America at war! (1941–) – Part 4

961

americavotes1944

Wife of Socialist Norman Thomas expects never to be First Lady

Party won’t like it, but that’s her belief
By Jo Ann Healey

“I don’t know about the wives of other candidates, but I personally never expect to be the First Lady.”

So says Mrs. Norman Thomas, the wife of the Socialist Party’s five-time presidential candidate.

She said:

Of course, the party wouldn’t like me to express those sentiments, but there they are.

Mrs. Thomas, who has campaigned with her husband as his private secretary since he first ran in 1928, says she has noticed few changes in the country in the last 16 years.

Everything seems the same

She said:

Skirts are short again and of course there is the predominance of servicemen and women in the audiences, but other than that, everything seems much the same – with the exception of the Republican candidates, of course.

Mrs. Thomas, a small, alert woman, writes all her husband’s speeches from his dictation, and says she has not tired of listening to them. She admits:

However, I once did fall asleep while I was sitting on the platform, so now I always sit in the audience.

More and more welcome

The thrill of campaigning has not worn off, Mrs. Thomas asserts, although on election night her excitement comes not from hoping her husband will be President, but from seeing if he polled more votes than during the last campaign.

She says wistfully:

It takes the country a long time to recognize a great man, but each year Norman is more and more welcome in the cities where he speaks.

She hinted this might be the last campaign her husband would enter. She says:

I should miss it. But I realty never thought about being First Lady. I should like to entertain at the White House, but I should be frightfully shy, and I shouldn’t know about precedent and such.

Would like to entertain

Mrs. Thomas, who has five children and nine grandchildren, says that if by any chance she should ever become First Lady, she would lead a very sedentary life.

She says:

I can’t write at all and I never speak in public, but I should like to entertain all of the interesting people who come to the White House. I have never been there, you know.

962

In Washington –
Draft to take 100,000 men every month

Hershey says job far from finished

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963

Press freedom guarantee asked

Congress asked to take action

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964

British deny envoy’s blast in Indian case

Phillips answered point by point

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Destroyer O’Bannon receives citation

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965

Navy aircraft to use jet units

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966

americavotes1944

Perkins: CIO union ignores Dewey’s presence in same hotel

Already committed to Roosevelt, office workers weren’t interested in speech
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania –
The United Office and Professional Workers of America (CIO) resumed its sessions today with hardly a ripple to show that for more than 10 hours the 300 delegates had lived under the same hotel roof with the Republican nominee for President, Governor Dewey.

The Dewey entourage was on the ninth floor of the Bellevue-Stratford. The CIO unionists were meeting on the 18th but there was no communication between the two despite the fact that both are interested in politics.

The reason is, the union is already committed, like all other CIO unions, in its presidential choice. The Office Workers did not wait to see whether the Republican nominee, in his opening campaign speech last night might make some statement or display an ability indicating his fitness for the Presidency.

Declared for Roosevelt

Following the lead of CIO leaders who turned an early thumb down on any Republican who might be named for the high office, they declared for a fourth Roosevelt term early in this week’s convention. They also announced a plan to raise $50,000 for political expenditures by the CIO Political Action Committee.

In his speech here, Governor Dewey promised to discuss the labor question in detail during the campaign and he asserted.

Of course, the rights of labor to organize and bargain collectively and fundamental. My party blazed the trail in that field by passage of the Railway Labor Act in 1926.

One of several unions

The Office and Professional Workers Union is one of several labor organizations cultivating the white-collar workers who are generally described as “including but not limited to office workers, typists, stenographers, clerks, salespersons, bookkeepers and accountants, attorneys, draftsmen, engineers and agents.”

Among all the groups, the Office and Professional Workers Union is regarded as most leftish and its president, Lewis Merrill, has drawn charges of Communistic sympathies from Congressman Martin Dies.

