(See front cover)
In Washington last week, friends of lively Elizabeth Vandenberg, 26-year-old daughter of Michigan's Senator Arthur Vandenberg, were surprised to hear of her marriage to Edward Pfeiffer, Trade Extension Bureau Manager of True Story Magazine. This was the second time in two weeks that lively Betty Vandenberg, who year ago made her debut as a pianist with the Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra, contrived to make news. Last fortnight, she was the central figure in a de luxe musicale given by her father at the Sulgrave Club in honor of his own 54th birthday. The Vandenberg guest list of 300 included, as well as two Supreme Court Justices, half-a-dozen Ambassadors and a quorum of top-ranking Republicans, a good handful of anti-Roosevelt Democrats like Montana's Wheeler, Missouri's Clark and Rhode Island's Gerry. Washington political wiseacres promptly concluded that Mr. Vandenberg was launching his campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination in 1940 according to the festive precedent established by High Commissioner Paul Vories McNutt's fabulous cocktail party last February.
The Vandenberg musicale was by no means the only event that served to turn the political spotlight on Republicans last week. In New York, just back from his first visit to Europe in 19 years, Herbert Hoover, still his party's dean, sounded off. Main points: 100 dignitaries with whom he had conversed had given him the impression that immediate general war is unlikely but the U. S. should nonetheless keep out of entangling alliances, and totalitarianism will get you if you don't watch out.* In Bangor, Me., New Hampshire's Senator Bridges called on the country to put an end to "Roosevelt Constitutional tyranny." In a Washington broadcast, Idaho's Borah warned the U. S. not to be moved by "the din of screeching and incoherent propaganda" into lining up with European democracies against totalitarian governments. And in Newark, N. J. Republican National Committee Chairman John D. M. Hamilton spoke at a banquet in honor of New Jersey's seven Republican Representatives and Senatorial Candidate W. Warren Barbour. Mr. Hamilton's thesis: "In recent months there has been a tremendous flight of votes from the Democratic to the Republican Party"; and unless the Republicans succeed in winning 1938 Congressional elections, those elections might be the party's last fight. Said Mr. Hamilton: "I don't think we are going to survive a defeat of the Republican Party in 1938."
But well did Mr. Hamilton know that, far from having to face defeat this autumn, the Republican Party is almost statistically certain to add to its offices. No Presidency is at stake on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of this