Willkie Finds the Road

Wendell Willkie turned homeward from his Northwest campaign swing. The real news of his trip was that he had found in the West a road to Republican unity.

In Iowa, he told 200 Iowa newspapermen that the differences in the Republican party were minor. Said he: "There has been some misconception of what is Republican opinion. All day, beginning at breakfast, I have talked with Republicans. I have not talked with any Republican who has any notion that the party should represent narrow nationalism, economic toryism, or abandonment of any social advances.

"They want just the opposite."

To cap this discovery, Wendell Willkie then went so far as to praise a speech made by Alf Landon of Kansas, longtime anti-Willkieite, as "one of the most provocative and constructive talks made by any Republican during the past few months. It took a great deal of courage to make it."

The Willkie week:

> In Portland, Ore., though well aware that nobody supposes he has barnstormed for his health through 45 States in the past twelvemonth, he made formal announcement that he is a candidate for the GOPresidential nomination. > He disposed of another ritualistic prerequisite for election by being inducted, feather bonnet and all, as "Flying Eagle," into the Blackfeet Indian tribe at Great Falls, Mont.

> He appointed Portland's Ralph Harlan Cake, Oregon Republican national committeeman, as his preconvention campaign manager.

If Willkie is nominated, Cake will at once become Republican national chairman. A grey-haired, lively, amiable man of 52, Ralph Cake has a deceptively easygoing manner. President of Portland's Equitable Savings & Loan Association, onetime president of the U.S. Savings & Loan League, he has shown himself to be a shrewd, hard-driving lawyer and businessman.

Ralph Cake was sickly in youth, but he followed Teddy Roosevelt's example, fought his way to health on a ranch. He started his own political career only in 1940 when his old friend Senator Charles McNary persuaded him to become a candidate for national committeeman. Oregon elects its national party committeemen by popular vote. Cake stumped every county in the State, won by a vote almost as large as that of his three opponents combined. Father of two, he likes to read history and biography, hunt deer and bear in Oregon's Cascade Mountains. National Willkie headquarters will be set up promptly in New York City, announced Manager Cake, with branch organizations in all 48 States.

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