Mystery Story

Thousands of visiting Democrats and a few donkeys appeared in Chicago last week. Most of the donkeys (on the hoof and on signs) were soon removed. Exactly why, delegates to the Democratic Party's 28th National Convention had to judge for themselves: unexplained mysteries were the rule in Chicago. On a wall of the Convention's vast (21,000 seats) Chicago Stadium, a huge picture of a donkey was replaced by a spotlighted, grisly sketch of Franklin Roosevelt. Assiduously distributed were 500,000 campaign buttons, adorned not by a donkey but by a bright red cock-o'-the-walk and the legend: "Just Roosevelt."

Observers said they had never seen such a convention. The Republicans had been leaderless; the Democrats had been bossed into apathy. They were there for just one purpose, and they knew it--to nominate Franklin D. Roosevelt. Those who were not on the Democratic payroll made no secret of their discontent.

One delegate brought a dash of vigor and verve along with him. At otherwise abortive hearings on the Party platform (to all intents it was written at the White House), San Antonio's gobliny Mayor Maury Maverick prescribed for the Democratic Party "that aggressive spirit which has made it great." He evoked the Mavericks who pioneered in Texas: "They came praying to God and shootin' Indians. That's the way this country was built and it's the way it's got to be kept alive." One night--Maury Maverick continued--his wife found him praying, said she was "glad that you are praying for our boy."

"I'm sorry to disappoint you, honey," the mayor quoted himself, "but I'm not praying for our boy. I'm praying for the British Navy and the Bank of England."

But even Maury Maverick succumbed to the pall that hung over Chicago. Said he, surveying the lacklustre scenes at the Stevens hotel ("World's Greatest"), where the National Committee was quartered: "This convention is like a mystery story in which everybody knows the answer to the mystery."

After eight years of power, the Democratic Party still had strength. What was lacking as the convention opened in Chicago was an outlet. Silent at the White House, remote on the Potomac, Franklin Roosevelt had dammed the only outlet, presumably would open it in his own good time. Some of his victims cursed the baffling indignity of their position; a few cursed the man who had created and preserved it, simply by letting them assume instead of know that they were there to ratify Nomination III.

Despite all the traditional hocus-pocus of bands and bunting, platform committees and "keynote" oratory, the forms and panoply had no more meaning than they had had at Philadelphia, before Wendell Willkie and his freshening forces swept the Republicans' fog away. To the Convention's keynoter, Alabama's William Brockman Bankhead, the 1940 campaign seemed to be nothing more than a necessary footnote. Said he: "The minds of the American people are now so deeply engrossed in . . . the preservation of our established order of life and institutions, that they will have no tolerance for the superficial banalities of politics. An election must be held, but . . . the major objective of both parties must be unity and solidarity of purpose. . . ."

Orator Bankhead's best and strongest words were reserved for Foreign Policy (his hearers noted that he jointly credited Franklin Roosevelt and Cordell Hull with formulating and executing a sound policy). He quoted the President's "we will not send our men to take part in European wars", and only by inference did he mention, much less defend, U. S. aid to the Allies and then to Great Britain.

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