Address by New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey
September 25, 1944, 10:00 p.m. EWT
Broadcast from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Mr. Chairman and fellow Americans:
For two and a half weeks, I have been laying before our people the program I believe must be adopted if we are to win at home the things for which our American men are fighting abroad. In six major speeches, I have set forth a part of that program. There is much more to come.
In doing this, I have been deeply conscious that this campaign is being waged under the most difficult circumstances and at the most trying time in our history as a nation. Our national unity for the war and for the cause of lasting peace must be strengthened as a result of this campaign. I believe the conduct of the campaign on our side has greatly strengthened that unity.
I had assumed that every American joined me in hoping that would be the spirit of this campaign. Last July, Franklin Roosevelt, in accepting his party’s nomination for a fourth term, said: “I shall not campaign, in the usual sense… In these days of tragic sorrow, I do not consider it fitting…”
Last Saturday night, the men who wants to be President for 16 years made his first speech of this campaign. Gone was his high-sounding pledge. Forgotten were these days of tragic sorrow. It was a speech of mudslinging, ridicule and wisecracks. It plumbed the depths of demagogy by dragging into this campaign the names of Hitler and Goebbels: it descended to quoting from Mein Kampf and to reckless charges of “fraud” and “falsehood.”
Let me make one thing entirely clear. I shall not join my opponent in his descent to mudslinging. If he continues in his desire to do so, he will be all alone.
I shall not use the tactics of our enemies by quoting from Mein Kampf. I will never divide America. Those tactics I will also leave to my opponent.
I shall never make a speech to one group of American people inciting them to hatred and distrust of any other group. In other nations, the product of such discord has been Communism or Fascism. We must never reap that harvest in America.
The winning of this war and the achievement of a people’s peace are too sacred to be cast off with frivolous language.
I believe that Americans whose loved ones are dying on the battlefronts of the world – men and women who are praying daily for the return of their boys – want the issues which vitally affect our future discussed with the utmost earnestness. This I shall continue to do with full consciousness of the solemn obligation placed upon me by my nomination for President of the United States.
My opponent, however has chosen to wage his campaign on the record of the past and has indulged in charges od fraud and falsehood. I am compelled, therefore, to divert this evening, long enough to keep the record straight. He has made the charges. He has asked for it. Here it is.
My opponent describes as a “fantastic charge” the statement that his administration planes to keep men in the Army when the war is over because it fears there will be no jobs for them in civil life. Well, who first brought that up?
Here is the statement by a high official of the administration as reported in the publication of the United States Army, The Stars and Stripes. He said: “We can keep people in the Army about as cheaply as we could create an agency for them when they are out.”
Now who said that? It was the National Director of Selective Service appointed by Mr. Roosevelt and still in office.
But, says Mr. Roosevelt, the War Department thereafter issued a plan for “speedy discharges.” You can read that plan from now until doomsday and you cannot find one word about “speedy discharges.” It is, in fact, a statement of the priority in which men will be discharged after the war. It does not say whether they are to be retained in service a month or years after victory. That will be up to the next administration. The present administration, with its record of peacetime failure, is afraid to bring men home after victory. That’s why it’s time for a change.
Now why does my opponent first describe what is a matter of record as a “fantastic charge” and then try to laugh off the problem of jobs after the war? He jokes about depressions – about the seven straight years of unemployment of his administration. But he cannot laugh away the record.
In March 1940, Mr. Roosevelt had been in office seven years. Yet the depression was still with us. We still had 10 million Americans unemployed. These are not my figures – these are the figures of the American Federation of Labor.
Is that fraud or falsehood? If so, let Mr. Roosevelt tell it to the American Federation of Labor.
By waging relentless warfare against our job-making machinery, my opponent succeeded in keeping a depression going 11 years – twice as long as any depression in a century. And the somber, tragic thing is that today he still has no better or different program to offer. That is why the New Deal is afraid of peace and resorts to wisecracks and vilification – when our people want victory followed by lasting peace in the world – and jobs and opportunity at home. That’s why it’s time for a change.
Now I had not intended in this campaign to rake over my opponent’s sad record of failing to prepare the defenses of this country for war. It’s all in the past – a very tragic past. It has cost countless American lives; it has caused untold misery.
But Mr. Roosevelt has now brought the subject up. He seized violently upon the statement that we were not prepared for war when it came. He calls that a “falsification” which not “even Goebbels would” have attempted.
Now, were we prepared for war, or were we not? It is a simple question of fact.
In 1940, the year after the war began in Europe, the United States was in such a tragic condition that it could put into the field as a mobile force no more than 75,000 men. The Army was only “15 percent ready.” Now, Mr. Roosevelt, did those statements come from Goebbels? Was that fraud or falsification? Those are the words of Gen. George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army.
I quote again: “December 7, 1941, I found the Army Air Forces equipped with plans but not with planes.” Did that come from Goebbels? That statement was made in an official report January 4 of this year by Gen. H. H. Arnold, commanding general of the Army Air Forces.
Does my opponent still desire to use the words “falsification” and “Goebbels?” Does he still claim we were prepared? If so, let’s go further.
