The Pittsburgh Press (October 28, 1944)
GEN. STILWELL OUSTED FROM CHINA
Removal stems from demand by Chiang
Differences of opinion on strategy cited
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GEN. STILWELL OUSTED FROM CHINA
MacArthur drives on Luzon
Japs ‘disintegrating’ along fronts on Leyte, Samar in Philippines
By William B. Dickinson, United Press staff writer
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Nimitz: Jap sea strength gone
Losses in Philippines continue to rise
By Frank Tremaine, United Press staff writer
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British blows in Holland crumbling German lines
Trap tightened on 5,000 Nazis with capture of second stronghold
By J. Edward Murray, United Press staff writer
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13,000 Dutch executed in Nazi prison camp
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Roosevelt will discuss taxes, jobs
Upholds war record in Philadelphia speech
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
En route to Chicago, Illinois (UP) –
President Roosevelt entered the Farm Belt today where the anti-New Deal trend has been strongest to supplement his Philadelphia Navy Day address with a Chicago speech discussing tax inducements to enable business to create post-war jobs.
KDKA and KQV will broadcast the speech at 9:00 p.m. ET.
Last night, Mr. Roosevelt bludgeoned a charge that certain Republicans were putting party above patriotism in this campaign.
To name names
His campaign advisers said the President would discuss at Chicago, in addition to tax-inducements to business, certain individuals, including President John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers, Rev. Gerald L. K. Smith, America First leader; Senator Gerald P. Nye (R-ND), and Joseph N. Pew Jr., president of the Sun Oil Company.
Last night, Mr. Roosevelt was welcomed by a crowd estimated at 90,000 in Philadelphia’s Shibe Park after a 45-mile parade which police estimated attracted upward of a million persons.
Firing statistics and scornful rejoinders against Governor Thomas E. Dewey’s campaign charges, he told the wildly enthusiastic, shivering ball park crowd that we have more than four million soldiers overseas and that the war in Germany is in its “final and decisive phase.”
Accuses Republicans
He charged Republican campaigners with “deliberate and indefensible” efforts to put party advantage above patriotism. They had done that, he said, by implying that Congress would not cooperate hereafter with a Democratic President in an effort to set up world peace guarantees.
But he was gaily confident as he told of the war and the war effort. We now have, he said, an American fleet greater than “all the navies of the world together – including what was until three days ago the Japanese fleet.”
He reported overall war strategy had progressed into a third phase in Europe but had farther to go against Japan.
The first phase was holding the line while we increased our arms and brought our guns to bear. The second phase was shattering enemy outer defenses, well underway in the Pacific. The third and final phase in Europe is the attack on Germany itself.
American landings in France and the Philippines – more than 13,000 miles apart – within less than five months was a remarkable achievement, the President said, and then cocked his head to inquire sarcastically:
And speaking of the glorious operations in the Philippines, I wonder whatever became of the suggestion made a few weeks ago that I had failed for political reasons to send enough forces or supplies to Gen. MacArthur?
Stops in Indiana
The speech was the first of two on this swing which has enabled him so far to make brief addresses also in Delaware and New Jersey.
Mr. Roosevelt paused briefly today in Fort Wayne, Indiana, for a train-end appearance. Tonight, in Chicago’s Soldiers Field, Mayor Edward J. Kelly is expected to have 100,000 of the faithful present for one of the great political occasions of this campaign.
Independent observers in Pennsylvania reported the state’s 35 electoral votes extremely doubtful. If Mr. Roosevelt wins them, it will be with a whopping majority in Philadelphia where hundreds of thousands of persons lined a 45-mile parade route yesterday despite chill winds and rain.
Pittsburgh vote to drop?
Independent observers believe the President’s vote in the big Pittsburgh industrial area may be off this year.
Illinois and Indiana each have gone Democratic for President only five times since 1880, but the former has been for Mr. Roosevelt three times in a row and Indiana refused him only once – in 1940. They have 29 and 14 electoral votes, respectively. Mr. Dewey, Republican candidate, probably must have them to win.
