U.S. At War: Compromise

The promised knockdown fight between the Old Guard and the Willkieites in the Republican Party fizzled. At its meeting in St. Louis this week, the G.O.P. National Committee picked as its chairman Iowa’s greying, thick-jowled Harrison Earl Spangler, 63, dirt farmer, county seat lawyer, and an avowed middle-of-the-roader.

Two days of pre-convention dickering had failed to shake the candidacy of Illinois’s Werner W. Schroeder, backed by Old Guardists and anti-Willkieites. But on the first ballot, Schroeder was tied with Washington’s hustling, young (35) Fred E. Baker. On the second ballot, Fred Baker jumped into the lead. Then retiring Chairman Joseph W. Martin and the Committee’s pugnacious publicist, Clarence Budington Kelland, got to work. In a two-hours’ recess, they preached the inevitability of compromise. When the meeting was resumed, Candidates Schroeder and Baker walked down the aisle arm in arm, simultaneously announced their withdrawal. Mr. Spangler was elected by acclamation.