National Affairs: Man in the Mountains

Last week G. O. P.’s Wendell Willkie got some more rest. He lolled on the lawns and terraces of the famous Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs. He flew over the tawny Colorado Rockies (from Central City, where he attended a frontier music festival, to Denver, where he chinned with stockmen and sugar-beet growers). He puttered around the International Typographical Union’s stock farm, chumming up to Holstein-Friesian cattle. He chatted with the San Francisco Chronicle’s bumptious young Editor Paul Smith. He talked campaign strategy with Colorado’s Governor Carr, Iowa’s farm-minded Governor Wilson, National Chairman Joe Martin (by telephone). One night 350 tourists, mostly teachers and young professionals, raised so much we-want-Willkie that their hero had to leave his sixth-floor suite, go down to the Broadmoor dining room and give them a handshake apiece.

At the Broadmoor, and even while flying (see cut), Candidate & Mrs. Willkie spent much time beside a portable radio, listening to the Democrats being whooped up in Chicago (see p. 11). Unlike many another listener, Wendell Willkie was not bored. Having predicted his own nomination on the sixth ballot in Philadelphia, Mr. Willkie predicted Franklin Roosevelt’s renomination on the first ballot in Chicago. But until “we-want-Roosevelt” chants began to liven the broadcasts, Candidate Willkie was glum. When the news came, he happily puffed a cigaret: “Boy, I think my worries are over.”

People wondering how the campaign battle lines would shape got one indication from Wendell Willkie: that he wants to have it out, toe-to-toe, with Franklin Roosevelt. Twice last week, Candidate Willkie came out slugging. First blow was in reply to Keynoter Bankhead’s suggestion that Mr. Willkie, his power-company past, the Republicans, and the boom-mad ’20s were all tied up in one dirty package. Said Nominee Willkie: “I found myself in complete agreement with Speaker Bankhead in his condemnation of the speculative orgies of the 1920s. … I have always thought that such speculation was to be condemned, whether it was in the securities of utility companies, vending-machine companies … or gambling in . . . German marks.” Correspondents instantly remembered that Franklin Roosevelt in 1928 was briefly involved in an ill-starred vending-machine venture, had previously dabbled in German exchange during the post-war inflation.

The Willkie reaction to Franklin Roosevelt’s dark and lofty acceptance of Nomination III (see p. 9) was on a higher plane. Candidate Willkie grinned down at 400 earthy cattlemen, sheep raisers, herders and employes in the Denver stockyards, said: “I shall make no pretense of noble motives. … I frankly sought the opportunity to run for President on the Republican ticket because I have some deep-seated convictions I want to present . . . carry into execution. I know something about the democratic way of life . . . from experience. . . . I learned about civil liberties, not in textbooks, but in a hard struggle for survival. I know your aspirations and your hopes, because you’re the kind of people I grew up with. If you elect me President, you will have someone who understands the everyday problems of everyday people. I have lived them, and I glory in the fact that my route was the hard, not the soft way.”