The Pittsburgh Press (October 23, 1944)
Yanks take Leyte highway
Jap forces retreat to hills and jungles from east coast
By William B. Dickinson, United Press staff writer
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British close on road center in Netherlands
Nazi stand weakens near Hertogenbosch
By J. Edward Murray, United Press staff writer
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Republican Ball backs Roosevelt
Foreign policies cited in stand
Senator Ball
Washington (UP) –
Senator Joseph H. Ball (R-MN) said today that on the basis of President Roosevelt’s stand on foreign policy “I shall vote for and support Mr. Roosevelt” in the Nov. 7 election.
Mr. Ball, a strong advocate of close international cooperation to maintain peace, had posed three questions concerning that issue and said the answers to them would determine whether he would vote for Mr. Roosevelt or for Governor Thomas E. Dewey, the Republican presidential nominee.
Isolationists assailed
Mr. Ball said in a prepared statement:
President Roosevelt in his Saturday night speech capped this record [American leadership in the war] of action by meeting squarely and unequivocally the two vital and controversial issues on which the isolationists kept us out of the League of Nations and will fight our entry into the United Nations security organization.
He insisted that the United Nations organization be formed without delay, before hostilities cease, and that it be granted power to use military force against future aggressors without requiring individual approach of each member nation.
Governor Dewey has opposed delay but has not met squarely the second vital issue. He has spoken for a strong international security organization, but in each speech has so worded his commitment that both isolationists and internationalists could find comfort and support in what he said. A substantial part of his support is talking straight isolationist doctrine to the country.
‘Miraculous’ war record
Senator Ball said Mr. Roosevelt “is in a position to receive a clear and tremendously forceful mandate on this great issue from the American people,” but “Governor Dewey’s mandate would be confused and weak and his leadership hampered by a serious division among his own supporters.”
The “miraculous” American war record, he said, proved that the country is stronger than ever despite “changes in federal policy and administrative mistakes the past 12 years.”
Senator Ball said:
It can and will survive domestic blunders, but neither our enterprise system nor our democratic institutions will survive a Third World War. Therefore, the foreign policy which the American people choose for their government in this election becomes all important.
‘Efficiency needed’
Governor Dewey, he said, has not reversed or abandoned “any major objective or policy of the Roosevelt administration,” but promises more efficiency and a friendlier attitude toward business. Both are needed, he added, but the war is convincing proof that domestic issues cannot be separated from international issues, that “what America does at home has terrific repercussions abroad, and that the solutions reached for international problems will shape and limit our choices at home.”
Senator Ball said:
The Roosevelt administration, with some mistakes and timidity, has by its action reversed the isolationist foreign policy the United States followed for two decades. It has established American leadership of the United Nations in fighting this war and developing a world security organization to maintain peace.
Mr. Ball was said to have reached his decision after listening to the foreign policy speeches that the two candidates delivered last week – Governor Dewey before the New York Herald-Tribune Forum Wednesday and Mr. Roosevelt before the Foreign Policy Association in New York Saturday night.
Still a Republican
It was emphasized that Mr. Ball will not in any sense renounce his party – he is and will remain a Republican in principle and a foe of what he calls bureaucratic bungling on the home front by the Roosevelt administration.
But to him, a strong, forward-looking foreign policy, calling for vigorous U.S. participation in a world peace organization, transcends domestic issues in this election.
Three questions
Mr. Ball’s decision was based on a test that he proposed for both candidates – a test dealing solely with the proposed world organization and consisting of these three questions:
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Will you support the earliest possible formation of a United Nations security organization and U.S. entry therein before any final peace settlements in either Europe or Asia?
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Will you oppose any reservations to U.S. entry which would weaken the power of the organization to act to maintain peace and stop aggression?
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Should the vote of the U.S. delegate on the World Council commit an agreed upon quota of our military forces to stop aggression or should the delegate be compelled to get Congressional approval in each instance?
Both Governor Dewey and Mr. Roosevelt subsequently endorsed formation of the organization before hostilities end, but the President went beyond Mr. Dewey’s stand by urging that the American delegate be empowered to place U.S. forces in the path of future aggressors without getting Congressional sanction in each instance.
Grandmother gets war orphan baby
Normal life planned for 6-month-old baby
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United War Fund pledges, donations reach $944,632
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U.S. recognizes De Gaulle regime
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General’s son killed
Staunton, Virginia –
Mrs. Alexander M. Patch, wife of Lt. Gen. Alexnader M. Patch, commander of the U.S. 7th Army in France, has received a radio message from her husband that their son, Capt. Alexander M. Patch III, was killed in action in France yesterday.
