Editorial: Wallace’s junket
The President seems to have a dual purpose in shipping the Vice President off to China. He wants to take the heat off Henry here at home in the pre-convention period. And he wants to counteract, with a few kind words to the Chinese, the British reverses in Burma and India. But we wouldn’t put much money on the line that this junket will succeed.
It is not hard to figure why the President would like to get Mr. Wallace out of the country for a while. Though the Senate has a heavy schedule ahead, he is not particularly needed there as a presiding officer – in fact some are unkind enough to suggest that things will go better without him. He is unpopular with the Southern and conservative groups of the party, which the President is trying to butter up in a campaign year.
If the President decides to force him as a vice-presidential candidate on the next Democratic convention as in 1940, will that task be easier if Mr. Wallace remains out of sight and sound for two or three months? Our guess is that the President has not yet made up his mind whether he will run again, or if so, made his choice for second place on the ticket.
But since left-wing help will be needed in the campaign, he apparently intends to use Mr. Wallace in some capacity. We doubt, however, that Mr. Wallace’s absence will have made the party heart grow any fonder by the time he returns for the convention.
The Chinese situation is more important than the political fortunes of Mr. Wallace, and even less likely to be changed by the President’s simple device of sending him on a trip. Chinese morale is low, because they have fought a long time without appreciable help. Repeated promises have grown dangerously thin. Words, however eloquent and sincere, will not serve for weapons – the weapons required to stand off the Japs, much less lick them.
Why expect Mr. Wallace, a year later, to impress the Chinese with American good intentions if that was not achieved by Congress and the President personally when Mme. Chiang Kai-shek came here asking aid? Americans, for selfish as well as for humanitarian reasons, know that China must be liberated before Japan can be defeated. But it is now a matter of performance.
Our real ambassadors of goodwill to China are Adm. Nimitz, Gen. MacArthur, Gen. Stilwell and Gen. Chennault. Messengers of regret to Chungking, with alibis for the failure of the over-advertised Mountbatten offensive to get started before the rainy season, can accomplish nothing. If Mr. Wallace has powers of persuasion, he had better spend them in London and New Delhi.