The Undefeated

The scene opened like a scene in Shakespeare. In the foreground were the citizens, restless and murmuring. They clustered against the marble walls, around the useless columns of the Senate caucus chamber. The huge room, musty, ill-lighted, full of rococo carvings and decorations, looked like a stage set for a Shakespearean stock company. As you went in, you could see only the citizens, crowding together, trying to see over the heads of the people in front, wisecracking about what was happening. There were 1,200 of them in a room built to hold 500. The blur of their comments rose in the crowded air, as in those Shakespearean scenes where First Citizen turns to Second Citizen and asks him--how now--what he thinks of the hero.

The man they had come to hear was no spellbinding Mark Antony. Hefty, good-natured, middle-aged--his 49th birthday was a week away--Wendell Willkie faced the sharp-eyed committee as the defeated candidate for the Presidency. More than anyone, Wendell Willkie had warned the U. S. against the Third Term, which the U. S. had decided to take anyhow, and against such concentration of power as the Lend-Lease Bill would now confer on the President. He had been defeated; and as he waited for the hearing to begin, it seemed that he might face another and perhaps final defeat if the Republican Party -- whose professional politicians were united against the Lend-Lease Bill--rejected his counsel and his leadership. To his rival Robert Taft, the rejection was complete. Willkie, said he, could not speak for the Republican Party.

There were signs of fatigue around his eyes. There was none in his manner. Through a hot half-hour the citizens stirred restlessly while his prepared statement was mimeographed; he talked quietly with the Senators near him about his trip from Europe and the war. The crowd was miscellaneous: Senators' wives, mink-coated and opinionated; Washington's isolationists, scornful and expectant; friends of committee members, waiting for their champions to tear down Willkie's testimony; plain citizens, patient and interested.

Three photographers crawled precariously out on a ledge, 40 feet above the floor, for angle shots. (First Citizen: "My God, they're coming out of the -woodwork.") The talk rose in speculation about Willkie's future ("The Administration will ignore him, and so will the Republicans in Congress"--The New Republic), and about his relationship with the President who had defeated him ("The aim of the Roosevelt-Willkie-Bullitt combination ... is for a joint British-American war against the Soviet Union"--Daily Worker). But in a Washington that is far more conscious of politics than it is of the war, most of the talk of citizen to citizen raged on the question of Willkie and the Republican Party ("We leave the barefoot boy of Elwood . . . as a barefaced fraud"--Chicago Tribune).

Explanation. The mimeographed statements were handed to committee members; the citizens grew quiet. Hunched over the witness table, reading calmly, Willkie stated the reasons for his qualified support of the Lend-Lease Bill. Two great alternatives, he said, lie before the American people. One is that the U. S. should withdraw into itself, build up its own defenses, and become so vast a military power that no aggressor would strike. This action, he believed, would destroy U. S. freedom and result in war--the dictators "would so cramp us and hinder us and infringe upon us that we would be forced to fight."

The other alternative "recognizes the interdependence, not only of men, but of ideas and principles." Totalitarian methods of trade can be avoided only when there is a large international area of freedom; aid to Britain really means, not to work for Britain, but with Britain in defense of an area of freedom.

When the Administration offered the Lend-Lease Bill, the biggest shock to the U. S. came from its impenetrable vagueness. The big shock in Wendell Willkie's testimony came from the crystal clarity of his proposals. The electrifying moment of the afternoon came when he proposed: the U. S. should provide Britain with five to ten destroyers a month, should make available patrol bombers, without resorting to legal ruses, and merchant ships, without time-wasting auctions, as is now the procedure. And because it would unite the people, he asked the majority in Congress to work with the minority in ironing out disputed points, since doing so would remove the fears of those sincerely alarmed over the broad grant of power.

Crossfire. The defeated candidate had read for half an hour. The Senators sat silent; only one ardent supporter broke the rules by applauding. From some citizens previously opposed there were nods of tentative approval ("For ourselves, we believe the lend-lease bill is unnecessary, but . . . the former Republican Presidential nominee has shown . . . political courage, sincerity, high-minded non-partisanship"--Providence Evening Bulletin). Chairman George asked the Senators for their questions. Senator Harrison had none. Senator Connally had none. Senator Johnson of California, 74, a lifelong isolationist, shook his head sadly. "No questions."

It was Senator Vandenberg's turn. The cagey Michigan Senator, an isolationist who had recently shifted to aid to Britain, measured his words: ". . . Is this all-out-aid-to-England policy . . . a policy which, if necessary . . . takes us into war in order to keep England afloat?"

"In my judgment," Willkie said, "there is only one body in the United States that has the power to declare war, and if I were a member of Congress I never would vote in favor of a declaration of war until the American public sentiment was so overwhelmingly for it that I did not think--consistently with my obligations to my constituents--I could do otherwise."

Willkie testified easily, lounging in his chair. He avoided the baiting, the imputation of motives, the ready vilification, that have been the curse and almost the destruction of Washington debates on policy. The notes of approval were growing stronger ("A -very big man, one of the authentic leaders in ' this country"--New York World-Telegram).