I DARE SAY —
The last lap
By Florence Fisher Parry
The news photographers are overdoing their job of photographing public figures. While we all recognize the unfortunate necessity for this, it would take a lot of explaining to convince the public, and even more, the public figures photographed, that it is absolutely imperative for the cameramen so conspicuously to monopolize their subjects while they are speaking to their audiences.
The other night I sat very near Mrs. Clare Boothe Luce as she made her political address to the large audience at Syria Mosque. She is a woman of extraordinary poise; but I was close enough to observe that in spite of her admirable control and desperate effort to disregard the ordeal, her face flinched at the unremitting glare of the photographers’ flashbulbs in her face.
The interruptions sharply reduced the effectiveness of her address, and it was not until she was half through making it that the photographers retired.
Friday night at the Hunt Armory the Republican candidate for President was so surrounded by photographers during the early portion of his speech that it was difficult for many of those in the audience really to more than glimpse him for fully 10 minutes after his address began.
Reform needed
The present campaign has pointed up a number of other needs for reform. There are those in every audience who are hard of hearing, and who constantly complain that the public address system is not tuned loud enough for them to get the whole text of a speech. I have noticed in the theater, this tendency to play down the public address system. In some of the motion picture theaters, it is absolutely impossible for a hard of hearing person to catch all of the dialogue. It is quite evident that the volume of sound is geared to normal hearing.
I say there are too many hard of hearing people nowadays; and that in their interests, the volume should be greater.
Now it is being said that this presidential campaign is becoming “dirty.” Yet the record of past campaigns shows clearly that this one is being conducted in the usual American way, and I, for one, cannot deplore this completely American indulgence. The people of America, when they go out deliberately to become one of a great and cheering throng, do so because they love the circus of campaigning. If this were not so, they would stay at home and enjoy the effortless comfort of listening to the speeches on the radio.
But they go forth and congregate because they themselves want to participate. They want to clap and yell and stamp and boo and cheer.
Take, for example, the night of Governor Dewey’s speech here. Did that great throne weather the rain and fight through tangled transportation really to hear what their candidate had to say? No. They went because they wanted to be part of the rally. They didn’t just want to enjoy him. They wanted to enjoy themselves.
Compromise
For those who deplore this, we suggest this compromise.
Let the candidates, in an honest effort to lift the vital issues of this campaign to a level of serious and solemn dignity, address themselves to the people through the medium of radio at certain spaced and stated intervals throughout the campaign, with no listening audience except the unseen radio audience; and in these special broadcasts, from the quietude of their own separate retreats, advance with dignity and clarity, the issues of their platforms, thus providing those of us who would keep campaigns “clean” our own opportunity to reflect upon the issues.
Then when our candidates make their public appearances before great audiences, let them slug it out in the old American way.
Why could we not have, in future presidential campaigns, planned forums or debates, at which our candidates and their most eloquent supporters could participate in a serious, dignified exposition of their platforms?
Then when the candidates appear on party platforms before great audiences, let them cut loose with all that they have in the true, old-fashioned torchlight campaign American way!
Meantime, for the last stretch in this bitter campaign, let us beg for fewer flashbulbs, and loudspeakers that are tuned up loud!
Robot bombs in production for Air Force
Tests to decide weapon’s usefulness
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PCA asks right to fly Atlantic
Washington to Europe route proposed
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Orson Welles suffers from throat infection
New York (UP) –
The condition of Orson Welles, actor who has been ill of a throat infection at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel since Friday, was described today as “still very serious.”
Jackson Leighter, his manager, said that while his temperature remained at 104, he was not considered in a critical condition. Welles was forced to cancel several political speeches, including one before a Roosevelt rally last night.
Welles is scheduled to speak at a Democratic rally Nov. 2 at Syria Mosque in Pittsburgh.
Roosevelt studied four-point program to enforce peace
Legislation to carry out administration plans faces almost certain fight in Congress
Washington (UP) –
The administration is studying a four-step program to carry out the ideas on a world peace organization outlined by President Roosevelt in his foreign policy address Saturday night.
Speaking before the Foreign Policy Association in New York, Mr. Roosevelt declared that the peace organization must be set up before hostilities cease and said the U.S. delegate must receive Congressional authority “in advance” to commit U.S. forces to check aggression.
