America at war! (1941–) – Part 4

1914

americavotes1944

parry3

I DARE SAY —
Let’s get down to cases

By Florence Fisher Parry

Now really! We are not going to have accept Orson, too! The public’s capacity for practically anything has been considerably enlarged to meet the presidential campaign from both quarters, but I think this is just a leelte but too much to expect it to absorb.

Or are we to accept the choice of Mr. Orson Welles for the conspicuous role of introducing Mr. Henry Wallace to the Madison Square Garden Party rally last Thursday night as further indication of the New Deal’s bland assumption that the public is ignorant anyway?

When I tuned in to the mellifluous voice the other night and it finally dawned on me that it […] Orson introducing […] one of the biggest Democratic political rallies of the presidential campaign, I simply couldn’t believe it.

Orson? Who is a preposterous figure even on the corner of Hollywood and Vine? For him to be elevated to the platform of any political rally is an incongruity which was enough to put a strain on the credulity of the most cynical anti-New Dealer.

You may have read not more than a week ago of the party that Orson threw in Hollywood. And was it a party! The Borgias would have stood goggle-eyed at its weird and lurid extravagance.

Some of this off-the-beam genius for extravagance and hyperbole entered into a notable radio broadcast which the United States Treasury commissioned Orson to write for the opening radio program of the Fifth War Loan Drive. Those of us who heard this broadcast will not soon forget it! Remember the dialog between the old-timer and our Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Morgenthau? This radio broadcast hit the all-time corny in radio entertainment.

OK by me!

So, it cannot be claimed by the New Dealers that they are not wholly familiar with Orson’s brand of genius, character and technique. In spite of this, however, he was the chosen one to introduce Mr. Wallace.

Mind you, this is OK by me. But that it should be OK by our candidate for a fourth term is something to ponder. Surely, we should count on more dignity in campaigning than that.

I listened to every word of Orson and the defender of the New Deal faith, Mr. Wallace. As a matter of fact, I have listened to every radio speech of the present Democratic campaign. I even restrained myself from tuning out Mr. Ickes.

I try to hear all of Governor Dewey’s speeches, but if they collide with a New Deal speaker, sorry, I will just have to read the text of Mr. Dewey’s speech the next day.

The weakest thing about this whole campaign is that each party keeps spending its breath on its own disciples and converts. This was done in the last presidential campaign. The Willkie-ites talked to Willkie-ites, and the Roosevelt-ites talked to Roosevelt-ites. A house divided against itself will fall apart if the occupants of each leaning half cling only to their own walls. Governor Dewey spoke to 90,000 in Los Angeles. The total number isn’t important; the important thing is how many of those 90,000 were in the opposing camp and how many of them he could convert to his side.

Why not try this?

In Madison Square Garden, Vice President Wallace spoke to 20,000. It can be assumed that almost everyone present was already a New Dealer. It seems to me that if every person who makes up an audience of a major campaign speech would be pledged to bring with him someone from the opposing party, then we might get somewhere. Then, truly, the American populace might be informed!

I see all too many Republicans tune out a Democratic speech. I see too many New Dealers refuse to listen to any Republican campaigner. Here is where reform is needed. Here is where the weight of propaganda should work. By whatever device, by whatever persuasion, Republican workers in the field should make a Democrat listen to or read a Republican argument. By whatever device or recourse, a New Dealer should make a Republican listen to a New Deal argument.

Then and then only will our people make up their own minds. Then and then only can mass voting be broken up and the shameful machineries of racketeer politics be weakened.

1915

Reich’s fate still studied, Hull insists

Cabinet officer silent on dispute

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1916

americavotes1944

Wallace warns of inflation

Vice President cites need for Roosevelt

Buffalo, New York (UP) –
Vice President Henry A. Wallace asserted last night that post-era scarcities of consumer goods plus unprecedented spending power would bring sky-high inflation unless America reelected President Roosevelt as the “maestro” whose experience would enable him to control it.

He told a meeting sponsored by the Committee for the Reelection of President Roosevelt:

The time is coming when, unless we have the old maestro, that inflation will blow up as suddenly as the drop from a precipice. As liberals, it is our sacred duty to hold ourselves together.

Wants OPA kept

Mr. Wallace called for post-war retention of the Office of Price Administration, without which, he said, an inflation would set in “such as we have never seen and spectators would make bullions but labor, farmers, Canada, England and the whole world would get headaches.”

Predicting that the problems of reconversion would be difficult and require great skill, he said the President had had an opportunity to observe such forces “at work on a worldwide basis.”

‘Not tired old man’

He doubted if any who heard the President’s speech Saturday would believe he was a “tired old man.”

“But when it comes to intellect, give me the old maestro,” Mr. Wallace said.

In an earlier address to the Farmers for Roosevelt Committee, Mr. Wallace charged that reactionaries, “especially in the Republican Party, have done their best to drive a wedge between labor and agriculture.”

