Strange Interlude

From the moment last month when President Roosevelt leaned back in his study chair at a Hyde Park Press conference and, with a sly squint, added Kansas to the list of States whose Governors he was inviting to confer with him on Drought in Des Moines, everyone, including Alf Landon, knew that the Republican Presidential Nominee was on a spot. First off, there was the matter of the reception which Des Moines, swollen by State Fair visitors, would give the Governor of Kansas as compared with the one they would give the President of the U. S. Be sides the President's official superiority, there would be a direct and dramatic contrast between the personalities of the op posing candidates, and all sides had conceded from the first that colorless Alf Landon could never hope to compete in crowd appeal with magnetic Franklin Roosevelt. And suppose the President should choose to end the meeting with a joint commitment on Drought policy? Nominee Landon would then have two choices: i) to concur in the statement and appear to be taking his lead from the New Deal; or 2) to balk at Drought relief and thereby lose countless thousands of farm votes.

On the bright side, the Democratic nominee had given the Republican nominee and his advisers plenty of time to plan their strategy. No major battle was ever more anxiously rehearsed and mapped. Last week while President Roosevelt was detouring on his Drought trip to attend the funeral of Secretary of War Dern in Salt Lake City, the Topeka general staff made its first move. Republicans have been mum as possible on their nominee's record of New Deal cooperation, but now the attention of the Press was called to the fact that in June 1934 Governor Landon had sent President Roosevelt a letter suggesting for the Kansas and Arkansas River watersheds a major phase of the Drought program which the President was now sponsoring. The Kansas Governor had proposed Federal and State co-operation for water conservation and flood control by means of ponds, reservoirs, lakes and levees. Furthermore, during a White House visit in 1933, he had suggested that the CCC be set to saving water. Thus it was established that, whatever the appearances at Des Moines, Alf Landon had long since been out in front with Drought ideas of his own.

Major item of Topeka strategy was to avoid any hint of political competition at Des Moines by having the Republican nominee, like tripping royalty, preserve throughout the day his incognito of Governor of Kansas. To that end it was arranged that he should go to Des Moines, not in the special train of a Presidential candidate but by automobile along an unannounced route. He would be accompanied not by political advisers but by four Kansas agricultural experts. Slipping into Des Moines unobtrusively, he would motor to the State Capitol just as if he were any other of the seven attending Governors. While in the city he would resolutely shun any encounter which might possibly be construed as political. And as soon as dinner was over, he would scurry back to Topeka.

While these plans were being perfected, Franklin Roosevelt, leisurely rolling East from Salt Lake City, with stops for Drought inspection in Wyoming, Colorado, and Nebraska, was pondering his own strategic problems. Well did he know that it was Nominee Landon's prospective attendance which had converted an otherwise routine conference into a spectacularly newsworthy event. He realized, too, that any attempt to take political advantage of that circumstance would react sharply against him. Day before the meeting it was announced that he would not seek to commit his conferees to any statement of policy. Sternly rejected was a proposal by Democratic Governor Clyde Herring of Iowa to trot the President out for a bow and a speech at the State Fair while Governor Landon lolled in his hotel. Instead, President Roosevelt ordered himself treated as non-politically as Governor Landon planned to be. Des Moines was stripped clean of campaign posters, signs and banners, which were replaced by flags and the simple greeting: "Welcome--Des Moines." From his office where the conferees were to confer. Governor Herring removed political photographs, even hid a bronze bust of the President. "Of course," conceded he, "every time the President or Governor Landon takes off his hat there is some political effect." But so far as appearances were concerned, Franklin Roosevelt and Alf Landon were doggedly determined to pretend that no such thing as a Presidential campaign was going on.

Promptly at noon on the appointed day, the President's special train, after considerable backing & filling in the yards, chuffed into Des Moines' Rock Island railroad station. Cavalry bugles blared and police sirens shrieked as the Presidential procession moved off on a circuitous and well-advertised route which took it along all the city's principal streets on its way to the Capitol. From the back seat of an open car, President Roosevelt smiled and waved his Panama hat at the cheering crowds, well sprinkled with Landon sunflower buttons, which lined the curbs.

Meantime in Topeka, Alf Landon had been up at 5 a. m. Not stopping to shave, he put on a white linen suit with unaccustomed vest, swallowed his breakfast, hurried downtown to meet his agricultural experts. First hitch in his plan for an unobtrusive progress to Des Moines was the presence of four carloads of newshawks and photographers set to trail him. Three times along the 270-mile way the procession stopped at filling stations. At small Leon, Iowa, Governor Landon spied a barbershop in a hotel basement, hopped out for a shave. Afterwards he shook hands with most of 500 people who had gathered outside, singling out for special greeting a small boy in a cowboy suit. At a tourist camp on Des Moines' outskirts the caravan picked up six more carloads of newshawks and greeters, plus a motor-cycle police escort. Even though he kept in the back seat of his closed car, citizens along Des Moines streets knew that Alf Landon had arrived. The Republican nominee answered their cheers with smiles and waves of his sailor straw.

