The Election: The Last Seven Days

It was as if every instrument in the band was playing at once. In the huge cacophony the deep notes of the melody were almost drowned out. From platform, press and radio voices roared, barked, shrilled, pleaded. Newspapers carried full-page ads: Wendell Willkie Reneges. . . . This Is the Last Chance to Think. . . . Today I Am No Longer Free. … 7 Voted for the Beguiling Voice. . . . Why We Want Willkie. . . . This Is a Crusade. . . . To Those Who Still Have an Open Mind. . . .

The U. S. people, strained, distraught, almost beyond the point of listening, opened their mouths and made a Noise. It was the last seven days.

The Democratic candidate archly observed: “This is a funny campaign.” The Republican candidate retorted grimly: “That is a flippant remark.” Franklin Roosevelt’s looks belied his words: he was grey-faced, his eyes tired, his voice frequently ragged. If either of the two candidates was having any fun, it was not Franklin Roosevelt but Wendell Willkie.

In those last seven days the incredible Willkie train ended its 18,759-mile run. It had been rolling for 51 days. At week’s beginning it was in Ohio. Almost invariably behind schedule, it had pulled out of Jackson on time, leaving behind two court reporters and seven newsmen, who pursued it wildly by automobile. Wendell Willkie, nearsighted without his spectacles, had appeared once on the rear platform and to their frantic shouting and waving flung out his arms, thinking they were enthusiastic Republicans saying goodby.

Through black, smutty West Virginia mountains the train had chuffed into Charleston, where a raucous crowd listened to the candidate’s strained voice: “We’re going to win. Write it down.” Earnestly he had exhorted: “Help us, help us, help us.” In Baltimore crowds had packed the Fifth Regiment Armory to hear him speak of “increased business enterprise, job opportunities for our people.” In Wilmington next day he had exulted: “I never felt better in my life.” That morning he was sure he saw triumph in the sky.

In New Jersey, the last leg of the great political caravan, he had ridden into Elizabeth with confetti from New Brunswick still in his hair. He was the same confident Wendell Willkie who had said before his nomination: “I am the cockiest fellow you ever saw.” Saturday noon, the train had rolled into Penn Station in New York City, and stopped at last. That night, more than 22,000 supporters jammed Madison Square Garden in the most tremendous rally veteran reporters had ever seen, and Willkie raised his arms, to receive an ovation that transcended everything that had gone before.

For twelve deafening minutes he stood on a table before the roaring crowd. When they finally let him speak, his voice, with the flat, deep quality of a bass horn, touched off one outburst after another. Item by item he pilloried the acts of the Roosevelt Administration, interjecting a thunderous refrain: “That is the record of the New Deal. It is not the method of Democracy. I want to unite all people in America. I have no prejudice against any. I want to unite labor, industry and agriculture. I want to unite Catholic and Protestant, Jew and Gentile.” The crowd, waving U. S. flags, chanted again as in Philadelphia: “We want Willkie!” During one interlude of cheering, Maestro Walter Damrosch, sitting in a box, jumped up, and tried with husky voice and tears in eyes to sing My Country, ‘Tis of Thee. Willkie finished his speech. The crowd rose to the national anthem, while the spotlight held their candidate in its silver glare.

The same day that newsmen chased the Willkie train across Ohio, Franklin Roosevelt set forth in earnest as a candidate for a Third Term. That night he was in Boston. At the Boston Garden the crowd was apathetic. The hands of Franklin Roosevelt, the great organist, fumbled with the keys. He looked very tired.

Back he went to Washington, at week’s end sallied forth again, this time to Brooklyn’s Academy of Music. This time the Roosevelt touch was sure. He flayed the “unholy alliance” of elements which had united against him. Quoting Philadelphia Lawyer Robert McCracken as saying that only the paupers supported the Roosevelt candidacy, he cried: “These paupers are only the millions . . . who have helped build this country.”

The train took him north to upstate New York. In Buffalo his reception was tumultuous. Thence he went to Cleveland for the climactic rally of his brief campaign. For the first time he sounded angry and very earnest, as if suddenly aware that it was all too possible for him to be defeated.

The people of Cleveland had lined the streets five deep to watch the candidate ride by. Nearly 40,000 had squeezed into Cleveland’s vast Auditorium. They had cheered their hearts out, cheered even after he started to speak. Then they had sat spellbound while Roosevelt, fatigue written on his face, struck with every weapon at his foes. There for the first time he gave tacit recognition to the Third Term issue, asked for a chance “to stick it out” for “four more years.” He promised: “When that term is over there will be another President of the U. S.” He had told them of a renascent U. S.

which he could see: “An America devoted to our freedom—unified by tolerance, unified by religious faith, a people consecrated to … peace. . . .” The rallies had ended. But talk still filled the air; radios still blasted on; newspapers loosed their final barrage. Democrats blossomed out in Philadelphia wearing buttons inscribed: “Another Pauper for Roosevelt.” Diviners peered into the entrails of fishes, gazed at the geese in the sky, studied statistics, made Delphic guesses: Roosevelt (or Willkie).

The President had gone to Hyde Park and had spent the day before election touring his home counties. When a crowd showered him with rice he had remarked: “I feel like a bridegroom.” He breathed over the radio an Election Eve last word of idealistic faith in the vitality of democracy. Willkie, who had taken Sunday off and gone to church, went on the air for an even later last word, a husky plea for “the most sacred cause in all the world.” Politicians in back streets sorted out little stacks of greenbacks for the local workers, got ready to move in on the election in their own professional way. The U. S.

people, waiting for the polls to open, suddenly became aware that the tumult and the shouting had ceased.