The Clearing

Local advisers had warned him that the speech he planned to make would be poor politics in a town where fully two-thirds of the people are of German descent. That made no difference to Wendell Willkie. To 3,000 listeners in the Civic Auditorium of little Norfolk, Neb. (pop. 10,490) that evening, the big man proudly recalled his early and potent support of Lend-Lease, Selective Service and other war measures which most Republican professionals opposed. With strong hands and heavy voice he hammered away at his familiar arguments for international cooperation and all-out, sacrificial war, hoarsely exhorting Republicans to become the "win-the-war" party. Then he went back to the Norfolk Hotel (five stories) to hear the returns from the Wisconsin primary.

Several members of his party, including Mrs. Willkie, Right-Hand-Man Lem Jones, and a half dozen of the big-time correspondents covering his campaign, went with him to his suite.

The news trickled in in driblets: a radio flash, an A.P. bulletin, a telephone call from Wisconsin. Right from the first it was bad, incredibly, disastrously bad. When the reports from only 50 out of more than 3,000 precincts were in, Wendell Willkie said: "Well, that looks like it. We said it would be all or nothing, and it looks like nothing." Somebody suggested that 50 precincts weren't very many. But Willkie only smiled and shook his head.

"Whoever He May Be." The candidate's smile was brief. Huddled with the newsmen in the bedroom, he asked them again & again: "What does it mean?" Was the nation more isolationist than he had thought? Had the Wisconsin voters repudiated his principles? Or him personally? He decided it was partly both. But he had no regrets. "I'm glad I made the fight," he said. "I'd do the same thing if I had it to do over again." At midnight he went off to bed.

Next morning he appeared in the hotel lobby looking composed and reconciled. He had made up his mind to go through with that day's schedule. Privately he told a few of the reporters what he had decided to do that night.

The first stop was at West Point (pop. 2,510), where a high-school band and a thousand curious townsmen clustered on the main street. Wendell Willkie, hero to millions in 1940, world-flying confidant of Churchill, Stalin and Chiang Kaishek, climbed up on a truck. Slouched against the cab, hands in pockets, he urged his listeners to unite behind the next President "whoever he may be."

The campaign party rolled on to Fremont (pop. 11,862) to a luncheon crowd much like all of the hundreds of other breakfast, luncheon and dinner crowds Willkie has addressed in the past year in almost every state. Wendell Willkie could contain himself no longer. In a voice at times near breaking, he poured out his hurt: "It is apparent that the average citizen fails to realize the far-reaching effect on him of what is going on in the rest of the world. . . . Perhaps the conscience of America is dulled; perhaps the people are not willing to bear the sacrifices." He confessed to "a sense of sickening" and to feeling "a bit heartbroken."

Last Stop. The party sped on to Omaha. This was the last stop on the spectacular road which Wendell Willkie had traveled since the winter of 1939-40 when a few friends began to suggest that the big utilities president run for the Presidency. The shabby, barnlike Municipal Auditorium was about three-fourths filled; the 3,500 people on their folding chairs seemed unaware that anything special was impending. But reporters, who had already sent out their "Hold For Release" stories on the big upcoming news, sat remembering a hot June night at Philadelphia four years ago when the galleries were roaring "WE WANT WILLKIE!" They felt like people at a wake. The crowd sang; a band played several tunes, including a tactless I'm Going Back to Indiana. Mr. and Mrs. Willkie came in 25 minutes late, stiff and determined. The crowd applauded warmly, and Willkie gave them an arm wave, a boxer's salute. He began with a few extemporaneous remarks.

"I wish," he said, "that under the peculiar circumstances of this evening I could speak to you just from my heart.

But if I did I would perhaps express too much emotion. ... It would be perhaps too great a castigation of certain individuals and of what I consider one of the curses of American politics, the combinations of little cliques of mean and subversive elements." Then he launched into his prepared address.

"What Is America's Foreign Policy?" was one of his strongest and ablest attacks on the Roosevelt Administration. But to Wendell Willkie it now mattered little what those who had labeled him "Me Too" and "Carbon Copy Roosevelt" might think of this speech. When he had finished it, he said: "Now, my fellow Americans, I have something quite personal I want to say." In a flat silence he read his statement.

