Pre-Convention Score

Last week the Republican Presidential preference primaries of 1936 were concluded with New Jersey. Not counting six States in which no serious Republican candidate was officially entered, the score of victory stood:

P: William Franklin Knox won Illinois. P: Alfred Mossman Landon won New Jersey.

P: William Edgar Borah won Wisconsin, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Oregon, West Virginia.

More important in politics than the score of victory is the score of defeat. By that score Senator Borah was practically eliminated as a candidate. He lost Ohio almost 2-to-1 to Favorite Son Robert A. Taft, and last week he lost New Jersey to Governor Landon by 4-to-1. These two losses outbalanced a half-victory in Wisconsin, a moral victory in Illinois and four victories by default in other states.

Since Publisher Knox suffered a moral defeat in Illinois, the real victor of the primary season was Governor Landon, whose half-defeat in California was offset by the margin of his victory in New Jersey. Last week as Landonites went about preening themselves, Postmaster General James Aloysius Farley mounted a platform in Grand Rapids, Mich, to crack their candidate as follows:

"Talk about reckless experiments in government, which is one of our critics' favorite charges against the Administration! Could there be a more perilous experiment than putting the complex and highly delicate control of our government into the hands of a man destitute of experience and devoid of practice in national, still less in international matters?

"You know Roosevelt. He has been in public life from early manhood. What do you know about the individual who now appears as the most probable candidate of the minority party?"

Next day Representative Dewey Short, only Republican from Missouri in Congress, rose in the House to answer Mr. Farley:

"He asks who in the world was Alf Landon and who knew anything about him two years ago. I retort, who ever heard of Jim Farley two years ago?

"Of course we knew he was a prize fight promoter in New York. . . .

"I admit that Alf Landon was born of humble but of honest parentage. He was not born of an illustrious family whose name is known. He was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth and educated by private tutors and when he goes fishing, being so plain and simple, he gets a cane pole and a can of worms instead of taking a trip on a million dollar yacht of a social highlight.

"Perhaps Mr. Farley thinks that because the people out in the Midwest live in the prairie states, as did Lincoln, who was never heard of very much before his elevation to the Presidency they are all dumbbells, freaks, rubes and hicks. . . ."

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