Young Republicans

In the big, airy ballroom on the tenth floor of Washington's New Willard Hotel assembled for two days last week some 400 men and women. A few were Negro. Many were young. All were Republican. They had been called together by energetic Robert Hendry Lucas, executive director of the Republican National Committee, for a party "fight talk." They nominally paid their own expenses from every State in the Union to be inculcated with the Hoover brand of Republicanism. As a matter of practical politics, their rally marked the Republican National Committee's first mass gesture toward re-nominating and re-electing the President. The defensive, almost apologetic quality of the G. O. P. campaign next year was foreshadowed in every speech.

For all its campus mannerisms, its enthusiasm and noise, this mixed crowd was not collegiate at heart. Director Lucas, who views higher education with political alarm, had carefully picked his Young Republican delegates mostly from petty jobholders. Last April he said: "Many of our universities and colleges are literally saturated with Radicalism. Text books, classroom lectures and private conversations ... are antagonistic to the traditional policies of the Republican party. ... As it is hopeless to expect a reform ... the approach to the young man and woman must be made independent of our educational system."

The program conformed to this concept of youthful intelligence. In trite partisan speeches, Democrats and Progressives were flayed, the Republican tariff extolled, the Depression minimized, the Hoover policies lauded. Prohibition was silenced as an issue. Little or no effort was made by the oldsters who ran the meetings to freshen up political thought for the youngsters.

Keynoted Senator Simeon Davison Fess,

G. 0. P. chairman: "When the American people realize what President Hoover has done for them in the present emergency, he will not only be unanimously renominated but he will be overwhelmingly reelected. . . . [applause and cheers] . . . We should be thankful we have at the head of the Government a man who is the embodiment of all that is capable, strong, patient, sympathetic, protective, conservative, purposeful and beneficial. . . ."

Secretary of Agriculture Arthur Mastick Hyde set off a ten-minute riot of applause, when, coiling his long, lanky legs around the microphone stand, he declared: "Do you know what a 'yes but' man is? He's the fellow who says 'Yeah, the program's all right but--,' 'Sure, the President's O.K. but--.' We've got several of those fellows in the party and before you go home I wish you'd stop in at the War Department and get an armful of polo mallets. Then, whenever you meet one of those fellows, use the mallets. Let's have no buts about it. The President IS all right. ... I doubt if any man has ever been subjected to the malice organized to the nth degree which he has, but he has never raised his voice in complaint. . . . There was a time in my life when I was a Progressive but I can't understand what there is progressive about running around in circles and singing hymns of hate." Quoting Kipling's "If" at length Secretary Hyde concluded: "That's Herbert Hoover, your president and mine!"

Introduced by Director Lucas as "well fitted to discuss any phase of politics," John P. Davis, young Massachusetts Negro, rose to remark: "With its right hand dripping blood, the Democratic party lynched Negroes body and soul in the South and with its left hand attempted to lead us to the polls in the North. Success of the Republican party will be in direct proportion to the co-operation you white Republicans seek with colored Republicans."

After a White House reception the Young Republicans concluded their rally with a four-hour banquet and dance ("Good eats and dancing for those who indulge," promised the invitation). The young couples were slow in mixing though Director Lucas worked hard to make the affair pleasantly informal. As everybody was having ice cream and cake, the band, by some awful mistake, played the Brown Derby's "Sidewalks of New York" which all lustily sang.

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