President Roosevelt and all other conferees had been driven up to a screened-off ground-floor entrance of the carefully screened, locked and guarded Capitol, whisked up to Governor Herring's office in a freshly-painted elevator. Governor Landon's escort took him around to the plaza in front of the Capitol. The crowd got a good look as. with more smiles and hat-waving, he trotted up the long steps. Once inside, he was led to a washroom. As he emerged, there appeared at another door, on the arm of his son John, the man he had come to see. With warm smile and outstretched hand, he advanced.

"How are you, Governor?" beamed Franklin Roosevelt. "I understand you've had a long, hard automobile ride to get here."

"Yes, I have," returned Alf Landon, "but I got here on time."

Barred out by a canvas screen were some 100 correspondents and photographers as the President and some 60 Governors, Senators and drought experts sat down to a fried-chicken lunch at seven round tables in Governor Herring's big reception room. But bursts of loud laughter and Presidential Secretary Marvin Mclntyre, popping out with a round-by-round account, kept the newshawks informed. Afterwards various official onlookers were glad to furnish details of the momentous meeting. At the President's table sat Federal District Judge Charles A. Dewey, four Democratic Governors and one Farmer-Laborite Governor (Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, Oklahoma, Minnesota) and Republican Landon. Wisconsin's Phil La Follette had been delayed. Governor Landon sat three chairs away from the President, but the two managed to exchange considerable conversation. Whenever they did, the other diners at their table kept still, listened hard. Some scraps of dialog as they filtered into the Press at thirdhand:

Governor: Mr. President, I hope you enjoyed your trip up the Coast.

President: Yes, I did. The weather was delightful. I imagine you have been mighty hot out there in Topeka. . . .

President: You see the problems you have when you are President. . . .

President: When you come to the White House, you will appreciate the opportunity to take the President's boat down the Potomac and cool off. It would be pretty hard without that.

Governor: Thanks, I'll remember that.

According to Minnesota's Governor Petersen, the President once addressed his opponent by saying, "Now, Alf Landon. if you take my place. . . ." It was also reported that the President had given' up trying to eat his hard-frozen dessert of ice cream ball & shredded cocoanut after it had repeatedly skidded out from under his spoon.

After lunch, photographers were summoned. When Governor Landon hung back in the crowd of notables, President Roosevelt turned to Governor Herring, said. "Won't you bring the Governor up closer?" Nominee Landon took his stance by the President's side and the two grinned amiably at each other as flash bulbs flared. The photographs, centring every eye on Alf Landon in the midst of a mass of dark-suited figures, proved that the Republican nominee had performed his master maneuver, whether planned or accidental, when he put on a white suit that morning.

The President and his advisers retired to Governor Herring's office for their series of individual conferences with State groups. Precedence was settled by admitting the groups according to the order in which their States had been admitted to the Union. Missouri (1821) went first, next Iowa (1846), then Kansas (1861). With Senators Capper and McGill and his four experts, Governor Landon pulled up a chair, spent half an hour discussing Drought in Kansas with the President and those other prime Republican targets, Secretary of Agriculture Wallace, Resettlement Administrator Tugwell. WPAdministrator Hopkins. Their talk, it was reported, differed not at all from others the President had been having on his tour. At its end Governor Landon left a memorandum built around his 1934 proposals. At his hotel, he assured newshawks that he had had a pleasant and productive conference.

''What is your opinion of President Roosevelt?" boomed a voice from the rear of the room.

Nominee Landon waited until the laughter had died down, then said: ''He's a very fine, charming gentleman."

Later it was revealed that Alf Landon, who makes a uniformly excellent impression at close range, had also charmed Franklin Roosevelt. Dr. Rexford Guy Tugwell spoke for the President's entourage when he declared: "I want to tell you Landon is a swell guy."

At 7 p. m. Governor Landon drove down to the Rock Island yards for a steak dinner with the other Governors in the Presidential private car. This time he sat on the President's left and the conversation, according to Governor Herring, ranged over "everything from Spain to the Drought."

Shortly after 8:30 o'clock Nominee Landon, who planned to spend the night with a friend in St. Joseph. Mo., rose to : bring to an end one of the strangest interludes in the history of U. S. presidential campaigns. As the two new friends parted to resume their strenuous contest for the nation's greatest prize, Franklin Roosevelt said: "Well. Governor, however this comes out, we'll see more of each other. Either you come to see me or I'll come to see you."

"I certainly shall," replied Alf Landon.

"And, Governor," added the President, "don't work too hard!"

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