THE CAMPAIGN: Tough as Boiled Owls

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Kennedy had a New Deal heirloom that Humphrey could not match. Campaigning hard for him through desolate coal fields of southern West Virginia was New York's Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., and every time he mentioned "my father" he raised a storm of applause.Roosevelt even addressed his listeners as "my friends," and said of Kennedy: "He hates war." (In a below-the-belt attack on Humphrey's in voluntary 4-F status in World War II, Roosevelt praised Kennedy's war heroism, said that Humphrey "is a good Democrat, but I don't know where he was in World War II.") Across the state, Humphrey got the message, began salting his speeches with the magic name — and getting the same thunderous response.

Paramount Issue. Though both candidates played down any reference to it last week, Jack Kennedy's religion continued to be the paramount issue. The Rt. Rev. Wilburn C. Campbell, Episcopal Bishop of West Virginia, said he would rather not vote for a Roman Catholic, but retired Bishop Robert E. L. Strider, Dr. Campbell's predecessor, gave Kennedy his warm endorsement. Anti-Catholic pressures and threats forced a Kennedy worker to stop distributing literature and with draw from the campaign in tiny Parsons.

In Chelyan a Baptist minister distributed to his congregation copies of a phony Knights of Columbus oath,* an ancient political artifact. Kennedy made some converts. After hearing a Kennedy speech in Oceana, Mrs. Wanda Grey, a Baptist, had a change of heart: "I was surprised at myself. I thought I had my mind all made up. Then I heard him, and I decided being Catholic isn't so bad. I'm for him.

" But Hubert Humphrey was in his element in West Virginia as he never was in Wisconsin, and he was clearly the candidate who was setting the pace. Kennedy's response to Humphrey's rabbity race was to say that Humphrey had no chance for the nomination anyway (or, as Roosevelt said, "A vote for Humphrey is a wasted vote") and that it was not winning him any new friends. Humphrey hinted that the Kennedy camp was showing signs of panic, claimed that he was getting offers of a deal to run for Vice President on a ticket with Kennedy. His stock reply: "Fine, go ask Jack if he'll be my Vice President."

There was a rare irony in Kennedy's West Virginia predicament: he had pegged his campaign to primaries to prove he could be a winner. Yet he stood in danger of being knocked out, or badly hurt, in a state that proved very little about the other 49. The West Virginia primary itself is meaningless. It does not even bind the delegates. Said Kennedy glumly at week's end: "If I lose in West Virginia, it'll just throw the race open to all the contenders—including myself, I believe."