A principal accomplishment of the convention is authority for its officers to proceed with plans to try to induce Congress to legislate a “national white-collar commission” which would be a part of the War Labor Board, with exclusive jurisdiction over salaries including those now under control of the Treasury Department. A general increase of 35 percent is sought in white-collar pay levels, and to this end the white-collar union has endorsed the efforts of other CIO unions to break WLB’s Little Steel wage formula.

967

americavotes1944

Away from cheering crowds –
Dewey building campaign on quiet, local sessions

Meetings with Philadelphia leaders mark policy he will follow on 6,700-mile trip
By Charles T. Lucey, Scripps-Howard staff writer

Aboard Dewey train en route to Louisville, Kentucky –
The drama and excitement of Governor Dewey’s bid for the Presidency will be in cheering thousands in great auditoriums and along ticker-taped streets where he rides smiling and waving, but much of the political bone and sinew of the campaign will be in quiet sessions away from the crowds.

It was that way in Philadelphia yesterday, and, on Mr. Dewey’s word, will continue so throughout this 6,700-mile trip which will weight heavily in determining whether the 42-year-old governor can turn back President Roosevelt’s try for a fourth term.

The fireworks were in the vast hall where he proposed a dynamic domestic life for America in substitution for what he attacked as Roosevelt defeatism, and where he ripped away at bickering and muddling in the administration in Washington.

Says people not trusted

Mr. Dewey got a full-throated roar from the crowd when he alleged a mistrust of the American people by the Roosevelt administration, and followed through with: “I do not share that fear.”

Here was the Dewey of national affairs who could prescribe remedies for some of the ills of the nation.

But on the ninth floor of the Bellevue-Stratford was the Dewey who could meet with local groups in a friendly way and discuss some of their local problems and give them personal assurances on some of the broader questions facing the country.

Governor Dewey is hundreds of miles from Philadelphia now, but many of those he met in personal sessions are selling Thomas E. Dewey today.

Much selling needed

There isn’t much question but that it will take a lot of selling in Pennsylvania between now and November. Mr. Roosevelt carried the state by 281,000 in 1940, and most of this margin came from Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

In his speech, Mr. Dewey pounced on Maj. Gen. Lewis B. Hershey’s statement that “we can keep people in the Army about as cheaply as we could create an agency for them when they are out.” He sought to link this with “an administration conceived in defeatism” which is “getting all set for another depression.”

968

americavotes1944

Willkie raps both parties as ‘cowards’

Foreign policy plans assailed
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer

Washington –
Wendell L. Willkie today charged President Roosevelt and Governor Thomas E. Dewey equally with political cowardice for their share of responsibility in shaping the foreign relations planks of the Democratic and Republican platforms.

In an article timed to hit the newsstands as Republican presidential candidate Dewey undertakes his first major campaign swing, Mr. Willkie begins in the current issue of Collier’s a series of discussions on the party platforms. He calls them “Our Recent Mockeries.”

‘Cowardice at Chicago’

The article is entitled “Cowardice at Chicago.” Mr. Willkie charged that Mr. Dewey alone had adequate foreknowledge of what GOP platform makers would produce and that “the Democratic platform under President Roosevelt, was in all of its essential provisions drafted in advance of the convention.”

Towards the end, Mr. Willkie states that “I am a Republican,” but he writes like an independent who has not yet decided for whom to vote.

And he warns that it is the “independent voter – the man who does not vote automatically for any candidate his party may nominate – who has determined most presidential elections in the past generation.”

Many included

That phraseology, no doubt carefully chosen, does not limit independents to voters without party affiliation but includes within the term those who do belong to a political party – as Mr. Willkie does – but who refuse to go along with their party candidates without question.

Mr. Willkie’s basic charge is that both parties framed platforms designed to “conciliate and win all elements of the population without offending others within or without the party.”

Lacking courage to face the issue of post-war foreign policy, Mr. Willkie wrote, the platform makers – with knowledge of Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Dewey – “borrowed from the past the timidities, the outworn doctrines and mistakes long since rejected by history.”