House defied in election quiz

Washington (UP) –
The Committee for Constitutional Government, founded by Rochester publisher Frank Gannett, today defied authority of a Congressional committee to subpoena a list of its contributors and a spokesman said the organization would leave the matter for courts to decide.

E. A. Rumely, executive secretary of the Committee for Constitutional Government, told the House Committee on Campaign Expenditures that subpoenaing its financial records “is beyond the power of this Congressional committee” because the organization spent no money in support of or opposition to any political candidate or party.

Yielding to the committee subpoena, he said, would set a precedent “for the misuse of the power of Congress to attack and smear any citizen or group of citizens who organize to support a philosophy of government or take a position on broad public measures of any kind, but without participating in elections.”

Committee Chairman Clinton P. Anderson (D-NM) refused immediate comment on what his next step would be.

1917

9,600 men idle in labor disputes

By the United Press

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1918

americavotes1944

Aid for farmers pledged by Dewey

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (UP) –
Continuance of several New Deal farm aid programs on a modified basis was promised Oklahoma farmers today by Governor Thomas E. Dewey as he opened a series of conferences with state agricultural, labor and veterans and business groups.

The GOP nominee told farm leaders that a key point in his platform was the revision of social security laws to include them.

Z. H. Lawter, secretary of the Oklahoma Farmers Union, said he believed Governor Dewey “made a good impression” on the Oklahoma farm group.

Mr. Lawton said after the conference:

He talked about social security and he was emphatic in stating that he favored wider courage to take in agricultural workers. And he is for continuing the Farm Security Administration and – in a general way – the triple-A program.

W. E. Harvey, owner of several farm near Ada, said of Governor Dewey, “He talks my language.”

Fireworks promised by Governor Dewey

Aboard the Dewey Special –
Governor Thomas E. Dewey all along has been hinting that the foremost objective of his present transcontinental tour was to smoke President Roosevelt into open battle – the sooner the better – and he lost no time in seizing the President’s Saturday night speech as the consummation of that purpose.

Traversing the New Mexico desert at noon yesterday, Governor Dewey issued a statement asserting that Mr. Roosevelt has “dropped the mask of a ‘non-political’ campaign and I shall feel free to examine his record with unvarnished candor beginning with a national broadcast at Oklahoma City Monday night.”

The complaint heard increasingly from Dewey supporters is that he has been too tender both of President Roosevelt and the New Deal.

Governor Dewey heretofore has made no answer to this criticism but his associates have not been so reticent. They said that, opposing as he was a war-burdened President, sitting silently and aloof in the White House and, as reported, in none too good health, there was a great question as to how far Governor Dewey could go in direct attack without arousing popular feeling adverse to himself.

Certainly Mr. Roosevelt has now demolished this reservation.

1919

americavotes1944

Bricker ‘certain’ of Pennsylvania

Cleveland, Ohio (UP) –
Governor John W. Bricker, Republican vice-presidential nominee, was back in Ohio today, convinced of a Republican victory in the New England states and Pennsylvania in November.

Governor Bricker will return to Columbus Wednesday after attending a meeting of the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite here for two days.

Before leaving his special car at Cleveland yesterday, Governor Bricker said that he was “amazed at the size and enthusiasm” of the crowds he spoke before during his whirlwind 3,250-mile swing through five Eastern States.

Upon his return to Columbus, Governor Bricker will rest until Oct. 1 when he will start on a 9,250-mile tour which will take him through the Northwest, the Pacific Coast and 20 states.

Actually, the Governor’s western trip will begin in the South with two meetings on Oct. 2 at Bowling Green, Kentucky, and at Nashville, Tennessee.

He will be at Centralia, Illinois, on Oct. 3 and at St. Louis on Oct. 4. On Oct. 5, he will speak at Ottumwa, Iowa, and Rock Island, Illinois. He will spend Oct. 6 in Milwaukee and on Oct. 7 move on to St. Paul, St. Cloud and Duluth. Minn. From Duluth, he will launch his campaign into the Pacific Northwest, but schedules for the trip have not been definitely decided.

1920

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America Firsters endorse Dewey

St. Henry, Ohio (UP) –
Gerald L. K. Smith of Detroit and Harry Romer of St. Henry, presidential and vice-presidential candidates respectively of the America First Party, today announced the support of their party for the Dewey-Bricker Republican ticket.

At a rally attended by 3,000 persons yesterday, Smith and Romer said that their party could not carry the nation this year, but added that the groundwork was being laid for 1948.

Browder assails GOP candidates

Chicago, Illinois (UP) –
Earl Browder, president of the Communist Political Association, last night bitterly denounced Governors Thomas E. Dewey and John W. Bricker for what he called “divide and conquer” tactics in their assertions that the Democratic Party is being dominated by Communists.

