Cockiest Fellow

In a little more than two weeks, the Republican Party will gather itself together, go to Philadelphia, make up its mind. That mind was still wandering last week. All that seemed certain was: 1) Thomas E. Dewey and Robert Alphonso Taft would go to the convention with more delegates than anyone else; 2) neither would have enough to win on the first ballot. Plentiful were the guesses that a dark horse might romp away with the nomination. The most rambunctious dark horse, getting more rambunctious daily, was Wendell Willkie, onetime Democrat.

Willkie followers, mostly amateurs, went around breathing hard, with a hopeful gleam in their eyes. One thing that made them happy was a widespread feeling that the Dewey drive was slowing up. Here & there delegates openly avowed they would desert Dewey at the first chance. A Gallup Poll, which showed Dewey still far ahead in popular favor (56%). also showed that he had dropped six points in the last two weeks of May. This could not be credited entirely to the Willkie boom: many a crack had been taken at "Toothbrush Tom," and perhaps voters were getting cold feet about entrusting the threatened future of the U.S. to young Mr. Dewey.

Meanwhile, from a standing start in March, when he polled less than a 1% vote among Republican rank & file, Willkie had risen to 3% in early May; last week the Gallup Poll gave him 10%. On the strength of the surprising write-in vote (at last count more than 24,000) for Willkie in New Jersey's primary, observers predicted that Willkie might get the votes of half of New Jersey's 32 delegates (pledged to Dewey).

The Brooklyn Young Republican Club voted 24-to-11 to endorse Willkie in preference to Tom Dewey. In Illinois, Major Aaron K. Stiles (Stiles Waxt Thread), who recently retired as chairman of the Republican State Committee, leaped back as manager of a Willkie campaign. Along Philadelphia's swank Main Line, rough & ready Wendell Willkie had become the rage. William H. Harman, vice president of Baldwin Locomotive Works, and head of the Pennsylvania Willkie-for-President Club, declared: "I regard this as a semi-religious movement and we are trying to get it on a revival basis." A Chestnut Hill lady wrote the Philadelphia Inquirer: "To my way of thinking the Lord has sent us Wendell Willkie."

In Kansas, a somewhat baffled Alf Landon introduced the utilities executive as the "vigorous, energetic and amazing Wendell Willkie." Said Mr. Willkie to Alf Landon and a Kansas crowd: "I'm the cockiest fellow you ever saw. If you want to vote for me, fine. If you don't, go jump in the lake and I'm still for you."

While Tom Dewey, with bravado, was fumbling with the topic of foreign affairs, while Taft appeared to be running toward the wrong goal posts, Willkie seized the ball, flatly declared: ". . . England and France constitute our first line of defense against Hitler. ... It must therefore be to our advantage to help them in every way we can, short of declaring war." It was what many a U. S. citizen believed.

Said Columnist David Lawrence, edging out on a limb: "Notwithstanding the opposition of the Republican politicians, the nomination of Wendell Willkie, which was believed impossible a few weeks ago, is decidedly within the realm of a possibility today."

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