Truman: Dewey avoids foreign issues
Stresses danger in shortsighted policies
Los Angeles, California –
Senator Harry S. Truman last night called Governor Thomas E. Dewey a “fence straddler” on foreign policy and said the election of a man like him in 1940 would have cost the lives of American soldiers because “we would have set our sights too low.”
In the first campaign speech of his present swing around the country, Mr. Truman attacked Mr. Dewey’s record at a Democratic rally in the Shrine Auditorium.
Mr. Truman, the Democratic nominee for Vice President, said the nation “took a chance on Harding in 1920” and could not “afford to repeat that mistake.”
Linked with isolationists
He said:
We must support the President. He demonstrated his leadership and courage in foreign affairs when his present opponent was flirting with the isolationists and currying the political support of the Hearsts and McCormicks [William Randolph Hearst and Robert R. McCormick, publishers].
…The Republican candidate has not repudiated them support – no, not even softly. Instead, he has joined them. Like Hearst and McCormick, he spends much of his time denouncing the Communists. And like Hearst and McCormick, he lumps all liberals in with the Communists.
Mr. Truman struck back at Mr. Dewey for quoting reports of the Senate Truman Committee in an effort to show that the war effort had not been properly administered. Mr. Truman said the committee criticized mistakes and never hesitated to lay blame where it belonged but that Mr. Dewey must have known that all committee members, including the Republican Senators, had praised the accomplishments of the war effort in all their annual reports.
Explains Pendergast connection
Asked about his association with the Pendergast machine in Kansas City, Mr. Truman replied that no candidate in Missouri could be elected without the support of that organization.
He said:
I didn’t ask them to support me. They supported me because I was a good vote getter.
New Dewey charges bring reply from White House
Washington –
The White House today replied to Governor Thomas E. Dewey’s latest charges against the administration by issuing another “analysis” of his statements together with “the facts.”
The new White House document dealt with charges voiced by the Republican presidential candidate at St. Louis last night.
The compilation took up Mr. Dewey’s use of a National Resources Planning Board report which Mr. Dewey quoted as saying that “delayed military demobilization has been strongly advocated” after the war.
“The facts” as released at the White House, showed the same passage from which Mr. Dewey took his statement also contained as a “definite recommendation” the following:
A general policy of speedy, but orderly and controlled, military demobilization should be adopted coupled with the use of all reasonable plans and measures to increase the employment available to those being demobilized.
The White House also took up this Dewey statement:
Here is a report from the July 30, 1943, issue of The United States News. It says… “In North Africa… field agents of a dozen agencies – the Treasury, BEW, Lend-Lease, State Department and others – are reported to have brought confusion to the brink of chaos.
The White House document:
The United States News is not an official publication. It is a private publishing venture, edited by Mr. David Lawrence.