The Pittsburgh Press (September 9, 1944)
Governor Dewey outlines way to keep peace
Opposes secrecy in world affairs
Aboard Dewey campaign train (UP) –
The Republican Party was pledged today by presidential candidate Thomas E. Dewey to nonpartisan efforts to shape and maintain world peace.
Mr. Dewey voiced the pledge last night in a nationwide radio address, the second of seven major speeches scheduled in a three-week coast-to-coast campaign tour. He spoke before the closing meeting of the Republican Women’s Clubs biennial convention augmented by an audience which packed the Louisville National Guard Armory to the rafters and was estimated by GOP National Committeemen at 18,000.
Goes to Michigan
Today he headed for Michigan for conferences at Lansing with party leaders and labor, agriculture, Negro and veterans’ groups and a weekend visit with his mother, Mrs. George M. Dewey, at his birthplace, Owosso.
Choosing Kentucky for his foreign policy speech only because he wanted it to be the second address on his agenda, Mr. Dewey voiced this promise as titular head of the Republican Party:
So long as I have anything to say about it, I shall insist on two things.
First, that the American people shall be fully informed of our efforts to achieve and to keep the peace.
Secondly, these matters shall never be subjects for partisan political advantage by any individual, or by any party either in or out of power.
Mr. Dewey said the American people are agreed that there shall not be third world war and know that we cannot achieve that resolve through isolation.
He said:
Our problem is not how to stay out of a future war. Our problem is to prevent a future war before it happens, instead of getting into it after it has happened.
Calling attention to the fact that he has already made “a practical beginning” on nonpartisan cooperation with Secretary of State Cordell Hull on the Dumbarton Oaks Conference to set up an international peace organization, Mr. Dewey said signing a peace pact is not enough.
He endorsed the four-power Dumbarton Oaks tentative agreement for an international assembly with an executive council on which the Big Four and smaller nations shall be represented.
He said:
This world organization should develop effective cooperative means to prevent or repel military aggression, and such means should include the use of force as well as the mobilization of international opinion, or morale pressure and economic sanctions.
There should be a world court to deal with justifiable disputes.
He added:
But even this is not enough… We must be fair and upright in our dealings with the smaller nations…
We Americans and a few strong friends must not assume the right to rule the world. It is the obligation of the mighty to make common cause with the less powerful in the interests of justice and peace.
Then he injected the only political note of his half-hour speech. Referring to the need for continuing international cooperation to “get along with our neighbors” be asserted:
By this I do not mean getting along by the philosophy of the Washington wasters. They have been proposing that America should try to buy the goodwill of the world out of the goods and labor of the American people… That is no lasting way to win friends or to influence people.
To aid freed people
Mr. Dewey pledged that the American people will help liberated peoples through their period of crisis.
He promised:
We can and we will seek to work out conditions that will lead to an ever-wider exchange of goods and services without injury to our own people.
Beyond that, we know that we shall be able to help in keeping this long peace we pray for, only if we are strong at home.
Mr. Dewey said complete and crushing victory over Germany and Japan must be followed by complete disarmament of both aggressor nations and punishment of high and low international criminals in both countries.
Wants Germany disarmed
He suggested that in the case of Germany, it may be necessary to establish a commission to supervise disarmament and prevent for many years any rearmament, possibly even to the extent of denying the nation any aviation industry of its own and internationalization of the Ruhr section.
He added:
In the case of Japan, similar measures adjusted to the particular characteristics of that island nation will be needed.
In this case he noted that China must have a definite and special interest.
Charge repeated
Mr. Dewey made only one major departure from his prepared text – to repeat the change of his opening campaign speech at Philadelphia last night that the Roosevelt administration plans to keep young men in the Army after victory is won because it fears failure in creation of peacetime jobs, and military service would be cheaper.
He repeated his belief that the men in the Armed Forces should be brought home rapidly after victory is won and released at the earliest possible moment.