Gentleman & Scholar

Old Pat Nash might be revolving in his grave. Old Ed Kelly might be fidgeting with alarm. But Illinois' potent Democratic machine, which has customarily counted on tried & tested party professionals to do its toughest campaigning chores, announced last week that its 1948 ticket would be headed by 1) a gentleman and 2) a scholar.

Shrewd Boss Jake Arvey had wanted to line up a more seasoned vote-getting combination. But Senator Scott Lucas had refused to run for the governorship; as the Senate's only Midwestern Democrat, he thought he could do his party more good in Washington. Chicago's able Businessman-Mayor Martin Kennelly had also turned down the governorship post.

Rueful Laugh. Though Boss Arvey's candidates were political newcomers, they were newcomers who might be more promising than many a well-known party hack. His men: Adlai Stevenson, 47, the U.S.'s alternate delegate to the U.N., who will run against shopworn Governor Dwight H. Green; and Paul Douglas, 55, University of Chicago professor of economics, who will try to unhorse rabble-rousing Senator C. Wayland Brooks.

Most Democratic workers knew Candidate Stevenson only as a name. A grandson of Grover Cleveland's Vice President, he is a suave, able, well-liked socialite lawyer with an anxious expression, a rueful laugh, a lemony sense of humor--and a tongue in his head that has won him a reputation in Chicago for soundly progressive ideas. He has been away from Chicago for nearly seven years. He served as a wartime assistant to Secretaries Frank Knox, Cordell Hull and Ed Stettinius; he went abroad on several missions for the State Department. Stevenson has numerous friends both in the downstate area (where his family for generations has owned the Bloomington Pantagraph) and on Chicago's La Salle Street, where many Republicans have already promised him their votes.

Marine Fireworks. Candidate Douglas has none too happy a reputation with party workers. As a rebellious and reform bent city alderman, he had thrown many a prewar monkey wrench into the Kelly-Nash machine. He had been badly beaten in the 1942 senatorial primary. Then (while his wife, Emily Taft Douglas, guarded the family political fortunes by serving a term in Congress), he had gone off to fight as a private in the Marines. Twice wounded, he came home a hero and a lieutenant colonel.

One fly in the Stevenson-Douglas ointment was that each man would have preferred the other's spot. But if Boss Arvey had tried to send Economist Douglas to Springfield, every patronage-minded man in the ranks would have howled rebellion.

Stevenson, who has never campaigned for office, planned no slam-bang fight. He would work hard, but quietly. Most of the fireworks would come from Douglas. He announced that, as one ex-marine dealing with another, he hoped to blast Curly Brooks "in every county, every town and before every factory gate" in Illinois.

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