Hollywood, California (UP) –
Radio producer Harold “Hal” Styles, Democratic Congressional candidate in California’s 15th district, today filed a million-dollar libel suit against the Los Angeles Examiner, charging the newspaper “maliciously” linked him with the Ku Klux Klan.
The suit, filed in Superior Court, was based upon an article and a cartoon appearing in the Oct. 26 edition.
Mr. Styles said he had demanded and been refused a retraction.
Broadcasts begin at 7 o’clock tonight
Washington (UP) –
Election returns will be radioed to U.S. fighting forces on every continent and in the remotest islands of the South Pacific today.
News will be flashed over Signal Corps and commercial wireless by a special point-to-point voice-casting arrangement.
Six shortwave transmitters on the East Coast will send five-minute bulletins across the Atlantic beginning at 7:00 p.m. EWT and seven other shortwave outlets will provide identical coverage starting at 8:00 p.m. EWT.
Far into the night
Also at 8:00 p.m. EWT, six powerful transmitters on the West Coast will begin flashing returns to the small Pacific Islands, Alaska, China, Hawaii, the Philippines, New Guinea and Australia.
Two stations made available to the Army by OWI will broadcast bulletins and summaries on the returns from the Army News Service in New York from 9:45 p.m. EWT through 2:30 a.m. EWT to Great Britain, Italy, the Mediterranean and North Africa.
The Army Communications Service hopes to reach even Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s troops on Leyte with a point-to-point voice casting by Army announcers direct from New York.
State returns tomorrow
Additional election coverage by Signal Corps and commercial wireless, through extra editions of The Stars and Stripes and widely-scattered unit newspapers and rebroadcasts of shortwave will give soldiers on isolated fronts full returns.
Tomorrow, a detailed analysis of the state voting will be sent by airmail to all overseas newspapers and radio stations.
Hyde Park, New York (UP) –
President Roosevelt today did all he possibly could toward defeating his Republican opponent, Governor Dewey, by going to the polls and voting – for Roosevelt.
Following a custom of the years, the President and his wife were scheduled to appear at the white-walled town hall of Hyde Park this afternoon and cast their ballots.
To get returns in home
Tonight, the President will settle down in the library of his home and watch election returns fed into his house through press association wires and in other dispatches from party leaders throughout the nation. And if around midnight there is a clear trend of his victory, the loyal Democrats of predominantly Republican Dutchess County will organize a torchlight parade and weave through the President’s estate to give him their personal congratulations.
Last night, the President returned to his house after an afternoon tour of the Hudson Valley to broadcast an appeal for a vote of 50 million to prove the democratic process in this country and resultantly assure a lasting peace.
Introduced by Georgia girl
He was introduced on the air by Bettie McCall, Decatur, Georgia, who was chosen as the typical 18-year-old Georgia college girl who, under her state laws, is eligible to vote. She was presented on a Democratic committee program by Julius O. Regnier, 94, who will vote in his 19th presidential election and who shook hands with Abraham Lincoln at Galesburg, Illinois, in 1898.
In the afternoon, the President made a four-and-a-half-hour drive around the Hudson Valley, giving a “howdy do” to his neighbors and a sharp political needle to Rep. Hamilton Fish (R-NY), who is one of the President’s more outspoken and active political foes.
The President made no political predictions except to say that he “hoped” he would not be beaten “too badly” in traditionally-Republican Dutchess County.
He recalled that when he campaigned down the Hudson Valley four years ago, he was reputed to have said that obviously was his last trip as a candidate for public office. “This time,” he added, “I’m not doing any prophesying.”
Albany, New York (UP) –
Governor Dewey submitted his candidacy for the Presidency to the nation’s voters today with an appeal for a Republican victory “to shorten the war” and lay the groundwork for post-war peace and prosperity.
That was the theme of his final message closing the first wartime political campaign in America since 1864.
The GOP candidate asked that every qualified voter in the nation participate in today’s election. He proposed to suit his own words to action by traveling from Albany to New York City, where he has been a registered Republican for 21 years.
