National Affairs: Quite a Lad

With a benign smile on his face and ready answers on his lips, Robert Alphonso Taft plodded through the Northwest last week, seeking the votes of delegates and the good will of men. Working 18-hour days (his smile was as big at 11 p.m. as it was at 6 a.m.), the Senator from Ohio held press conferences before breakfast, met coveys of politicians, students, businessmen and farmers, ate fried chicken at box suppers, and all the while held a steady bead on his main target: the Truman Administration.

He Sought the Young. Most of those who came to hear Taft's speeches were comfortable, middle-aged people. He sought out the younger and the not so comfortable, wherever he could find them. In Spokane, where he talked to 3,000 at a Chamber of Commerce banquet, he also answered students' questions at the Jesuits' Gonzaga University. From a dim back corner of the gymnasium, a student shouted: "Senator Taft, do you favor sending an ambassador to the Vatican?" Taft had a prompt reply. "I don't believe a formal ambassador is necessary," he said in his flat voice. "But we should have some sort of emissary there." Later, a young Republican asked: "What would you do about the war in Korea?" Replied Taft: "A deadlocked peace is better than a deadlocked war. I think we'd better make a deadlock peace and go on from there. The Russians moved into Korea after Acheson and the President had publicly announced that we would never defend it . . . In Korea, we stand exactly where we stood when we entered, except everything has been leveled to the ground . . . The Administration didn't want to win the war in Korea. Certainly no nation has been as idiotic in its foreign policy as this."

Two or three times a day, Taft hammered at a money point: $65 billion of the $85 billion U.S. budget is going to the military. By the time he left town, the people were talking about that. "Sixty-five billion out of 85 billion is what Truman is giving the Army," said a Spokane cab driver. "My gawd!"

In Seattle, a crowd of 5,000 jammed the Civic Auditorium to hear Candidate Taft at a Lincoln Day banquet. He was so absorbed in his attack on the Truman foreign policy that he almost forgot to include a mention of Lincoln in his speech, but worked in a few lines just before he started speaking.

No Arm Leading. In Portland, even an 18-hour day wasn't long enough. While Taft was talking with a farm-business group, local G.O.P. men grabbed his arm and tried to take him off to another conference, explaining: "You'll just have to excuse us; the Senator's way behind schedule." Bob Taft, who doesn't like to be led around by the arm, turned abruptly away from the politicos. "We have time for more questions," he said sharply. After a conference with organized labor representatives, a C.I.O. Marine Cooks & Stewards Union director said: "He seems like a pretty nice guy, but they wouldn't give him time to answer all our questions."