Steps outlined
Administration officials were understood to be contemplating this four-point program:
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Submission to the Senate of a treaty to make the United States a member of the new organization. This would require a two-thirds vote for ratification.
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A separate agreement on the types and amounts of military forces to be held ready for use by the Security Council. This may be either in treaty form or as a resolution requiring simple majorities in both houses.
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Legislation to set up the office of the American delegate and to outline his duties and authorities. To prevent this from being stymied by the two-thirds Senate rule, the measure probably will be in form of domestic legislation requiring simple majorities.
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Various appropriation bills providing funds for the office of the delegate and for the American quota forces.
Fight almost certain
Despite the almost certain prospect of opposition from many Congressmen, Mr. Roosevelt said it was imperative that the Council of the organization projected at Dumbarton Oaks have power to act quickly to keep the peace.
He said:
I was clear that if the world organization is to have any reality at all, our representatives must be endowed in advance by the people themselves, by constitutional means through their representatives in the Congress with authority to act.
Dewey’s advisers are ‘smart’
But nominee makes up his own mind
By Charles T. Lucey, Scripps-Howard staff writer
Albany, New York –
A brain trust has come to be an accepted part of a presidential campaign, and Tom Dewey’s is rated an extremely able one.
The Republican candidate’s speeches are his own and when he steps up to deliver one, he is not peddling canned goods someone has slipped into his pocket just before he leaves for the auditorium. Yet his research and writing staff, burning the 3:00 a.m. oil in its headquarters on the 11th floor of the DeWitt Clinton Hotel here, has contributed largely to his bid for the Presidency.
Mostly, the men around Governor Dewey are ex-newspapermen about the candidate’s own age – Elliott Bell (now New York state finance director and ex-New York Times writer), Harold Keller (ex-New York American man who is a kind of managing editor on research and writing production) Merlin Pitzele (labor editor of Business Week on leave), Hickman Powell (ex-New York Herald-Tribune) and a number of others.
Act quickly
Unlike Wendell Willkie, who carried a large speech-writing staff with him, Governor Dewey leaves most of his at home in Albany save for Elliott Bell. When Mr. Roosevelt delivered his Teamsters speech, the Albany staff didn’t wait to hear from the candidate, who was headed for Oklahoma City.
Instead, it pulled FDR’s speech apart in a conference that began the minute the broadcast was over, and when it had decided that sharp and immediate reply was called for, it said so in a lengthy telegram to Mr. Dewey aboard his train, including salient points on which it believed an effective answer could be pledged.
Had ‘spare’ speeches
When Governor Dewey headed for the West Coast in his opening campaign swing, he carried with him two or three “spare” speeches which could be substituted for other addresses along the way if circumstances suggested.
When he started work on his Oklahoma City speech, he had these to draw on for parts of his reply to Mr. Roosevelt, plus a generous sheaf of well-documented memoranda on many subjects on which he and his staff had worked.
If he couldn’t at once put his hands on what he wanted, he could call his Albany staff for it.
Blunt language
Home at Albany between speeches, Mr. Dewey may summon his research and writing men to the executive mansion at 11:00 p.m. and spend hours pulling apart a campaign proposition with them. In these sessions there are no punches pulled.
The language is as blunt as you’d get in a session of a half-dozen men anywhere; the Governor accepts some of the thinking and rejects more of it.
No one pattern is followed all the time in preparing speeches. Often there’s a “story” conference in which a decision is made as to subject, and various phases of it may be parceled out to several writers.
Or there may be a session at which a nearly-completed speech is being discussed, and Mr. Dewey himself makes revisions and interlineations as the talk on each point goes back and forth.
Simms: World bases held vital to U.S. future
Election candidates should air views
By William Philip Simms, Scripps-Howard foreign editor
Washington –
Now that President Roosevelt and Governor Dewey have both spoken vigorously in support of American cooperation in post-war security, it is remarked that neither has yet mentioned the subject of bases without which America’s role might be fatally handicapped.
The administration’s attitude thus far has been that territorial and related matters should be pigeonholed until the end of the war. And, generally speaking, this stand has received wide support.
However, the other members of the Big Three are following no such policy. Russia, and to a certain extent Britain, already know what they want, and intend to get, out of this war. Of the great powers, apparently only America will go to the peace table, hat in hand, wondering what will be dropped into it.
Action is vital
Both candidates agree that quick action is vital to peace, if the world is again threatened by an aggressor. And rightly, it is remarked the President Saturday night likened policing the world to policing a town.