Fala left at home
Washington –
Fala, President Roosevelt’s Scottie, is not with his master on the campaign tour because he has a “swelled head.” Fala was left at the White House because he suffered from an overdose of publicity during the New York tour last week.
Dewey charges ‘exploitation’ of farmers
Syracuse, New York (UP) –
Governor Thomas E. Dewey charged today that the Roosevelt administration has “exploited for political profit” its farm programs of the last 12 years and promised that a Republican victory in November would bring farmers a safeguard against extreme price fluctuations as well as “freedom… from dictation and control.”
In a speech at the State Fair Grounds here today, the Republican presidential candidate challenged what he called the “scarcity theories and shrinking economy of the New Deal years” and demanded that the nation “go forward and develop the great American market for our farm products through improved diet for American people.”
‘No hope’ in New Deal
He said there was “no hope” of achieving such results under the Roosevelt administration because “after it had been in office nearly eight years in 1940, the New Deal still had failed to achieve anything like fair prices for farm products. It took a war to get decent farm prices, just as it took a war to get jobs,” Governor Dewey charged.
He linked the failure to what he said was quarreling and bickering over overlapping responsibility as well as inability to stabilize agriculture on a par with industry and labor.
Governor Dewey charged:
From the very beginning of the New Deal, farm programs put forward by the farmers have been set up, only to be exploited for political profit and to gain control over the operation of our farms.
Offers 10-point plan
As for overlapping authority, Mr. Dewey recalled that Chester A. Davis of St. Louis resigned as first War Food Administrator for the Roosevelt administration after two months on the job with an explanation that “I find that I have assumed a public responsibility while the authority, not only over broad food policy, but day-to-day actions, is being exercised elsewhere.”
As an alternative, Dewey offered a 10-point program from the Republican platform promising a Department of Agriculture under practical and experienced administration free from regimentation and confusing manipulation and control of farm programs, His proposal also included protection of prices, protection of farmers against surpluses and research to aid in new crops.
Governor Dewey said this program was “comprehensive,” and would be adjusted to meet changing conditions. He promised that “for the sake of the nation we can and must avoid these extreme price fluctuations.”
He said:
As a nation, we are committed to the proposition that the prices of major farm products must be supported against the substandard levels we saw for so many years before this war.
In the final analysis, Governor Dewey said, farm prices inevitably are tied to urban prosperity.
He said:
We have learned that depression on the farm leads to depression in the nation just as unemployment and misery in the city lead to misery on the farm. If we are to have a strong, vigorous and happy country, we must have full employment in the factories and fair prices on the farms.
Dewey acts to extend New York poll hours
Albany, New York (UP) –
New York State’s Legislature, for the first time since Oct. 22. 1940, will meet in extraordinary session Monday noon to consider extending election day voting hours in the state.
In 1936 and again in 1940, when the regular closing hours of polling places was 6:00 p.m. ET, the Legislature was called into special session to add three more hours to the voting day by Governor Herbert H. Lehman. Under an amendment to the election law in 1941, the closing hour was changed to 7:00 p.m.
Monday’s special session, the first ever called by Governor Thomas E. Dewey, will last, it is expected, not more than two or three hours and will cost the state according to official estimates between $11,000 and $13,000.
Governor Dewey, in Albany yesterday between campaign trips for the Presidency, took time out to study the voting situation and issued the call after a lengthy conference with Charles Breitel, his counsel, and Republican legislative leaders.
Wife of servicemen –
Hospitals spurn mother; twins sleep in drawer
Babies born in office of St. Louis doctor who says institutions fight U.S. maternity program
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British, U.S. friendship stressed by Lady Halifax
Tells of affection in England for Yanks
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Try Nazi criminals, Jewish group demands
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Truman raps Dewey plan of foreign policy
Demands repudiation of eight isolationists
En route to Worcester, Massachusetts (UP) –
Senator Harry S. Truman, crossing Governor Thomas E. Dewey’s home state, asserted today that the Republican presidential candidate would have his “last chance” today to repudiate eight isolationist Republican Senators seeking reelection this year.
