Coalition Scuttled

One afternoon last fortnight in Topeka, Kans., a lamb-faced, inoffensive oilman was called to the telephone, invited to lunch at the White House with the President. Alfred Mossman Landon, titular chief of the Republican Party, came away worried. He had just issued a statement praising the President's defense speech. Through the U. S. press blew high, windy talk of national unity. It was known that Mr. Roosevelt had offered Republican Frank Knox--for the second time--the Secretaryship of the Navy. It was reported that the Labor portfolio had been offered to New York City's baggy, electric Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. It was quite possible that Mr. Landon was next on the list.

Mousy Mr. Landon sniffed the smell of cat. If this kind of thing kept on, G. O. P. leadership would be captured by the New Deal. Mr. Landon gnawed over the situation with Ohio's Favorite Son Robert A. Taft, in Topeka on tour. After five hours of hard discussion, Mr. Landon called in reporters, came out flatly against a Third Term, denounced coalition as a political trick. Feeling easier in his mind, he entrained for Chicago and the East.

At the White House Mr. Landon's statement was digested. Presently Brigadier General Edwin M. ("Pa") Watson. White House secretary, telephoned Topeka to call off the lunch. Mr. Landon was finally found in Chicago. He was told that the White House luncheon was off. Mr. Landon allegedly said he wasn't hungry anyway.

The incident got an exceptionally bad press. Franklin Roosevelt read the papers over his breakfast coffee, grabbed the telephone, and himself called Mr. Landon. The Kansan, in a press conference, was at the peak of a denunciation of Term III. Everybody had muffed everything, said the President mellowly; he always liked to eat lunch with Mr. Landon whenever he happened to pass through Washington. Mr. Landon, 835 miles away in Chicago, just gulped, then entrained for Washington.

Apprehensive Republicans steeled Alf Landon for the dangerous lunch. Collar askew, pants rumpsprung as ever, the Kansan appeared at the White House, reappeared almost two hours later, said: "We talked of shoes and ships and sealing-wax, of cabbages and kings." "Cabinets and kings?" asked a reporter. Cabbages, said Mr. Landon. He went back to his hotel room, there dictated another vigorous blast against a Third Term. Mr. Roosevelt could have national unity, he said, if he would at once renounce Term III. This statement went big with all G. O. P. leaders, drew a laudatory press.

Mr. Roosevelt was irked. From the White House came harsh words: "The President regrets that he has no time, just now, to give to the preparation of political statements. He is too busily engaged with problems of far greater national importance. . . ."

Coalition in any political sense was dead. This seemed to be all right with everybody. The U. S., impatient with politics, wanted not coalition but non-partisan unity behind a vast national effort to arm the country. That Colonel Knox might yet become Secretary of the Navy was still possible; a more likely possibility was that New York City's Mayor LaGuardia would become Secretary of War, in place of Harry Woodring, who had vowed to stay until he was kicked out.

At his next press conference the President, in unusually vigorous language, said that coalition talk had been made up out of whole cloth; that newspapers had gone out on a limb and had then tried to brazen it out. Mr. Landon, who had traveled 1,352 miles for a desk-tray lunch and a talk about shoes, etc., headed home to Topeka.

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