To vote after noon
His schedule provided that, accompanied by his wife and a host of reporters, he leave Albany by special tram and arrive in New York City at 12:10 p.m. ET, there proceeding directly to his polling Place at 108 East 48th Street to cast his vote before retiring to his suite at the Roosevelt Hotel to await the election returns.
The Governor made his last speech of the campaign last night in a 15-minute radio talk over all networks.
Describing today’s election as one which “may be the most fateful in our history,” and “a test for each of us of our devotion to the American system of government,” he declared:
The great test is whether, knowing we need a new administration, we will make the change necessary to speed victory and to build the peace to come.”
Three questions for voters
He predicted that the years from 1945 to 1949 will be important, difficult years, requiring “vigorous, hardworking, harmonious leadership, with abiding faith in America.”
He asserted that “everyone will agree that we need improvement and need it badly.”
In conclusion, he posed for voters in today’s election three questions:
How can I help shorten the war? How can I help secure lasting peace? How can I help give jobs and opportunity in the years that lie beyond our victory?
He said:
If you will soberly ask yourself these questions and will think the answers through in the light of your own knowledge, I have no doubt of the outcome.
By the United Press
West Virginia’s two gubernatorial candidates took to the airways last night in a last-minute appeal for the support of the state’s 1,046,514 registered voters and to land a final punch in one of the most strenuous general election campaigns in state history.
Both candidates, confident of victory, spoke from their home cities in an effort to bring out the vote today.
Mayor D. Boone Dawson, GOP nominee, spoke from Charleston, delivering a “thank you” message to the voting public.
Circuit Judge Clarence W. Meadows, Democratic nominee, spoke from Beckley and urged a heavy vote.
In addition to electing a governor, West Virginians will select members of the Board of Public Works, a judge of the State Supreme Court of Appeals, 16 Senators, 94 members of the House of Delegates, 25 judges and six Congressmen.
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.
Not so many years ago, a citizen could take his politics or leave it alone. He didn’t have to listen to campaign speeches unless he wanted to.
Then, the radio revised campaign methods in 1928 and now you can’t escape hearing the candidates.
But there’s more to come – in the post-war world. Senator Wagner, last Sunday night, was the first candidate for major office to be televised right into the homes of voters. Wonder what the campaign of 1948 will be like?
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
As this is written the election is in doubt. Although many people are saying so, this campaign has been no meaner than many others we’ve staged. Between campaigns, we forget old rancors.
The reason we can forget the wounds of political campaigns is because we are essential a fair-minded people. Even when contests are hottest, neighbors and friends on opposing sides can laugh together over their differences.
Editorial and platform accusations sometimes sound vicious, but that’s a part of the game too, and those who are engaged in the fight know it. In Washington, Democrats and Republicans fraternize in private even while the public is led to believe them mortal enemies. Those skilled in political techniques use every device to win, but a good deal of their alarmist talk is pure bosh and nobody knows it better than they do.
Whatever the election outcome, the country faces a crucial period. It will take the best efforts of all good Americans to pull us through. We could therefore utilize the day to examine our own hearts and ask ourselves seriously why mankind has not been able to outlaw war.
We know the answer, too. Peace is not built on hates. It does not spring from greed. It is the result of human behavior. And a good many humans must change their behavior in order to achieve it. Maybe that means you and me, as well as our leaders.
Exclusiveness gives rise to anxiety
By William Philip Simms, Scripps-Howard foreign editor
…
Columbus, Ohio –
Governor John W. Bricker, Republican vice-presidential nominee, today voted the Republican ticket “all the way down the line.”
Argument in no-man’s-land results in 18 Germans deciding to save their skins
By William H. Stoneman
…
Wounded sergeant tires of red tape
…
Houston, Texas –
John H. Crooker, Texas elector, declared here today that he will cast his electoral vote for Governor Thomas E. Dewey and Governor John W. Bricker “if that’s the best way to defeat the Roosevelt-Truman ticket,” and indicated other electors of the anti-Roosevelt party will do likewise.