Mrs. Luce to rip CIO-PAC tonight
Women will elect Dewey, she claims
By Kermit McFarland
Here to pitch into the CIO Political Action Committee and its alleged Communist “infiltration,” Mrs. Clare Boothe Luce, the Republican “glamor girl,” today predicted that women voters will carry the election for Governor Thomas E. Dewey because: “They want an efficient administration from here out which will bring the boys home the quickest and get them jobs the fastest.”
Mrs. Luce, who speaks at a Republican rally in Syria Mosque tonight, said that after 11 years of failing to keep us out of war and 11 years of unemployment, “there is no hope that Mr. Roosevelt will disclose himself as a better administrator in his declining years than he was in his prime.”
The demure-appearing but sharp-tongued Congresswoman from Connecticut said she has been hurling three questions at the Democrats in her five-day speaking tour of the Midwest, but “nobody answers the questions.”
Here are her questions:
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Would wise statesmanship have prevented this war in the 10 years before the war began?
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If America’s entry into the war was inevitable after 1939, why didn’t the President tell the American people so? If it was not inevitable, why are we in it?
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If the answer to the last question is because we were attacked, why were we attacked if we were truly neutral and trying to stay out?
Then she added another question:
Did the President say in 1940, after Dunkerque, that the Axis war on the world was a “foreign war” or did he not? The answer is that he said it, again and again. But did he believe 11? If he did believe it, where was his vision? If he didn’t believe it, why did he say it?
Mrs. Luce said she was “just asking the questions,” and not, as Congressman Mary T. Norton (D-NJ) charged yesterday, telling “half-truths.”
Speech to hit PAC
She said:
But nobody will answer these questions. All they say is that you are dealing in half-truths, or they don’t like the way you do your hair, or women don’t have any business in politics anyway.
Mrs. Luce said she will devote her speech tonight to the CIO Political Action Committee and “Communist infiltration” into the PAC.
She said the news from Bridgeport, Connecticut, in her home Congressional district, that a PAC chairman had quit because the PAC campaign against her was “un-American,” indicated that “the PAC is going to have a considerable surprise on election morning.”
Women will settle decision
She said:
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it hasn’t done more to alienate the working man than all the Republican logic and other reasonable argument can do.
Mrs. Luce said she was “quite sure” women voters will decide the election.
She said:
Six of every 10 voters are women. They ate responsible for the increased registration.
I think they will vote Republican because they don’t bother with superfluous questions and extraneous matters, the wav men do. They don’t clutter up their minds with so many details. They get right to the heart of it, and the heart of it is that they want an efficient administration which will bring the boys home the quickest and get them jobs the fastest.
I think they also are very anxious to have a little honesty in government. I don’t think they are so swayed by complicated matters like inflation, or sustaining the currency or other affairs which are very important.
First Lady comment refused
Asked by a lady reporter looking for a “woman’s angle” to compare her travels with those of Mrs. Roosevelt, Mrs. Luce replied: “I never comment on Mrs. Roosevelt.”
Later, she broadened this to include all women in public affairs. She said:
I never comment on other women in public affairs. I don’t think it does the cause any good. Men have an unrestrained impulse to call it a catfight, or a hairpulling contest.
Answers Wallace
Mrs. Luce said she noted that Vice President Henry A. Wallace also was asking three questions, to the effect that the voters should decide which man could best win the war, which could best win the peace, and which could best provide employment after the war.
“If I were he,” she said, “I wouldn’t go around asking those questions. I can answer him.”
She said an “efficient administration” would best win the war, that Mr. Roosevelt had failed to keep the peace, and that until the war came along, he had failed to solve the unemployment problem.
“This war saved his goose,” she said.
Mrs. Luce said she wouldn’t accept a challenge to debate Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes over “microphones at 10 paces.”
She said:
Mr. Ickes in private life, some of my friends find, is very interesting, but in public he has the soul of a meat ax and the mind of a commissar. I have no intention of debating him.
Dewey here Friday
In her speech tonight, Mrs. Luce will precede by four days the appearance here of Governor Dewey, who speaks Friday night in Hunt Armory.
The rally tonight will present a long list of Republican speakers and will include entertainment and what Republican County Chairman James F. Malone described as an “old-fashioned” political parade through the aisles of the hall.
Governor Edward Martin will introduce Mrs. Luce.
Following her speech. Scheduled for 9:30, which will be broadcast over a statewide radio network, Governor Dewey’s address in St. Louis, to begin at 10:00 p.m., will be tuned in for the Syria Mosque audience.
Other speakers
The speaking program at tonight’s rally will be opened by Mrs. Nelle G. Dressler, vice chairman of the Republican County Committee. Other speakers include Mrs. Margery M. Scranton, Pennsylvania member of the Republican National Committee; Mrs. Edna H. Carroll of Philadelphia, vice chairman of the State Committee, and Mr. Malone.
Republican State Chairman M. Harvey Taylor will introduce Judges J. Frank Graff and Arthur H. James, candidates for the Superior Court; Justice Howard W. Hughes, candidate for the Supreme Court: City Treasurer Edgar W. Baird of Philadelphia, candidate for State Treasurer, and Rev, James R. Cox of Old St. Patrick’s Church.
PAC chairman quits, charging unfairness
Bridgeport, Connecticut (UP) –
Chairman Daniel Hannon of the Political Action Committee of the CIO Brass Workers International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers local here resigned today. charging the PAC campaign against Congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce of Connecticut was un-American.”
Mr. Hannon also charged that a voluntary contribution of $1 collected from each union member for the PAC was “unfair.”
Edward C. O’Brien Jr., president of the local, said the executive committee would meet to select Mr. Hannon’s successor and that the work of the local PAC organization would go on despite his stand.