Alf Landon, former Republican nominee for President, admitted that he had never heard of Graville Hicks as he arrived in Boston last night.

"Not being a Harvard graduate, and not knowing anything about it, I have no comment to make," he said when informed that the University had appointed an avowed Communist to the faculty.

But on the Pennsylvania election he was more loquacious. "The result in Pennsylvania is rather extraordinary," he commented, "but very pleasing to every Republican. It is a repudiation of the Administration."

When asked whether he considered it more significant as a defeat of the CIO or of the New Deal, he told reporters that "to a Republican, the CIO and the Administration are synonymous."

Refusing to take the result in Pennsylvania as a prophecy of a GOP victory in 1940, the ex-Governor of Kansas did point to it as "a pretty good indication of what will happen next fall."

The man who two years ago was the white hope of good Republicans everywhere is now living quietly on his chicken farm in the country. "Mrs Landon is doing pretty well with her chickens, selling six or-seven dozen eggs a day." But one morning the man who wanted to be President could not find an egg in the house for an early breakfast.