Editorial: United we stand
Today we vote as partisans, but we do not cease to be Americans, We shall prove that, when the verdict of the polls is in, by laying politics aside and joining hands to support the chosen President.
People in other countries are said to be amazed that we in the United States have dared, at a crucial moment in history’s greatest war, to argue our differences of opinion publicly and hotly and even bitterly in an election campaign “as usual.” They think it displayed a lack of unity which we might wisely have concealed.
Such people do not know the secret of our strength. They fail to understand that we preserve our unity because we do argue publicly about our differences and because, at stated intervals, we settle our arguments by casting our ballots and accepting the results. If we had feared to hold an election at this time, that would indeed have been a sign of division, deep and dangerous.
In this campaign, as in many, many others, things have been said on both sides that might better have been left unsaid. But a reading of history would show that more bitter campaigns than this one have come and gone and left no lasting scars. And none has revealed a more fundamental agreement on main objectives – to win the war quickly, to make America’s influence count decisively for enduring peace, to achieve sound prosperity and abundant employment within the framework of the private-enterprise system.
Those were the things pledged by both presidential candidates, for the compelling reason that those are the things most desired by a vast majority of the American people, Democrats and Republicans and independents alike. Our arguments have been about methods and men, not about goals.
The next President, whether his name be Dewey or Roosevelt, will need the support of a united nation. He will have it. The nation will need the leadership of a President whose aim is to preserve unity. May it have that!
As we await the returns tonight, let us resolve not to gloat in victory, not to sulk in defeat, not to cherish partisanship and forget sportsmanship. We have mighty tasks ahead of us. We must tackle them together.