Razors in the Air

Wendell Willkie has pledged himself to campaign on issues, not personalities. His Democratic opponent has implied that he is going to conduct his political campaign without making any political speeches. Last week, while Franklin Roosevelt was looking the other way, Secretary of the Interior Ickes let fly with an old-fashioned barroom blast at the Republican candidate ("the simple, barefoot Wall Street lawyer"-- TIME, Aug. 26). Then, while Wendell Willkie kept his eyes strictly front, three hatchet men let fly at Mr. Ickes. Only conclusion that plain citizens could draw was that the lofty level of the 1940 campaign would be restricted for the use of nominees only: for the rest, the air would soon be filled with razors, hatchets and shillelaghs.

Sharpest tomahawk to be flipped in Mr. Ickes' direction came from Scripps-Howard Columnist Westbrook Pegler, who devoted three columns to Mr. Ickes and what Pegler called the "Social-Democratic party." Quick to claim his scalp, Columnist Pegler whooped : "In this world every guy has a sign on at least one other guy, and Harold Ickes is my guy." The Pegler war dance: ". . . Mr. Ickes is so cheap that when he gets sick or wants a rest he muscles into the Naval Hospital. . . . When he pulled that crack . . . about how Willkie made his money . . . I wanted to ask . . . how Ickes first got into the chips. . . . He said I had been a sports writer. . . . The answer is that he was a sports writer himself . . . but such a punk that he never made the grade. . . . Ickes has been extremely sensitive . . . but when he is doing the punching he draws the foul line down around the kneecaps. . . . Impecunious Johnny One-Suit . . . proud to collaborate with the hoodlum government of Chicago. . . ."

Columnist Pegler's column mate Hugh S. Johnson moved in, grunting heavily: ". . . A 30-minute spray of typical Ickiness. . . . A barrage of gas, mud and fireworks. . . ."

Hatchet Man No. 3 was New Hampshire's Senator Styles Bridges, who made suggestively scalp-knife noises by explaining that the Republican National Committee could not afford to answer Secretary Ickes on the radio because it was "refusing to chisel funds from New Deal business victims with a campaign handbook racket. . . ." Getting worked up to his war dance, Senator Bridges ululated: "Who is this Ickes who talks so big--at a safe distance--about Hitler? In his own right Ickes is a Hitler in short pants. . . . A professional rabble rouser. . . . A political hatchet man. . . . Like Hitler, he is a common scold puffed up by high office. . . . Who is Ickes to make faces at Hitler? Doesn't he own a mirror?"

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