures he has been unable to get his party to go along with him. ... So long as [he] remains in office [the Democratic Party] is permanently divided. And if he should be re-elected it would become divided more and more.

"The Republican Party is out of power; it has not selected a leader as yet. It is natural that different men, aspiring to become leaders, should present different viewpoints. When the Republican Party selects its new leader with a forward-looking viewpoint, I feel certain that Republicans will support him with a united party."

Next night, at Tacoma's Masonic Temple, in the major speech of the trip, Wendell Willkie returned to this theme:

"Our Government itself promotes disunity. . . . The Administration, in order to accomplish the just aspirations of the people, adopted the technique of making political friends of some economic groups and political enemies of others. . . .

"We need a new leader. A leader who does not hold in his mind bitter or triumphant memories of past conflicts. A leader who does not think of a nation as made up of groups of people who can be played against each other to insure his continuing power. ... A leader with malice toward none. . . ."

Results. What had the Willkie trip accomplished? Its direct result on convention votes would not show for months --and may wear off anyway. The Idaho G.O.P. delegation will still be uninstructed;

Willkie had perhaps split the Utah delegation; friendly Washington is still uncertain. In Portland, he announced his entrance into the Oregon primary. The most significant result might follow his luncheon with California's Governor Earl Warren, the most potent Western GOPolitico. If Wendell Willkie could snare Earl Warren's support, the whole West might fall into his hands.

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