The Pittsburgh Press (September 23, 1944)
In Boston speech –
Bricker favors a World Court
Then force if needed, candidate proposes
Boston, Massachusetts (UP) –
The United States must be ready to unite with other nations to prevent by force the outbreaks of small wars which might lead to a third great World War should “persuasion or economic pressure” first fail, Ohio Governor John W. Bricker said today.
The Republican vice-presidential candidate, speaking before the Massachusetts State Republican Convention, charged that the New Deal administration’s international policies of “day-by-day expediency” had led the nation into the present war.
World Court favored
He proposed the establishment of a World Court to arbitrate and conciliate international disputes. Small wars, he said, lead to “worldwide conflagrations” and economic sanctions must be applied at incipient trouble points.
He said:
When this cannot be done, our country must be willing to join with others if necessary to prevent small wars from becoming big ones.
This country, he said, furnished material “and power with which to make war” to Japan while sending money to China. Hitler, he added, came to power when the New Deal did, but the government did “not make any effort to keep orderly peace in the world” and maintain national security.
‘Boondoggling’ assailed
“We squandered our substance in boondoggling and took no heed of gathering war clouds,” Governor Bricker said. He added that the United States could go far in eliminating the causes of war by giving “constant and unselfish attention to matters of discriminatory trade agreements, excessive tariffs, monopolies and cartels, exchange wars and other barriers to international trade and commerce.”
Governor Bricker will speak tonight at Norwalk, Connecticut, and return to Ohio tomorrow for a week’s rest before beginning a 9,000-mile Western tour.
Spending assailed
In a speech at Bangor, Maine, last night, Governor Bricker asserted that the Roosevelt administration had spent three times as much money as all the other Presidents combined, and promised that a Republican victory in November would “put an end to the orgy of spending.”
Governor Bricker said George Washington spent only $34 million; James Madison $176 million; James Polk $175 million; Abraham Lincoln $3,335,000,000; William McKinley $2 billion, and Woodrow Wilson $46 billion. The speaker emphasized that he was quoting figures on money spent by war Presidents.
“Franklin Roosevelt, during his 12 years,” Governor Bricker said, “has spent the astronomical sum of $360 billion.”
He asserted that at the end of 1944, the public debt will be $258 billion compared to $22.5 billion when Mr. Roosevelt took office, and with every person in America now obliged to pay an average of more than $100 a year in federal taxes.