Willkie aides seek unity
Urge him to endorse promptly, cordially the Republican nominee and platform
By Arthur Krock
Chicago, Illinois – (June 25)
In the drive for unity which is in progress here by Republican leaders who feel it will be necessary in the campaign to make up for a certain lack of enthusiasm over the prospective presidential candidate, members of the late movement on behalf of the renomination of Wendell L. Willkie are conspicuous.
Among these are men and women who concentrated their energies for months, after Mr. Willkie decided to seek the Presidency once more, in advancing his prospects. They formed what organization they could, arranged for widespread publicity and, in the face of growing apathy toward Mr. Willkie in the national financial and business communities, raised as much as they could of the modest sum which was spent for him before the Wisconsin primaries ended Mr. Willkie’s renomination effort.
With some exceptions, most of these cheerfully accepted what they some time ago conceived to be the inevitable selection of Governor Thomas E. Dewey to head the 1944 Republican ticket and have since urged Mr. Willkie to do the same unless he finds in the platform some major position which he cannot in conscience espouse. They expect to find no such positive bar in the platform as it was outlined to them today.
They have reminded Mr. Willkie of what he said at St. Louis in the speech with which he formally opened his renomination attempt. He said that, even if he had generally agreed with President Roosevelt’s politics and actions, which he emphasized he did not, he would hold that a change of government was vital to the progress of the country and the world. The only way to bring about this change, they have argued, is to elect the nominees of this convention, and therefore they are urging Mr. Willkie to endorse them promptly and cordially after he has had a full opportunity to examine the proceedings.
It is accepted here that Mr. Willkie’s chief anxiety is over the international plank, which has now been drafted in secret by a subcommittee headed by Senator Warren Austin (R-VT) and has the unanimous support of that subcommittee. Mr. Willkie’s friends on the ground here are inclined to think that it will authorize this convention’s presidential candidate to adopt the foreign policies for which Mr. Willkie has long contended.
Mr. Austin has expressed himself as finding it “acceptable” to him, and this has encouraged the workers for Willkie-Dewey unity because the Vermont Senator was in many respects the most outspoken Republican advocate of intervention and has been in favor of the broadest form of post-war cooperation for security by the United States. They reason that if Mr. Austin, “who risked his political neck,” can accept the plank, Mr. Willkie should be able to do the same. The Vermont Senator, it is recalled, candidly accepted Lend-Lease, which he supported, as an act of war and said he favored it despite the clear risks of war involvement, almost a unique Republican attitude at that time.
Efforts today to discover the details of what has passed between these missionaries of unity and the candidate for whom they labored so diligently were unsuccessful. Nor could it be learned whether they have gathered from their former leader whether he is likely to be persuaded by their arguments if he finds in the platform no retrogression toward what is newly called “nationalism.”
It seems certain, however, that if Mr. Willkie withholds his support of the platform and the nominees for any length of time, this group will not wait to announce theirs.
Among those who worked with Mr. Willkie to the end of his renomination campaign, and are now urging unity, it is understood that the following are included: John W. Hanes, his financial chairman and general economic adviser, and John Cowles and Gardner Cowles Jr., his close personal friends, who were also associated in the management of his interests at Philadelphia in 1940.