The Pittsburgh Press (October 19, 1940)
WILLKIE ASKS A ‘PEACEFUL REVOLUTION’
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More Benefits for More People, Urged by Republican Candidate
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By William H. Lawrence, United Press Staff Writer
Aboard Willkie Train, En Route to Minneapolis, Minn., Oct. 19 –
Wendell L. Willkie today proclaimed the need of a peaceful revolution to revitalize the American economy and bring its benefits to more people.
The Republican presidential candidate was en route to Minneapolis, where he was scheduled to deliver a major farm policy address tonight. Other speeches were scheduled at La Cross, Wisconsin, Red Wing and Hastings, Minn. Tonight’s address will not be broadcast nationally.
Mr. Willkie charged at Springfield, Ill., last night that President Roosevelt “by all his acts, by all he is doing, whether consciously or not,” was in favor of establishing in the United States a form of state socialism worth “complete centralized government dominating the complete economic life of the people.” That, he said, was a major issue of the 1940 campaign.
Opposes Socialism
He said he was opposed to state socialism “because I know of no way to maintain freedom for the individual under such a system.” Democracy must be made effective to meet the challenge of the totalitarian powers and remain at peace, he asserted.
America in order to become effective, sufficiently effective, to survive in the world of counter-revolution that is going back to the old tyrannies and yet is creating effective societies in countries like Germany and Italy – America must have a peaceful revolution.
And that revolution must consist in again releasing the energies and the abilities and the initiatives of its millions of citizens so that they, with their enterprise, may again make this society dynamic, vital, alive, expanding. But in order to maintain that society, the society that you and I grew up in – the society of excess profits for some and small returns for others, the society in which a few prey upon the many, the society in which a few took great advantage and many took great disadvantage – must pass.
‘Beacon of Liberty’
We must unleash the energies of men, but we must in our revolution to save this free way of life expand, expand, not alone the national income, the wealth and well-being of then people, but we must bring that well-being to a larger and larger number of people.
It is my belief that under such a system American can remain completely representative, completely Republican in its method of government and its economics with a wider diffusion of the results of struggle, of work of energy and development among the people and become so effective that in the totalitarian world, it will establish a beacon light of liberty from which the torch of liberty will be relit in the shambles of present-day Europe.
Discussing the threat he saw in state socialism, Mr. Willkie said:
It is my belief that such a society as inevitably will come out of the course of action being pursued by this Administration offers restriction and limitation to the clergy and to the preachments of individual and separate religious, and offers little hope for the freedom of the press and of expression.
Mr. Willkie’s appearance at the Twin Cities tonight will be his second since he began his campaign for the Presidency, but his first since his nomination. It was at the Twin Cities last April, just 48 days before the Republican National Convention, that he was given his first major tryout as a candidate. He went there at the request of some supporters who wanted to test public reaction to the president of the Commonwealth and Southern Corp.
Defends His Ability
At Springfield last night, Mr. Willkie struck back at critics who charged he was unqualified for the Presidency because he never had held public office. He said Washington, Jackson, Lincoln, Cleveland and Wilson had little, if any, experience before they were elected President while Buchanan, “whom everybody agrees was one of our weakest Presidents,” had a lifetime of public service when he was elected President.
A tomato and a small rock were thrown at Mr. Willkie’s party at Springfield. The tomato struck the foot of the driver of the press association auto which followed Mr. Willkie’s car from the railroad station. The stone struck Carter Keel, 40, breaking his eyeglasses and injuring his eye. Mr. Keel was treated for lacerations of the eyelid and eyeball.