The Election: The Losers

The great, carpeted Grand Ball Room of Manhattan's high-ceilinged Commodore Hotel was hazy with cigaret smoke, thunderous with cheers and the intermittent beat of a metronomic chorus: "We Want Willkie! We Want Willkie!" Before a crowd of 5,000, men with black chalk scaled stepladders, wrote first returns on a broad white board. It was 8 p. m.

In a green carpeted suite on the 14th floor sat Wendell Lewis Willkie, a tousle-haired Peter the Hermit in a rumpled sack suit, waiting for news of his crusade. He lounged in a big chair, his feet...

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