Young Guard

Out of the swarming lobbies of Cleveland's three big hotels, out of jammed restaurants and air-cooled cocktail bars, poured double-chinned politicians, deep-bosomed matrons wearing badges, pert blondes with white Dutch bonnets tilted upon their ringlets, marcelled brunettes with tipsy red cartwheel hats, broad-shouldered youngsters in panamas, pompous oldsters with sticks, all dressed for their brief appearance in the "national arena." The real work of the national arena was proceeding day & night not in the Convention Hall whither they were bound but in the hotels whence they departed.

In Cleveland's Statler Hotel, Senator Arthur Vandenberg, with his grey-streaked hair plastered like damp seaweed over his round dome, held court for politicians and newshawks. In the Hotel Cleveland's grand ballroom, Frank Knox's managers showed every consideration to anyone who strayed in upon their vast rose-colored carpet. Four floors above in a room at the end of a long corridor Senator Borah meditated and gave counsel to his acolytes, admitted one by one from the queue waiting without. But only a madhouse could have matched the Hotel Hollenden.

All day long men and women wearing sunflowers pushed their way through packed lobbies to visit the bevy of prairie state editors who were Alf Landon's managers: genial, secretive little Lacy Haynes. Kansas manager of the Kansas City Star; the Star's grave, scholarly Editor Henry Haskell; mild-faced Publisher Oscar Stauffer of the Arkansas City Daily Traveler; wise old Editor William Allen White of the Emporia Gazette; above all, huge-girthed, pink-faced Roy Roberts, managing editor of the Kansas City Star and oldtime Washington correspondent, who masterminded the enormously skillful publicity campaign which in a few months built up obscure Alf Landon as the likeliest GOPossibility. In the forefront of this group stood crinkly-haired John Daniel Miller Hamilton, 44-year-old Topeka lawyer, onetime Speaker of the Kansas Legislature, until last March assistant chairman of the Republican National Committee who, as manager of the Landon campaign, had more power than any GOP man old or young in Cleveland.

His power, however, was the power to lead, not to dictate. It lay in the fact that he was driving a vehicle which looked more like a bandwagon than any other in Cleveland. His job was to drive it invitingly through a crowd of Republicans whose greatest eagerness was for a quick lift toward success in November. Masterly was his success. Aided by tact, clean-cut good looks and animal vigor, he was a personal success with delegates and Press, blocked without offense the efforts of Old Guardsmen to Stop Landon. Instead of brushing oldsters aside, John Hamilton listened courteously to forlorn Old Guard bosses who had lost control of their delegations. Borah was humored on the platform, Herbert Hoover by a chance to speak. Hamilton himself, suffering not only from overwork but from a virulent attack of barber's itch which kept his chin in bandages, was a wreck, but he won a sweeping victory with a minimum of hurt feelings in the party, a maximum of harmony behind the candidate.

From the moment when he had delivered his effective nominating speech and staged the most dramatic nomination which Republicans have made in a generation, John Hamilton took over the machinery of the GOP. An immense job of reconstruction was before him. Next afternoon he began work at a snappy session of the new Republican National Committee. Gone from the committee were such old familiar faces as Walter Folger Brown of Ohio, David A. Reed of Pennsylvania, Mark L. Requa of California, Frank L. Smith of Illinois. In their places were Young Guardsmen. Without saying boo, the committee elected John Hamilton its chairman. Without ceremony he named an executive committee of 16 to meet this week in Topeka and begin overhauling the GOP. He made a speech of four sentences and the meeting was over: "There is no speech left in me, but we are entering here and now a hard and vigorous campaign. I ask only one thing. We are going to make lots of mistakes and many errors of judgment. All I ask is your indulgence in the hope for the election of a Republican President next fall, which I know we are going to do."

Political oldsters began to remark with surprise that they believed John D. M. Hamilton with his cleft chin might prove a worthy match for James A. Farley with his double chin. Within 48 hours the two were at each other's throats.

Said Mr. Farley: "This is the weakest ticket ever nominated in the history of the party and it is doomed to overwhelming defeat. Their candidate was, until he was lifted to eminence by the familiar building-up process, perhaps one of the least known of the governors of the 48 states. . . ."

Retorted Mr. Hamilton: "Mr. Farley is, of course, both frightened and disappointed. He is clearly dissatisfied both with the Republican candidate for the Presidency and with the Republican platform. That was one of the purposes of the Cleveland Convention. . . ."

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