Speaking at a rally marking 25 years of Communist activity in the United States, Mr. Browder reaffirmed CPA support of the Roosevelt-Truman ticket, and alternated criticism of the Republican candidates with attacks on Col. Robert E. McCormick’s Chicago Tribune.

“Dewey and Bricker are making a major issue against Roosevelt that the Communists are supporting him,” Mr. Browder said in his first Chicago appearance since the CPA replaced the American Communist Party early this year.

He added:

What nonsense it is talking about someone capturing Roosevelt. The reactionaries have been trying to do it for 12 years, but no one has succeeded yet. Even Hirohito dreamed of it, with no more success.

1921

americavotes1944

GOP leaders hit ‘humor’ of Roosevelt

President is termed rival of Bob Hope

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania –
Republican State Headquarters today distributed the following comments on President Roosevelt’s Saturday night speech by “leading Pennsylvania Republicans.”

State Chairman M. Harvey Taylor said:

Once again, he promises us a Heaven on earth. He had 11 years to do it and failed. It took a war to put us all to work. The people of this country will not fall for the same siren song this time. It wasn’t a speech; it was a humorous monolog.

Davis quoted

U.S. Senator James J. Davis, candidate for reelection, said:

Mr. Roosevelt’s speech was distinctive in one respect. It wasn’t made during an inspection of military installations, war plants or from the poop deck of a battleship, his gay hilarity and optimism for a future under the New Deal prove that Mr. Roosevelt is still the great showman who has mastered the art of saying many things without saying anything.

Owlett comments

Republican National Committeeman G. Mason Owlett said:

As a political document, it was a sorry flop. The President used more quips and gags than six professional funny men. Bob Hope and Milton Berle have a new rival.

1922

americavotes1944

Old technique employed again by Roosevelt

Strategy of satire and ridicule in speech recalls his addresses made in 1940
By Charles T. Lucey, Scripps-Howard staff writer

Washington –
President Roosevelt’s first avowedly political speech of 1944 gave every indication – in subject matter, technique and tone, in use of satire and ridicule – of a campaign strategy cut from the same cloth as that with which he beat Wendell Willkie in 1940.

It was rated widely here as one of the President’s best political speeches. But observers who placed parts of it against the half-dozen campaign speeches of four years ago came up with “this is where I came in.”

The President’s springboard for the fourth-term campaign is the same he used in 1940. He said then he would have no time or inclination to engage “in any purely political debate,” but that he would “never be loath to call the attention of the nation to deliberate or unwitting falsifications of fact.” He said just about that this year.

Four years ago recalled

In his opening campaign speech at Philadelphia four years ago, he said:

Certain techniques of propaganda, created and developed in dictator countries, have been imported into this campaign. It is the very simple technique of repeating and repealing and repeating falsehoods, with the idea that by constant repetition and reiteration, with no contradiction, the misstatements will finally come to be believed.

Talking Saturday night, he said:

The opposition in this year has already imported into this campaign a technique invented by the dictators abroad… According to that technique, you should never use a small falsehood; always a big one, for its very fantastic nature will make it more credible – if only you keep repeating it over and over again.

Record cited

Mr. Roosevelt will not let the Republicans forget – nor did he in 1940 that his administration came to power after three and a half years of depression, overcame a bank crisis, began taking steps to put people back to work, and went on to institute programs of social security, collective bargaining, bank deposit guarantees, stock market reform and wage-and-hour laws.

Campaigning four years ago, Mr. Roosevelt commented that now the Republican leaders were all for such progressive measures, and “believe in them so much they will never be happy until they can clasp them to their own chests and put their own brand upon them.”

Saturday night, he cited the Republican Party platform’s acceptance of such reforms and remarked that many Republicans “would not even recognize these progressive laws if they met them in broad daylight.”

Loves a fight

Four years ago in Philadelphia, Mr. Roosevelt talked of “a chicken in every pot” and “two cars in every garage.” Saturday night it was “Hoovervilles."

“I am an old campaigner,” he said in his opening speech in the fall of 1940, “and I love a good fight.”

He still does. He warmed to that fight Saturday night with effective thrusts of satire and dramatic emphasis on the droll or amusing touch – something GOP candidates somehow do not match.

In 1940, there was the famed “Martin, Barton and Fish” phrase he dished out in his Madison Square Garden speech and, so well did it catch on, used again in Boston.

Chides Dewey

Now. in this campaign, he tells a rollicking story of his dog, Fala. He uses a gag, “Never speak of rope in the house of one who has been hanged,” in chiding Governor Dewey for talking about a depression which began in Republican President Hoover’s era. And talks of seeing many marvelous circus stunts but never a performing elephant that “could turn a handspring without falling flat on his back.”