In a statement prepared for release at the state capital, Albany, Senator Truman continued pounding on the note he has sounded all week – that Governor Dewey could not enforce a “strong foreign policy” without a sympathetic Congress.
Senator Truman said:
This week you have witnessed the spectacle of your governor, the Republican candidate for President, traveling nearly 3,000 miles in a private train surrounded by his brain-trusters and experts to read a farm speech in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Today, he is taking a three-hour drive over to Syracuse to deliver that same farm speech.
He wants no more of Minnesota, for when he got out there to tell the farmers how to run their affairs, he found that everyone, farmers included, was demanding to be told where the candidate stood on foreign affairs.
‘Hiding under bed’
The vice-presidential nominee said Governor Dewey had given four speeches on foreign affairs “but he refused to tell the people whether he was for a Congress that would work for him.”
He asserted that Mr. Dewey was “hiding under the bed trying to get you to rely upon his words at the same time that he refuses to take the action necessary to make those words mean anything.”
Time to act
Senator Truman said:
Now that will not do when the lives of Americans are at stake. The time has come for Mr. Dewey to act. If he will not act this noon when he speaks at Syracuse, I think that we can fairly assume that he has no intention of acting. This is Mr. Dewey’s last chance. Let us hear from him, or let him be judged by his silence.
Mr. Truman moved into New York after branding Governor Dewey and his running mate, Governor John W. Bricker, a “couple of fakers” and assailing the foreign policy record of Ohio’s Republican Senator Robert A. Taft, one of the eight isolationists he has been criticizing. He spoke last night at Akron and Cleveland.
He called Mr. Dewey a “fence straddler” on foreign policy and said Governor Bricker had given an inaccurate picture of the State of Ohio’s finances in comparing Democratic and Republican administrations.
Mr. Truman called Senator Taft “one of nose unfortunate cases where the son is elected because the people remember the outstanding character of his father.”
After a 50-minute stop at Albany, Mr. Truman was scheduled to move on to Worcester, Massachusetts, and motor from there to Fall River and New Bedford. He will return to Worcester tonight for a party rally.
Dewey’s record cited –
Wallace assails ‘Doubting Thomas’
Detroit, Michigan (UP) –
Vice President Henry A. Wallace told industrial Detroit last night that the greatest asset this nation has to lick post-war problems at the peace table and on the home front is President Roosevelt, whom he said had the vision, courage and leadership to put new economic freedom into effect.
Mr. Wallace called for voters to examine closely the records of President Roosevelt and Governor Thomas E. Dewey before going to the polls. He said that after such an examination they would not find it hard to answer the serious question, “Shall the man in the White House be the man of words, doubting Thomas Dewey, or shall it be the man of action, Mr. Roosevelt?”
“Roosevelt will win the election because the people see in him the better man of the two, to carry on in war and peace,” Mr. Wallace said in his sixth speech of a three-day Michigan tour. The address, although revised shortly before his appearance, was an elaboration of speeches made outstate yesterday and today.
Mr. Wallace said the “record of Doubting Thomas is short.”
He said:
He doubted his Commander-in-Chief. Before Pearl Harbor, he doubted an all-out preparedness as a necessary guarantee of the dignity and freedom of America. And he doubts himself as he measures post-war problems through a Wall Street attorney’s eyes.
Examine this choice in all seriousness. Can you see this Doubting Thomas surrounded by men of great learning at the peace table? I need say no more.
Bricker accuses New Deal of abusing small business
GOP candidate says administration’s restrictions threaten free enterprise
Joplin, Missouri (UP) –
New Deal “abuse” of small business was attacked today by Ohio Governor John W. Bricker as a threat to free enterprise which, he said, was the bulwark of the American system of government.
