National Affairs: Ears Back

Meeting in Chicago to hear the fact-findings of 35 subcommittees, 145 members of Dr. Glenn Frank’s committee, whose job is to draft a Republican program for 1940, found their liveliest inspiration in a statue. Presented by the committee’s secretary-pressagent, Journalist William Hard, to G. 0. P. Chairman John D. M. Hamilton, it portrayed a streamlined elephant, charging and trumpeting, tusks up, ears back, tail flying, was inscribed, “Let’s G. O. Places.” In August 1927, Calvin Coolidge, summering in the Black Hills, renounced third-term aspirations by handing out a little slip of paper, reading “I do not choose to run.” Last week, on the eleventh anniversary of that occasion, Third Termite Charles Michelson, grizzled pressagent of the Democratic National Committee, declared: “. . . Franklin Roosevelt would take a case of hives rather than four more years of the headache that being President means. It will not be an easy choice, at that. . . . The man in the White House is not the kind of individual who would let his personal desires interfere with what seemed to him to be his duty.”

¶ Senator Smathers of New Jersey: “I have but one political ambition left … to help elect President Roosevelt for a third term. . . . There is no one big enough and strong enough to carry on for him. . . .”

¶ Democratic Senator Burke of Nebraska (advocate of a single six-year term for Presidents): “He [Franklin Roosevelt] thinks he could carry out his program better than anyone else. In this situation there will always be people around who will urge him to seek a third term.”

¶ In Philadelphia, a young woman carrying a babe in arms handed a grubby $1 bill to Chief Investigator George Dooley of the Registration Commission, announced: “I took a dollar from a man to change my registration to Republican. It’s dirty money. I can’t keep it.”

¶ Statesman J. Hamilton Lewis, whose elegant pink beard has grown grey in 25 years during which he served Illinois off & on in the U. S. Senate, announced he would retire from Congress next year. (His term does not expire till 1943.)

¶ In Hollywood, Republic Pictures announced a cinema starring Gene Autry titled Hillbilly Governor based on the musical campaign of W. Lee (“Pass the Biscuits, Pappy”) O’Daniel, Governor-Nominate of Texas.

¶ Oklahoma’s State Democratic nominees, meeting in Oklahoma City to plan their autumn campaign, adopted a plan for motor caravans with hillbilly bands.

¶ Officials of the Jewish War Veterans of the U. S., in Detroit to arrange their national convention, declined an offer from Ford Motor Co. of automobiles for the use of delegates, called on Henry Ford to reject the Supreme Order of the German Eagle awarded him by Hitler’s Reich last fortnight on his 75th birthday. (Same day, Mr. Ford & wife sailed on a lake freighter for a month at his Huron Mountain estate near Marquette, Mich.)

¶ The Motion Picture Democratic Committee (Dashiell Hammett, Paul Muni, Miriam Hopkins, Fredric March, Melvyn Douglas, Donald Ogden Stewart et al.) telegraphed to Republican Governor Frank Merriam: “FOUR YEARS AGO WE . . . HAD TO CONTRIBUTE A DAY’S PAY TO YOUR CAMPAIGN FUND TO SAVE CALIFORNIA

[from Upton Sinclair’s EPIC]. WE ARE NOW CALLING ON YOU TO CONTRIBUTE A DAY’S PAY TO OUR COMMITTEE FOR THE SAME PURPOSE.” Their candidate for Governor: Upton Sinclair’s 1934 lieutenant, Culbert L. Olson.

¶ In Alaska: 1) Harold Le Clair Ickes & Bride accepted carved totem pole pins from Indian schoolchildren at Ketchikan; 2) Senator Reynolds of North Carolina slew a 3,000-lb. bull walrus which, wounded, charged his hunting party’s boats off Wainwright.

¶ Senator Norris of Nebraska: “Felix Frankfurter is the most outstanding personality to continue and carry out the judicial philosophy of these great statesmen [the late Associate Justices Holmes and Cardozo]. The common people of America have faith in President Roosevelt. He will perpetuate that faith if he places Mr. Frankfurter on the Supreme bench.”