The speech was that of a man who long ago got his degree in political tactics; he chose adroitly to discuss issues that pleased him and which he could handle frequently with barbed sarcasm, and to overlook others. He could discuss labor questions at length, for example without attempting to answer Governor Dewey’s factual account of the conglomeration of Federal agencies in the labor field.

Jobs is big word

Both Governor Dewey and Mr. Roosevelt are making “jobs” of top-rung importance in their speeches.

Friday night at Los Angeles, Governor Dewey cited the importance of a job in everybody’s mind, said the country must not go back to the 10 million unemployed of 1940, repeated his charge that the New Deal had to have a war to get jobs, stressed the need for peacetime jobs.

The next night, Mr. Roosevelt said:

The keynote of all that we propose to do in reconversion can be found in the one word – “jobs.”

1923

americavotes1944

Vote campaign termed battle of personalities

New York (UP) –
Norman Thomas, Socialist Party candidate for President, asserted last night that the two major political parties are waging their campaigns on the basis of personalities instead of concerning themselves with principles and programs which will bring “peace and plenty.”

In an address broadcast locally and recorded for rebroadcast to overseas troops, Mr. Thomas said the issue of the election is not “positively Dewey versus Roosevelt – it is for or against Roosevelt.”

He charged that President Roosevelt had failed to plan for either war or peace in his pre-war administrations. Attacking the thesis that the President is “indispensable,” he said that “no democracy is secure in which the sole question is the personality of the leader.”

1924

americavotes1944

PAC commits CIO unions to own detailed platform

By Robert Taylor, Press Washington correspondent

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1925

Jap barges sunk off Peleliu Island

Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (UP) –
Pacific Fleet headquarters disclosed today that U.S. warships broke up a Jap attempt to reinforce remnants of its garrison herded into the northwest corner of Peleliu in the Palau Islands.

At least 10 and probably 13 barges, carrying men and equipment, were wrecked by the warships which moved in close to blast the craft at close range. The barge convoy apparently came from Koror or other Central Palau islands.

On Peleliu, the enemy force, now approximately one-quarter of its original size, was still fighting viciously in the treacherous terrain, reported to be the worst yet encountered in the Pacific.

1926

americavotes1944

CIO-PAC attacked by labor leader

Dayton, Ohio (UP) –
A political victory in November by the CIO Political Action Committee “would be a black day for the future of American organized labor,” John E. Breidenbach, president of the Dayton Building Trades Council, said today.

Mr. Breidenbach, in an article printed in the labor paper, Labor Union, charged that a PAC victory would be a triumph for Communism.

He wrote:

A victory by Sidney Hillman’s CIO Political Action Committee would constitute the greatest single political triumph ever achieved by the Communists of America, and would be a black day for the future of American organized labor.

Mr. Breidenbach said:

Granting the probable truth of Mr. Hillman’s statement that he is not a Communist, this does not mean that Mr. Hillman, in his own devious way, has not been a powerful influence for Communism in America.

His current alliance with the Browderites in the PAC merely highlights a quarter-century record of shrewd assistance to selected left-wing causes.

1927

americavotes1944

Dewey may talk on Pearl Harbor

Washington (UP) –
Senator Styles Bridges (R-NH) said today that Governor Thomas E. Dewey has been “gathering facts” about the Pearl Harbor disaster and may use them in a major campaign address on the Jap attack and the “responsibility” of President Roosevelt as Commander-in-Chief.

Mr. Bridges said:

The Democrats are scared to death that the Pearl Harbor question will be brought into the campaign further than it has been.

He charged that the current Army and Navy investigations of the case were “just a means of stalling to cover it up until after election.”

1928

Drives to flank Japan mapped

Philippines invasion likely first step

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1929

Relief comes just in time for trapped paratroopers

Rescue column struggles through after forced march against Nazi opposition
By Richard D. McMillan, United Press staff writer

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1930

Chinese take bastion near Burma Road

Gain in campaign in Yunnan Province

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Racial war peril in Orient cited

Col. Romulo: U.S. pattern must be adopted

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1931

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Ball asks defeat of 11 Senators

Washington (UP) –
Senator Joseph H. Ball (R-MN) charged today that 11 of 32 Senators up for reelection in November are isolationists who would attempt to stifle plans for a world peace organization and called for their defeat at the polls.

Although declining to identify them, Mr. Ball said eight of the 11 Senators were Republicans, three were Democrats and almost all of them figures of note.

He predicted that a long, and perhaps disastrous, fight would ensue in Congress over the security organization now being planned at Dumbarton Oaks unless the public forces an “involuntary retirement” of certain members of the Senate and House.

At the same time, Senator Warren R. Austin (R-VT) said the world security plan being outlined at Dumbarton Oaks had a single purpose – security – and that fears that it would vest American representatives with authority to plunge the nation into war were premature.

1932

Editorial: Worldwide press freedom

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1933

Editorial: A major post-war job

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