The Landon Week

Alf Landon's closest approach to a revelation of his political views last week was in a telegram to a First Voters League in Manhattan. Observed the Republican Presidential nominee: "If we spend what we do not have today, we must pay the bill tomorrow."

Shrewdly building up suspense for his acceptance speech this week, Governor Landon lost not a day in the public eye by his silence. All week long a host of volunteer talkers trod each other's heels at his doorstep. And out of their political No Man's Land marched three long-disgruntled Democrats to enlist formally under the banner of their onetime enemies.

"I shall vote," proclaimed Woodrow Wilson's Assistant Secretary of War Henry Breckinridge of Manhattan, after flying to Topeka for dinner with the G. O. P. nominee, "for Governor Landon and Colonel Knox."

"I am going," announced Massachusetts' onetime Governor Joseph B. Ely after breakfasting with Republican Chair-man John Hamilton in Springfield, "to follow what I have always considered the ideals of the Democratic Party as I see them. It happens that in the coming election those ideals are espoused in national politics by the Republican Party."

"I have been," wrote Maryland's one-time Democratic Senator William Cabell Bruce, 76, to Governor Landon, "bitterly disappointed in Mr. Roosevelt as an incumbent in the Presidential office, and I am deeply gratified by the nomination of yourself. . . ."

To Topeka for a three-hour talk with the Republican nominee on farm and foreign trade policies went that voluble New Deal outcast, onetime AAAdministrator George Nelson Peek. Revealing that the Republican platform embraced most of the farm and trade views which he had submitted in pre-Convention memoranda to both Republicans and Democrats, George Peek declared of Alf Landon: "He seems to have a good deal of understanding of these problems, but I intend to take no position until after he has declared his views specifically in his speeches."

"I stopped in," explained onetime Federal Reserve Board Governor Eugene Meyer after his visit, "to pay my respects to the Governor. When I say pay my respects, that is what I mean. He is entitled to respect."

After 90 minutes with the nominee, one-time (1921-36) Comptroller General John R. McCarl sat down, wrote an enthusiastic blurb. Excerpt: "I venture to prophesy that his will be the most economical administration our country has experienced for many a moon--and in striking contrast with the extravagances now so prevalent."

Cried Publisher Bernarr ("Body Love") Macfadden after his Landon interview: "He looks vigorous."

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