Evening Post. FRIDAY, JUNE 12, 1936. THE ACTORS COME HITHER

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 138, 12 June 1936, Page 8

Evening Post. FRIDAY, JUNE 12, 1936. THE ACTORS COME HITHER

"The Republicans," says the | Columbus (Nebraska) "Daily Telegram," .enjoy "the same chance to defeat President Roosevelt that a sheep has to kill a butcher." What the . Nebraskan editor thinks is thought by a good many people, but it does not in the least damp the gay spirit of the sheep, or the bandwagon display of the great Republican Convention at Cleveland, Ohio. Delegates may go to Cleveland with a defeatist mind on the subject of the Presidency, but Cleveland all the same will be for four days or a week a place of high carnival, just as though America had no economic depression and as if the Republican prospect of continuous Presidency were unclouded as in days of yore. "There's no need this year," said the Providence "News-Tribune," "for politicians to set out to stump the country—it's stumped already." But the "News-Tribune" means no such thing. The idea of "Conventions as usual" is so settled in the United States that no one thinks of questioning it. A party holiday, in the sense of a political armistice, would be no holiday at all. But a Republican Convention is just that. It is the quadrennial holiday in the lives of members of the Grand Old Party, just as the Democratic Convention (soon to be held at Philadelphia) is to the Democrats. With all the surface blare and trumpeting, and all the deadly fighting behind the doors of committee rooms, the sublime and the ridiculous will join hands at Philadelphia as at Cleveland. And from this strange marriage of mirth and purpose will spring, in November - next, the political decision of 120 millions of people. Political mass enthusiasm is a permanent force because it combines what is instinctive in people with what is mental and intellectual. It is instinctive to get together and make a noise; animals do it. The mental purpose of these human politicals does, they think, lift them I clear of the instinctive. ,Yet it is a fact that as much wild, physically expressed enthusiasm can emerge from a meeting of Germans where the Dictator has already fixed the programme as from a platformdrafting Convention in Cleveland or Philadelphia. Remove both Presidency and platform from the jurisdiction of assembled persons, even insist that they be all Yes men, and they still shout and cavort more than ever, such is the resilience of animal spirits. The Philadelphia "Inquirer," taking as its text a headline "Democrats Begin Shaping New Platform," jib(?s thus at its author: "Don't be absurd; just use the photostatic copy of the old one." Mentally, permit that jibe be taken for granted; physiologically, it does not count, for the Democrats or Republicans serving in the band or on the bandwagon have no sense of their relative unimportance in the scheme of committee-made platforms, nor yet any sense of the hypocrisy and fatuity of all platforms. "The show's the thing." It will do them. American cynicism concerning party politics, and Americans' ecstasies at Conventions, march forward together. America is unique perhaps in degree, but not in principle. The technique of mass enthusiasm differs in different countries. And yet is ever, at bottom, the same. Consider the modern phase of alliances between ambitious politicians and great newspaper owners. Alfred Landon, Governor of Kansas but not nationally known, has suddenly taken the lead for Republican Presidential nomination, heading the better-known Borah and Knox. The Landon boom needed publicity; and a few months ago Mr. W. R. Hearst, the noted owner of a chain of newspapers, began to supply it, particularly through the Californian newspapers in bis chain. As nearly everything in party politics is doubleedged, Republicans cautioned Landon to look this publicity gift-horse in the mouth. The Independent Republican "San Francisco Chronicle" asked why "this New York Democrat" (Hearst) should be allowed to "kidnap the Republican Party" in California. The sequel is curious. At the Republican primaries in California there arbse a battle (termed "Landon v. Landon") between a ticket of delegates absolutely committed to vote Landon at the present Cleveland Convention—this ticket backed by Hearst—and a ticket (backed by the Republican ex-Pre-sident Hoover) that was friendly to Landon but uncommitted. The second ticket won, and the political expert of the Washington "Post" at once commented on Landon's luck, for the Californian voters had "repudiated Hearst and lifted this burden from Landon's back." The Californian incident is typical of the guile and unreality of party politics and political publicity. But here again America is not unique. Has not Mr. Lloyd George left on record a remark, following the dissolution of his alliance with llie Northcliffe papers, that it was danto pull on tfrg same tow-rope ftaniiesft.

can swim"? Did not Sir Wilmott Lewis, representing "The Times," and "dean of the foreign correspondents' corps at Washington," dcclarc in New York last April that "the owner of a group of papers has more absolute irresponsibility in the use of great power than any other living man"?

Assuming, however, that Mr. Landon is saved from all his friends, and from all his enemies, and becomes the Republican Presidential nominee for 1936, and is well beaten in the November election—the Cleveland Convention will yet be an outstanding success. Presidentially, it is needed to keep the Republicans in practice for 1940, if not to win in 1936; it is needed to secure a share of the Congressional and Gubernatorial and other jobs that are swayable by machine action; further, it is needed because the Convention is an end in itself—a thing of beauty, and a joy for ever. When workerwooing candidates appear in overalls and aprons, the Convention is as good as a costers' parade; when it rises in a yelling chorus, it is exceeded only by those scenes of mass hysterias which the modern movie director accomplishes largely with the aid of the Negro race. To complain (as American writers frequently do) that there is no real difference between the two parties is to glorify sacred externals like the Republican and the Democratic Conventions; it is to honour the husk, whether the kernel is there or not. If there is no fight, let there at least be a real sham fight! And here again, it may be conceded, this human foible is not confined to America. So far the highlight at Cleveland has been the dramatic hit-and-run visit of Mr. Hoover, who dropped in on his way to New York to indict very pithily the New Deal. His announced departure, after making this coup, suggests that it was a blow struck genuinely for the Democrats' cause, not for Mr. Hoover's personal ambition. Ex-Pre-sidents can be nuisances at Conventions, and a columnist lately proposed that they be dealt with in the Mexican way. As a protest against any such savagery Mr. Hoover's intervention promises to be entirely effective.