He said:
A policeman would not be a very effective policeman it, when he saw a felon break into a house, he had to go to the Town Hall and call a town meeting to issue a warrant before the felon could be arrested.
But it is observed, there is a corollary to the presidential metaphor. It is that a policeman would not be a very effective policeman if he had to make his headquarters, say in New York, and somebody telegraphed him that a felon was breaking into a house in New Orleans.
Bases needed
To preserve order in a large area, the authorities are careful to have adequate police stations located at strategic places throughout the town.
Russia, which owns approximately a sixth of the habitable globe and which, at the end of this war, will be the world’s greatest land power, is not waiting to strengthen her defenses. Already she has staked out claims in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, and Britain, if not America, has okayed them, at least in principle.
In return, there is reason to believe that Marshal Stalin and Prime Minister Churchill, at their recent meeting in Moscow, reached a degree of understanding with regard to Britain’s post-war sphere of influence. They are not holding back until the peace.
In line with the Atlantic Charter, of course, the United States is seeking “no aggrandizement, territorial or other.” But it does have one major stake, namely, an enduring peace. To get such a peace an overwhelming majority of the American people and both Houses of Congress favor, if necessary, the use of force – United States force. But this force will not be effective without adequate bases in the Atlantic and the Pacific and these we haven’t got.
‘Spend, waste’ hit by Bricker
GOP candidate assails New Deal
Cheyenne, Wyoming (UP) –
Ohio Governor John W. Bricker, assuring that there was a vital need for greater control over the spending of taxpayers’ money, today demanded extension and strengthening of the pre-audit functions of the General Accounting Office.
Arriving from Laramie, where he made his first rear-platform talk in Wyoming, the GOP vice-presidential nominee said that this reform could not be attained by “an administration drunk with power.” It could be done, he said, by Thomas E. Dewey as President and a Republican Congress.
New Deal assailed
Tracing the legislative reforms in public financing, Mr. Bricker accused the New Deal of “constantly” trying to “rob Congress of its control over government spending.”
He cited, as one example, the responsibility of the General Accounting Office to pre-audit expenditures “to make sure that money is spent as Congress intended.” This power, he explained, extended to the administrative agencies.
Mr. Bricker said:
This was too much for a New Deal… It has always been a policy [with the New Deal] of spend, waste, borrow and tax. And so, the New Deal attempted to abolish the independent pre-audit functions of the General Accounting Office… by transferring these functions to the Treasury Department, and hence subject to the President’s control.
In the Reorganization Act of 1939, Mr. Bricker pointed out, Congress “retained the independent pre-audit functions of the General Accounting Office intact.”
He said:
There is a vital need in Washington for greater control over the spending of taxpayers’ money. This will not be done by an administration drunk with power and bent upon making another Reichstag and rubberstamp out of our Congress.
From Cheyenne, Mr. Bricker will carry his campaign into Colorado with rear-platform talks at Greeley and Brighton. He delivers his main Colorado speech tonight in Denver.
Gracie Allen Reporting
By Gracie Allen
Hollywood, California –
It’s really a little early to worry about Christmas, because we’ve got the election to worry about first. Of course, even that isn’t as bad as the year we had two Thanksgivings, and nonpartisan voters got indigestion from eating both Republican and Democratic turkeys. But someone has alarmed our children by telling them the Office of Defense Transportation is going to ask Santa Claus: “Is this trip really necessary?”
And another branch of the government has warned housewives to use their ingenuity because the usual type of Christmas tree ornaments won’t be available this year. Well, I’ve used mine. I’ve found some wonderful ornaments for George to hang on our tree – a wristwatch, a necklace, a new pair of shoes, a fur coat…
Why, I won’t miss the tinsel and glass bulbs one hit.
Willkie adviser backs Roosevelt
New York (UP) –
Russell W. Davenport, personal adviser to the late Wendell Willkie during the latter’s 1940 campaign for President, said last night in a broadcast supporting the reelection of President Roosevelt that Mr. Willkie died while he was still pressing for clearer commitments on foreign policy from the two major political parties.
Asserting that Mr. Willkie had not accomplished his goal when he died, he added: “And no one in the world knows what his final position in this election would have been.”
Mr. Davenport, former managing editor of Fortune Magazine, said in the broadcast that he was “impressed” with the steps President Roosevelt had taken toward world peace since 1940.
He said he was “not satisfied with the pronouncements of either of the candidates in this election,” but that he felt that Republican candidate Thomas E. Dewey lacked the qualities of “foresight and determination in the cause of mutual action” for peace which had been displayed by President Roosevelt.
