Wanna Get Slugged?

The G.O.P. presidential contest was beginning to get rough.

Candidate Harold Stassen, galloping through the South, took a passing swipe at Candidate Bob Taft. In New Orleans, obviously referring to Taft for his cautious position on foreign aid, Stassen chomp-chided: "I plead with the members of our Republican party not to become afflicted with a chronic fixation of opposition."

Then Stassen turned his attention to Tom Dewey, who so far has even declined to admit that he is a candidate. Stassen had already taken one crack at Dewey. "There is nothing in America's political history," he had said, "to recommend an evasive policy, followed at an eleventh hour by a 'me too' answer."

The Correct Thing. In Milwaukee, with his eyes on Wisconsin's April primary, Stassen swung again, including the G.O.P. "presidential pickers" in his haymaker. "It is their view," he said, "that the correct thing to do is to go through very elaborate operations of looking the other way; that the difficult, hard, controversial issues of the day should be avoided and the people should not be told our views upon them; that a long vacation trip should be taken admiring mountains and lakes and rivers and flowers and crops and livestock. These riders of regal reaction hold that a position of photogenic availability should be maintained until such time as a key group of their men, with delegates in their pockets, make hard, tough, secret deals for a nomination."

Tom Dewey did grapple with one issue this week. He also continued to take trips. Last week, he added to the list of things he admired: the wintry hills of Vermont and New Hampshire; the old Dewey family home in Lebanon, N.H., now occupied by Farmer Daniel E. Lahaye; Mrs. Lahaye's range; the Lahayes' year-old daughter ("She's as cute as a bug"); and the snow-covered New Hampshire cemetery where the Dewey ancestors are buried. "Old cemeteries fascinate me," he said.

Dewey was in New Hampshire for the dignified purpose of boosting a money-raising campaign for a crippled children's hospital.

The Fouling Practice. But for all his dignity, Tom Dewey also had his sleeves rolled up. He had given Stassen a haughty punch in the nose for the needling which the Stassen forces had been giving him. He had authorized an aide to state: "The Governor never criticizes other members of his party publicly. He does not follow the practice of those who foul their own nests."

And some of Dewey's unpublicized views were well known to newsmen who cover Albany. From the Dewey camp came opinions which had a decidedly knuckleduster quality. The candidacy of Ike Eisenhower? The Dewey camp hoped that the country could be "delivered" from him. Taft? An intelligent fellow, but a "most stubborn man." Convention delegates would realize that good old Bob Taft would never make a good President.

Taft so far had kept his views of rival Republicans to himself. He was busy working over Harry Truman.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.