In a speech prepared for delivery here today, the GOP vice-presidential nominee charged that New Deal “injury” to small business began before the war. The present condition of small business and the Roosevelt administration’s attitude toward it, he said, indicate “the failure of the New Deal to comprehend even the nature of the problem.”
Free enterprise threatened
Declaring that the American people were determined to preserve free enterprise, Mr. Bricker said:
Unless we can create an atmosphere of opportunity in which the small business man may start out, grow and prosper, our system of free enterprise, will wither and die.
The Republican Party this year, he asserted, offers small business a “constructive program” based on the belief that if that field of industry is protected against discrimination and is given equality of opportunity, it will become “the most important factor in providing employment.”
Demands tax changes
He said:
It must be aided by changes in taxation – by eliminating excessive and repressive regulation and government competition – by the enforcement of laws against monopoly and unfair competition – and by providing simpler and cheaper methods of obtaining venture capital necessary for growth and expansion.
The New Deal, Mr. Bricker charged, “stunted” small business by “arbitrary and restrictive” policies. Even before the war, he said, private investment was discouraged.
Last night, Mr. Bricker told a nationwide radio audience tuned in on a Republican rally at Kansas City that President Roosevelt’s record on national defense and foreign policy was one of “vacillation, confusion, secrecy and bungling.”
He said the country’s “desperate” needs now was for a President who would “courageously speak out for America’s convictions… with the same sturdy voice that Churchill speaks for Britain and Stalin speaks for Russia.”
Governor Bricker said:
Mr. Roosevelt gave lip service to peace did nothing to preserve it here or elsewhere. His foreign policy was an utter failure. He did not keep us out of war. Moreover, he knew, or should have known, that America would be drawn in. Yet he refused to take us into his confidence. He minimized the danger and lulled us into a sense of security until after the fall of France.
Editorial: Only the people were right
While rival political leaders debate the blame for America’s relative unpreparedness when war came, there’s actually only one group in the United States which can point to its record on that score with justifiable pride.
And that group, strangely enough, is the plain people of the United States.
On the issue of preparedness, they were ahead of their leaders. The tragedy is that their will was thwarted by pressure blocs.
William A. Lydgate, editor of the American Institute of Public Opinion, has written an illuminating study of public opinion in the United States, a condensed version of which appears in the current Readers’ Digest. It’s worth examining.
It shows that as early as November 1936 – less than three years after Hitler came to power – a Gallup Poll revealed that seven out of every 10 Americans favored a bigger Army and Navy. The people were even further ahead of their leaders in appreciating the coming role of airpower, for eight out of 10 voted for a larger air force.
This sentiment increased sharply after the European war started in September 1939, 80 percent voting for a larger Army and Navy and 91 percent for a bigger air force.
Yet Congress, swayed by the noisy isolation blocs, voted money enough for only 59 airplanes in March 1940 – six months after the war had started – although the Army had sought appropriations for 1,200 new military planes.
Democrats blame this situation on Republican isolationists in Congress – and undoubtedly their responsibility was great – but the fact remains that the Roosevelt administration took no such lead in fighting for preparedness at that time as it now claims to have taken. It, after all, was the administration in power, claiming to exercise a popular mandate and backed by these expressions of public sentiment in unofficial polls.
The Republican isolationists then had powerful allies in the Communist and other left-wing groups which are today fighting for a fourth term – and the combination of those groups was more powerful than was public opinion. This might have been different had the administration actually exercised leadership in behalf of adequate preparedness.
The same survey of public opinion shows that three years before Pearl Harbor three voters out of every four voted in Gallup Polls for an embargo on the shipment of oil, scrap metal, gasoline and other war materials to Japan. But it was not until the summer of 1941 that the State Department arrived at the same position.
It is a matter of record that leaders in the steel industry were also crying out against the tremendous exports of scrap iron to Japan long before the Roosevelt administration took any steps to halt them.