The conclusion was inescapable. The taut Omaha audience heard it as Willkie reached the climax of his statement: "It is obvious now that I cannot be nominated. I therefore am asking my friends to desist from any activity toward that end and not to present my name to the convention."

Embarrassed, the audience applauded uneasily. Then the hundred-odd committee-folk on the stage closed around the Willkies, cutting them off from audience view. There were handshakes all around, sympathetic words of "Sorry," and "Good fight," and "Can't understand it," and "I was for you." Then it was over. At 1:30 a.m., dog-tired ex-Candidate Willkie boarded a train to return to New York and his law practice.

Wisconsin. The U.S. turned to take a deep look at Wisconsin. Everyone suddenly realized that this was a most significant election -- the most important occasion since Pearl Harbor in which a part of the nation had spoken its mind on the American problems, foreign & domestic.

What had Wisconsin said? Thousands of words were written analyzing it; every pundit had his say. Fourth Termers regarded it as nail-in-the-coffin proof that the Republican Party is irretrievably isolationist. Frenetic isolationists like Chicago's Colonel McCormick agreed.

Wisconsin disagreed -- with both. The state that had done the voting seemed to know what it had done, and why. The carefully edited Milwaukee Journal --which had backed Willkie -- now agreed with the result, and spoke up for all Wisconsin, "We're not isolationist." What had happened was not a simple thing to see in all the jungle of possible meanings. Wisconsin had clearly voted no confidence in global good will and a foreign policy of generalities. They had voted against the "crusade" kind of internationalism -- against a crusade which had never been clearly defined, which was hopelessly confused with New Dealism, and which neither Mr. Roosevelt nor Mr. Hull seemed yet to have joined. To say nothing of Messrs. Churchill and Stalin. No one could doubt the Wisconsin voters' willingness to "participate" internationally, but they want to do it on a "realistic" basis -- and as Republicans.

That the vote against crusading internationalism was not a vote for U.S. isolation was particularly clear to those who looked into Wisconsin closely. For in the state Harold Stassen was regarded as an internationalist equal to Willkie ; Tom Dewey was much criticized by isolationists during the campaign for his advocacy of a British-American alliance last September; and finally, much of the Mac-Arthur vote -- the stronghold of the isolationists -- was cast by people who merely admire the General as a "favorite son."

In short, Wisconsin isolationists, according to Wisconsin, formed only one part of the vote for one candidate.

Wisconsin, it seemed, had voted out of the way a massive roadblock on the way to realistic internationalism.

The Republicans. What had Wisconsin said about domestic matters? There was more to the election than the internationalism issue. In concentrating on that, the U.S. at large missed a main fact about the vote -- that Wisconsin was voting for 100-proof, Regular Republicanism. Willkie himself said in New York this week : "This election was a triumph for the county chairmen." In effect, all members of the Willkie Irregulars were soundly trounced. Wisconsin voted against even what seemed to them like secondhand New Dealism.

Tom Dewey got 15 delegates (plus two uninstructed who favor him), Douglas MacArthur 3, Harold Stassen 4, and Wendell Willkie not a one. Though returns were still incomplete this week, the best index to the popular vote was in the totals cast for the four delegates-at-large: the top three were Dewey men, and got 130,497; 114,395; and 112,052 votes respectively. The next four were MacArthur men, who polled 71,282; 68,249; 65,819; and 61,755 votes. Four Stassen men followed, and last came the four Willkie candidates.

In the total vote cast, Republicans got 61%, Democrats 39%. (There was no interest in the Democratic primary.)

Wendell Willkie. The Wisconsin decision had taken the form of a cruel blow to a gallant American who sought the nation's good. But Senator Ralph Owen Brewster of Maine summed up a widespread feeling:

"Wendell Willkie will rise from the ashes of his defeat in Wisconsin a far more powerful figure in American public life. Purged of personal ambition for the Presidency Wendell Willkie will rise to his real stature in the championing of the principles with which his name has become identified.

"Let us remember that some of the greatest and most influential figures in American history have not been occupants of the Presidential chair . . . Hamilton, Webster, Clay, Calhoun, and our own Elaine and Reed.

"The Republican resolution on foreign policy adopted at Mackinac is a direct tribute to the influence of Wendell Willkie and a firm guarantee of our foreign policy under a Republican administration."

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