It’s no foreign war, Reynolds tells conclave
Correspondent replies to Clare Luce speech
Chicago, Illinois (UP) –
War correspondent Quentin Reynolds told the Democratic National Convention last night that American servicemen have learned “this was no foreign war,” and on foreign soils have discovered “an outpost of America where there are no barriers.”
“They learned this was no foreign war when they first landed in England,” he said.
There, he said, when American men saw the scars of war on the House of Commons, which “has always been the symbol of free speech in Britain,” and Westminster Abbey, which “has been the symbol of the Christian way of life,” they knew that Hitler was waging war against “our ideals and our way of life.”
Answer to Mrs. Luce
Apparently referring to Rep. Clare Boothe Luce’s “G.I. Jim” speech at the Republican Convention, Mr. Reynolds said:
I do not propose to speak for your son abroad, and I never would commit the unholy sacrilege of speaking for his dead brother who has been killed in combat. No man – or woman – can speak for him. We can only accept his sacrifice humbly and not presume to speak for him with our unworthy tongues.
No barriers at fronts
Mr. Reynolds, who has toured many of the battlefronts, said American men overseas had found out one thing about war… “There are no barriers at the front.”
He said:
Kids here at home grow up surrounded by barriers… all man-made.
Neighborhood barriers, city barriers, state barriers, social barriers, racial barriers, political barriers, barriers of wealth. You climb over one barrier only to find another ahead of you.
Then you find yourself at the front, thousands of miles from home. And suddenly, perhaps for the first time in your life, you realize that here on American soil, as an outpost of America, where there are no barriers. This was always the dream you’d had of America, a dream that never before has come quite true.
There are no Democrats or Republicans at the front; there are no Italian-Americans or Polish-Americans; there are no New Yorkers or Californians or Texans or New Englanders… Only Americans… Only Americans purged of the artificial barriers we still make so much of here at home.
A ‘G.I.’ has the answer
Mr. Reynolds warned that the nation’s fighting men abroad are so proud of their country they would “hate to see it tarnished by the sad spectacle of fellow Americans indulging in the childish pastime of name calling.” He said the reaction of men in uniform to a “smear campaign” by either party would be unfavorable.
Aboard a troopship on the way into Salerno last September, Mr. Reynolds said, a soldier best expressed what Americans are fighting for when he said:
“Added all together, and it means we’re fighting for the right to bawl out the umpire.”