REPUBLICANS: The South Reacts

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In Charleston, S. C., last week a group of Willkiecrats announced that they will form a fusion party, support Democratic candidates for local office, Republican Presidential electors. New Deal-hating Editor William Watts Ball, son of a Confederate Army officer, announced himself for Willkie in the Charleston News & Courier.

Also for Willkie was the Charleston Post.

Greenville citizens, writing to their news papers, accused President Roosevelt of ruling out Jimmy Byrnes for Vice President because of a rumor that he was once a Catholic. In Georgia theatres last week, for the first time in the memory of man, newsreel shots of a Republican candi date drew loud applause. In Alabama (which missed going Republican by only 7,000 votes in 1928) the State's first Willkie club was formed in Jasper, Speaker William Bankhead's home town, and Willkie's newsreel face was cheered.

Louisiana's sugar planters, smarting un der Henry Wallace's restriction quotas, were reported going over in droves to the G. O. P.—in Louisiana's third (Sugar Bowl) district, a Democratic candidate for Congress withdrew in favor of Republican David W. Pipes Jr. (a Democrat too until 1940). In Florida Willkie clubs popped up over the State, and a onetime Democratic Governor, Gary Augustus Hardee, took up Willkie's banner. And in Texas Peter Molyneaux's Texas Weekly declared: "There are millions of Americans who do not think President Roosevelt is indispensable, who believe that the wel fare and security of the United States will be better insured by the election of Mr. Willkie. . . ." The Right to Woo. All of this added up to a large amount of potential Willkie strength in the South, but it did not add up as yet to a single Southern vote for Willkie in the Electoral College. Whether such anti-New Deal sentiment will be converted into Willkie votes depends entirely on what sort of campaign Candidate Willkie puts up. He can talk Jeffersonian issues till his face is blue, but the chances are that the South will remain Democratic—unless he shows himself the kind of man to capture Southern imaginations. All that the South showed last week amounted to little more than a willingness to be wooed.