It was Senator Clark's turn. Ruddy-cheeked, merciless in cross-examination, possessed of "a genius for public rudeness," Bennett Champ Clark hurled his questions in a strident voice' that made the microphones ring. ". . . Now, Mr. Willkie, on your tour of Great Britain did you learn anything as to the British desires on the question of naval convoys, let us say?"

"I do not recall particularly anybody expressing a desire."

"You spoke about such things?"

Willkie said: "I spoke my mind, yes. I usually do."

The Senator tried to draw him out on the situation if Britain fell after getting U. S. bombers. Willkie said: "If by sending bombers we were to help weaken Germany, we might still be in a stronger position than if we kept bombers."

Clark cried triumphantly: "Suppose the Germans got our bombers and used them against us?"

"If all the hazards of war go against us, we will get whipped."

"You have flown halfway around the world to advise this committee. . . ."

"I did not fly halfway around the world to advise this committee or anybody else. Let us be fair in this. . . ."

Years in the Senate, where his orations ordinarily begin "Mr. President," suddenly trapped Senator Clark; turning to Wendell Willkie, he roared into the microphone, "Mr. President. . . ."

The crowd burst into applause. Clark stopped, flushed. Willkie laughed. "Senator," he said, "you merely speak of what should have been." Senator George rapped for order above the laughter, warned the citizens about applauding. After a moment he added, kindly, "But you may laugh if you want to."

Clark next attacked Willkie's campaign speeches. Had Willkie not said: "But I cannot follow the President in his conduct of foreign affairs?" Had he not said: "The President's attacks on foreign powers have been useless and dangerous?"

"Sure; those are the words." Willkie protested that he did not want to rake up old disputes; that hot words were spoken in the campaign; that he did not want to give the impression that he was afraid to answer, but he could see no good in going over the old quarrels. He broke out: "I struggled as hard as I could to beat Franklin Roosevelt and I tried to keep from pulling my punches. He was elected President. He is my President now. I expect to disagree with him whenever I please."

When Clark sat down, old Carter Glass had a question to ask Mr. Willkie. Just one. "Do you still believe," he asked in his twisted whisper, "in the provision of the Virginia Bill of Rights which provides against cruel and unusual punishment?"

As the hearings ended, the citizens crowded around Willkie, policemen forced a path for him to the sanctuary of Senator George's office. The talk rose again as First Citizen and Second Citizen compared notes ("An extraordinary example of self-sacrifice and courage"--New York Sun. "[He] is turning out to be one of the most undefeated Presidential losers in our time"--Christian Science Monitor).

So Wendell Willkie justified his trip to England and his stand. On the cold morning, 21 days before, when the Yankee Clipper carried him from LaGuardia Field, there had been no expectation of such a momentous outcome. From the moment he landed on British soil, through his tireless scouting of the island, through his return and his triumph at the hearing, the story of Wendell Willkie gathered and sustained world significance.

There was no letdown after the hearing. At 10 o'clock that night a White House car carried him to the executive entrance; he stood for a moment in the deep shadows of the building, whooshed a tired sigh, and stepped inside for a two-hour conference with the President. He brushed off questions as he came out ("It was a very lively discussion"); denied that he would take a post in the Administration ("Don't talk about that. On my part there has never been a suggestion of that kind"), and hurried back to Manhattan.

There he spoke at the Lincoln Day dinner. At another, in Washington, Tom Dewey surprised everyone by giving his qualified approval of the amended Lend-Lease Bill. Preceded by many a devout reference to Abraham Lincoln, by a speech by Clare Boothe on the fatal inconsistencies of isolationism which Columnist Raymond Clapper called the frankest and most brutal in the history of Party gatherings, Wendell Willkie grew evangelical on the Party's future. He cried that it had its great opportunity: "If the Republican Party now, tonight and tomorrow and the next day, begins to preach a positive doctrine, if we begin to say that here are free men like ourselves struggling to preserve themselves; here is a war that will determine the course of American history; here is a war the outcome of which will determine whether or not the standard of living of every man in the world will be raised or lowered; here is an international situation which by reason of its very chaos offers to America the opportunity for world leadership. ..."

The letters poured in at the rate of 2,000 to 3,000 a day. He hurried back to Washington to make two off-the-record speeches at the Women's and Men's National Press Clubs. Plans for his future bubbled over in the writings of the columnists. He was urged again to take a defense post. It was suggested that he might go to China and also look over the unoccupied areas of the country, as he had looked over Britain. P:He said that he wanted to lay down "a barrage of ideas" throughout the U. S. He also wanted to take a quick trip to his Indiana farm, from which, last week, twelve hogs were stolen. Busy, active, turning ideas over in his mind, or turning them down, his defeat seemed a long way behind him. In the Republican Party there were still conflicts on the surface and below it. But his party critics could offer no such array of possibilities as had opened up for Wendell Willkie.

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