The American people were more generally right than were their leaders – and it so happened that the Roosevelt administration was then in power. Without attempting any defense of the Republican isolationists, we wish to point out that the administration has no just basis for pride as regards its record in this preparedness matter.
Editorial: The griping audience
Come campaign-time the politicians always seem intent on driving the radio audience to their opponents.
Even the worst features of radio, such as singing commercials, don’t seem so bad when compared with some of the punishment that the campaign broadcasters inflict on us.
We don’t refer to the principal speakers – such as Messrs. Dewey and Roosevelt or their outstanding supporters – but to those whom the local Democratic and Republican committees inflict on the unseen audience.
Unversed in radio speaking, reading a canned text prepared with the idea of compressing a maximum of bitterness and denunciation into a minimum of time, and often stumbling through their chores, these local political speakers are an abomination to the radio audience.
If the campaign committees that pay good money for this time were only to hear the griping that goes on in the average household as the family twists the dial in a vain effort to get some of their regular radio fare, we wonder if they wouldn’t wake up to the fact that you can’t win an audience by making it sore.
Background of news –
Late counting of soldier votes
By Bertram Benedict
Unless the presidential election of 1944 turns out to be one-sided, the result may be in doubt for some time after Election Day. That will be because in 11 states the ballots of servicemen and women will not be counted until after Nov. 7.
In Pennsylvania, whose 35 electoral votes might well be decisive in a close election, military ballots will not be counted until Nov. 22. In Nebraska, the count of absentee soldier ballots begins on Nov. 30; it may continue until Dec. 7.
The 11 states which will count absentee ballots after Nov. 7 are given below:
PROBABLY SAFE FOR ROOSEVELT:
| State | Electoral vote | Counting date |
|---|---|---|
| California | 25 | Nov. 24 |
| Florida | 8 | Nov. 7-17 |
| Rhode Island | 4 | Dec. 5 |
| Utah | 4 | Nov. 7-12 |
| Washington | 8 | Nov. 13 |
| 49 |
PROBABLE SAFE FOR DEWEY:
| Colorado | 6 | Nov. 22 |
| Nebraska | 6 | Nov. 30 |
| North Dakota | 4 | Nov. 22 |
| 16 |
IN DOUBT:
| Delaware | 3 | Nov. 8 |
| Missouri | 15 | Nov. 9 |
| Pennsylvania | 35 | Nov. 22 |
| 53 |
This situation – in which some ballots in some states will be cast and counted after most states have finished voting – takes one back to the early days of the Republic, when states voted for President on different days.
34-day span permitted
By an act of 1792, Congress provided that the states might vote for President any time during the 34 days preceding the first Wednesday in December. This 34-day span was in effect for 14 presidential elections. On Jan. 23, 1845, Congress put on the statute books the law still in effect – that all states vote for President on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.
With states voting on different days, the result of a presidential election usually was known well before Election Day came around in those states which had set it toward the end of the permissible 34-day period. So, there was no point in those states voting.
In the 1840 election, when Harrison ran for the Whigs against Van Buren for the Democrats, the first states to vote were Ohio and Pennsylvania, on Oct. 30. They gave 51 electoral votes to Harrison.
With 148 electoral votes necessary to elect, the election was obviously in the bag for the Whigs. Harrison had 185 votes by Nov. 5, although more than one-fourth of the states were still to vote.
Methods differed, too
Different voting days were not the only complication in those early elections. There were also different methods of voting for President. In some states, the presidential electors were chosen by the legislatures (in the first election, no vote was cast for New York, because the two houses of the legislature could not agree). Other states had statewide popular elections. Others had popular elections by districts; some districts would go for one candidate, some for another.
Then there was often doubt about electors. In 1800, the Federalists thought they had reelected President John Adams, only to find that they were mistaken in counting upon the electors from South Carolina. And sometimes electors who were chosen did not show up in their state capitals to cast their votes.