Associated Press appeals trust case
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Dewey goes west for speeches
Minneapolis talk set for tomorrow
Aboard Dewey campaign train (UP) –
Governor Thomas E. Dewey headed westward today to make two major campaign speeches and a strong bid for the 52 electoral votes of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois.
The Republican presidential candidate is scheduled to speak at Minneapolis tomorrow night, stop in Milwaukee for three hours Wednesday afternoon and speak again in Chicago that night.
Mr. Dewey’s address tomorrow night will be broadcast over KDKA and KQV at 10:30 p.m. EWT. Governor Dewey will also be heard over KQV at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday and over WJAS at 10:00 p.m. Wednesday.
Republican leaders generally believe that all the Midwestern states will go to the Dewey-Bricker ticket in November. But they are taking no chances on such doubtful areas as Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois – all of which President Roosevelt won four years ago.
May visit in Ohio
As the schedule stood upon departure from the New York State Capitol, Governor Dewey’s special train was due to return to Albany directly from Chicago, arriving Thursday afternoon.
In view of the fact that he has announced no other speaking engagements until Oct. 31 in Buffalo, however, it was considered possible that stops in Ohio and Michigan may yet be added to the present Midwestern tour.
In New York Nov. 4
If he doesn’t stop in those states this week, about the only free time remaining between now and Election Day would be between his Boston speech Nov. 1 and his Madison Square Garden appearance in New York on Nov. 4. Eastern leaders are hoping he will use that time to campaign in Connecticut and New Jersey.
President Roosevelt carried Ohio in 1940 by a margin of 146,000 votes and the late Wendell L. Willkie, the Republican nominee, won Michigan by a margin of 7,916.
Flynn replies to Dewey charge
$25,000 fee called ‘moderate’
New York (UP) –
Edward J. Flynn, former Democratic National Chairman, denied last night Governor Thomas E. Dewey’s charge that his law firm had received an exorbitant fee from the Railroad Brotherhoods for political reasons and charged Mr. Dewey with signing a previously-vetoed bill which gave “hundreds of thousands of dollars which rightfully belonged to the City of New York” to clients of John Foster Dulles, Mr. Dewey’s foreign relations advisor.
In a statement issued at Democratic National Headquarters, Mr. Flynn said the fee, referred to in Mr. Dewey’s Pittsburgh speech, paid his firm, Goldwater & Flynn, for representing the brotherhoods before the Railway Labor Panel in February 1943, was “extremely moderate,” that he had nothing to do with the brotherhoods’ strike vote and never had discussed the matter with President Roosevelt.
Mr. Flynn charged Mr. Dulles with having found the “back stairs” to the Governor’s office and asserted further that he and other corporation lawyers would find the back stairs to the White House if Mr. Dewey were elected.
The bill, which Mr. Flynn did not refer to by name, was said to have been vetoed by former Governor Herbert H. Lehman and signed over the protest of Mayor F. H. La Guardia.
Truman assails GOP ‘isolationists’
Names of nine Senators listed
Minneapolis, Minnesota (UP) –
Senator Harry S. Truman, Democratic vice-presidential candidate, calling on Governor Thomas E. Dewey to repudiate isolationist nominees, accused the Republicans today of adopting a “rule-or-ruin” policy on peace plans in an attempt to “blackjack” the voters into electing a President satisfactory to the isolationists.
Senator Truman told his audience at a luncheon attended by Minnesota Democratic chairmen and party leaders that “Mr. John Foster Dulles, the America Firster whom Mr. Dewey selected to represent him in foreign affairs, had the audacity to tell you that if you reelected the President, the Republican members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee probably would not support a world peace program drawn up by him.”
He said:
But Mr. Dewey stopped there and went no further. Despite his admission that agreement was essential, he did nothing to discourage his isolationist supporters or to prevent the election to Congress of candidates who Mr. Dewey knows would thwart any attempt which he might make to support the President’s program, to which Mr. Dewey recently became converted.
Senator Truman said the Democratic Party acted in the primaries to “cleanse itself” of isolationists but that the Republicans had renominated them. he listed as isolationists these nine Republican Senators seeking reelection this year: Gerald P. Nye (R-ND), Robert A. Taft (R-OH), Charles Tobey (R-NH), Hiram Johnson (R-CA), James Davis (R-PA), John Danaher (R-CT), Clyde Reed (R-KS), Alexander Wiley (R-WI) and Eugene Millikin (R-CO).