National Affairs: Candidates' Row

The Republican side of Candidates' Row was last week full of rumpus. The Democratic side was increasingly suave and smooth-running.

Mr. Willis. The Republican rumpus was really an explosion—the bursting of the Willis candidacy, which all along had reminded observers of the bullfrog who thought he could blow himself up to be a bull.

When the Hoover campaign entered Ohio last fortnight to take away from Candidate Willis some of the nucleus of delegates from which he had hoped to sprout a tail-end nomination like President Harding's, Candidate Willis blustered: "Personally, I have no fear of the results." He knew he was being laughed at in urbane Cincinnati, but he felt sure that, as champion orator of the Anti-Saloon League and loyal defender of the "Ohio Gang," he could count on Ohio's farmers, small-townsmen and patronage-seekers, and on big, semidry, well-organized Cleveland. His campaign manager, Col. Carmi Thompson of Cleveland, was thought to have thrilled upper Ohio, if not the whole continent, by announcing that the Willis Will-to-Win was "a pulsing, throbbing movement that is hourly gaining force throughout the country."

But the man whose privilege and duty it was to notify Candidate Willis how Cleveland felt, was not throaty Col. Thompson. It was a quiet, bald, astute, elderly person named Maurice Maschke, who for years, in his panelled study on the heights near Cleveland, has manipulated the clumsy fellows down in the city who call themselves politicians. Mr. Maschke is Ohio's National Republican Committeeman. When he wants to see the seeker or holder of an office, he is not above paying a call downtown, downstate or even down in Washington. In 1908, when Theodore E. Burton (now a Representative) was unexpectedly elected to the Senate, it was Maurice Maschke who did most of the "leg-work," but so quietly that none realized his power until the votes were counted.

When Maurice Maschke does not want to see some one, he just dictates a letter. Mr. Maschke dictated to Candidate Willis: ". . . All men who expect to be nominated for office on the Republican ticket here this fall, and the organization, almost to a unit, believe that our local political interests can best be advanced through nominating Mr. Hoover. . . ."

Mr. Maschke went to his club for a game of cards. In Washington, Candidate Willis heaved with indignation. ". . . In view of understandings which we have had," he wrote to Mr. Maschke, "and what

I supposed to be definite assurance of your support . . . etc., etc." Candidate Willis professed not to understand that Mr. Maschke had politely dropped him. Mr. Maschke elucidated: "Senator Willis' attitude has changed completely since he first talked with me on this matter in my home in November. At that time he said he wanted the compliment of being Ohio's candidate. . . . Since then he has taken the position that none of his delegates can vote for anyone else. . . ."