Secrecy assailed

Mr. Willkie wrote:

At the Republican Convention, the conclusions of the Platform Committee were so closely guarded, except from the leading candidate [Dewey], that even Republican governors who were delegates could not get copies of the proposed plank to study.

There is not much comfort in his article either for Republicans who hoped for an early and enthusiastic endorsement of Dewey’s candidacy or for those who may have thought Willkie would bolt his party to support Mr. Roosevelt for a fourth term.

Mr. Willkie said that on the general question of foreign policy, the Democratic plank is better than the Republican plank. He found the Democratic plank more forthright and concrete on the use of armed force to maintain the peace.

Willkie in hospital

New York –
Wendell L. Willkie has entered a hospital for “a rest and a checkup,” his physician, Dr. Benjamin Salzer, disclosed today.

969

americavotes1944

PAC called foe of democracy

Louisville, Kentucky (UP) –
Miss Marion E. Martin, assistant chairman of the GOP National Committee, today warned the meeting of the National Federation of Women’s Republican Clubs here that the CIO’s Political Action Committee is engaged in a “long-range program to subvert democracy.”

Miss Martin declared:

The PAC is employing Nazi tactics by urging that pupils in California grade schools be taught trade unionism.

Our schools are dedicated to training our children to think rather than to follow. Any attempts to indoctrinate our children with dogmas violates one of our most precious heritages.

Dewey there tonight

Miss Martin called upon her audience to point out in campaign arguments that “the same organization which is employing these un-American pressure methods,” is supporting President Roosevelt.

The GOP presidential candidate will make the second speech of his cross-country tour here tonight.

The Federation also heard the vote-getting suggestions of one lifelong Democrat – Pulitzer Prize-winning author Louis Bromfield, who announced he is about to cast his first vote for a Republican presidential candidate.

Warns of disasters

Mr. Bromfield declared that he thought the Democratic Convention in Chicago caused “at least three to four million Democrats to step over the line in 1944 and vote for Governor Dewey.”

Unless the present administration is unseated, “the disasters which overtook Europe will overtake us here,” Mr. Bromfield warned.

970

Unions’ dunning of war veterans called ‘outrage’

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971

Poll: Public favors pay for needy U.S. soldiers

Aid to war workers is opposed
By George Gallup, Director, American Institute of Public Opinion

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972

Editorial: ‘Ye’ did break faith

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973

Editorial: That Siegfried Line

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974

americavotes1944

Editorial: Dewey-Hull felicitations

Most Americans will share the gratification expressed by Governor Dewey and Secretary of State Hull in their exchange of letters regarding the nonpartisan basis of their foreign policy consultations.

In commenting on the recent conversations between his adviser, John Foster Dulles, and the Secretary, the Republican presidential candidate said they showed that Democrats and Republicans are beginning “to wage peace as we wage war” on a plane above partisanship. Mr. Hull in reply hailed Mr. Dewey’s letter as “a heartening manifestation of national unity” on the peace problem.

We believe these Hull and Dewey expressions represent much more polite amenities. Unquestionably both men share the same sincere desire for a constrictive peace and the same determination to keep debate above the party level.

Of course, this does not mean that these should be no debate. The democratic process, which we are fighting to preserve, requires frank debate of honest differences in judgment as to the best route on the uncharted sea of international organization. As Mr. Dulles stated on Mr. Dewey’s behalf, their agreement with the Secretary of State reserves the right of “full public nonpartisan discussion of the means of attaining lasting peace.”

975

Edson: Surplus property will yield only about $15 billion

By Peter Edson

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976

Ferguson: Will o’ the wisp

By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

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977

Background of news –
Interstate cooperation

By Burt P. Garnett

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978

Two-way blitz hits Jap-held Palau Islands

New attacks made near Philippines

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979

Moselle offensive may turn into another Patton surge

By B. J. McQuaid

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Reich pounded again –
Bombers raid ‘just ahead’ of troops

German war centers hit in new attack

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980

Brother’s keeper freed on murder charge

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