Four months before Pearl Harbor, there was a debate in the U.S. Senate. The chairman of a Senate committee described on the floor of the Senate the shocking state of our defense program. Senator Vandenberg asked the chairman where the blame should be laid, and the chairman replied, “There is only one place where the responsibility can be put.” Then Senator Vandenberg said, “Where is that – the White House?” And the chairman of the committee replied, “Yes, sir.” Who was the chairman of that committee? It was Harry S. Truman, the New Deal candidate for Vice President of the United States, Mr. Roosevelt handpicked running mate.
Again, in a magazine article in November 1942, this statement appeared: “The reasons for the waste and confusion, the committee found were everywhere the same: The lack of courageous, unified leadership and centralized direction at the top.” Again, on the floor of the Senate in May 1943, these words were uttered: “After Pearl Harbor, we found ourselves woefully unprepared for war.” Was that Dr. Goebbels on the floor of the Senate? Both those statements were made by Harry S. Truman.
Listen to these words: “When the treachery of Pearl Harbor came, we were not ready.” Mr. Roosevelt, were those words from Dr. Goebbels? The man who said that was Alben Barkley, your Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate. And where do you suppose he said it? Right in his speech nominating you for a fourth term.
Now why is it we were not ready when we were attacked? Let’s look at Mr. Roosevelt’s own words. In a message to Congress in 1935, he said: “There is no ground for apprehension that our relations with any nation will be otherwise than peaceful.”
In 1937, he said:
How happy we are that the circumstances of the moment permit us to put our money into bridges and boulevards… rather than into huge standing armies and vast implements of war.
But war came just two years later. It was in January of 1940 that I publicly called for a two-ocean navy for the defense of America. It was that statement of mine which Mr. Roosevelt called, and I quote his words, “Just plain dumb.” Then, as now, we got ridicule instead of action.
The war rose in fury. When Hitler’s armies were at the gate of Paris, Mr. Roosevelt again soothed the American people with the jolly comment: “There is no need for the country to be ‘discomboomerated.’”
The simple truth is, of course, that Mr. Roosevelt’s record is desperately bad. It is not one on which any man should seek the confidence of the American people. That’s why it’s time for a change.
My opponent now announces his desire to be President for 16 years. Yet in his speech of Saturday night, he called it a “malicious falsehood” that he had even represented himself to be “indispensable.”
Let us look at the closely-supervised words of the handpicked candidate for Vice President. He said of my opponent: “The very future of the peace and prosperity of the world depends upon his reelection in November.” I have not heard Mr. Truman repudiated by Mr. Roosevelt as yet. He waits to shed his Vice Presidents until they have served at least one term.
Here are the words of Boss Kelly of the Chicago machine, the manager of that fake third-term draft of 1940: “The salvation of this nation rests in one man.” Was that statement ever repudiated by Mr. Roosevelt? No, it was rewarded by increased White House favors. So, it was repeated again by the same man at the same time in the same place and for the same purpose this year: “The salvation of this nation rests in one man.”
And was it a falsehood that one of the first acts of Mr. Roosevelt’s newly-selected national chairman was to announce last May that he was for a fourth term and – that he was looking forward to a fifth term?
Let’s get this straight. The man who wants to be President for 16 years is indeed indispensable. He is indispensable for Harry Hopkins, to Madam Perkins, to Harold Ickes, to a host of other political jobholders. He is indispensable to America’s leading enemy of civil liberties – the Mayor of Jersey City. He is indispensable to those infamous machines in Chicago – in the Bronx – and all the others. He is indispensable to Sidney Hillman and the Political Action Committee, to Earl Browder, the ex-convict and pardoned Communist leader.
Shall we, the American people, perpetuate one man in office for 16 years in order to accommodate this motley crew? Shall we expose our country to a return of the seven years of New Deal depression because my opponent is indispensable to the ill-assorted, power-hungry conglomeration of city bosses, Communists and career bureaucrats which today compose the New Deal? Shall we submit to the counsel of despair that in all the great expanse of our nation there is only one man capable of occupying the White House?
The American people will answer that question in November. They will see that we restore integrity to the White House so that its spoken word can be trusted once again.
On battlefronts and at home, Americans have won the admiration of the world. Under the stress of war, we have thrown off the stupor of despair that seemed in the decade of the 1930s to have settled permanently upon the land.
Today, we know our strength and we know our ability. Shall we return to the philosophy that Mr. Roosevelt proclaimed when he said our industrial plant is built? Shall we go back to his seven straight years of unemployment? Shall we go back to the corroding misery of leaf-raking and the doles? Shall we continue an administration which invokes the language of our enemies and recklessly hurls charges of falsehood concerning things it knows to be the truth?
I say the time has come to put a stop to everything that is summed up in that phrase, “the indispensable man.”
If any man is indispensable, then none of us is free. But America has not lost its passionate belief in freedom. America has not lost its passionate belief in opportunity. It need never lose those beliefs. For here in this country of ours there is plenty of room for freedom and opportunity and we need not sacrifice security to have both freedom and opportunity.
To achieve these objectives, we must have integrity in our government. We need a new high standard of honesty in the government of the United States. We need a singleness of purpose, a devotion to the people of this country and to the gigantic problems we face at home after this war. We need a whole-souled devotion to the building of a people’s peace that will last beyond the lives and friendship of any individuals. We need humility and courage. With the help of Almighty God, we shall achieve the spiritual and physical strength to preserve our freedom in the pursuit of happiness for all.