GOP leaders divided on foreign policy
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer
Washington –
A real issue developing within the Republican Party on foreign policy was projected into sharp relief during the two-day visit here of Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio to promote his campaign for the party nomination for President.
It does not revolve about old-fashioned “isolationism,” as such, which Governor Bricker said is not an issue in the campaign. He added that anybody who charges isolationism in this campaign will be raising a “phony” issue.
The issue concerns how far the “international cooperation” to which the party had pledged itself in the Mackinac declaration of last September shall do, how it shall be implemented, and in this important question there is a basic cleavage within the party, one which must be fought out at the convention.
Governor Bricker is for international cooperation and collaboration, which he says should be implemented, but does not say how. He wants no superstate to “direct the course of American destiny,” but this country must remain free in international affairs and all nations must retain their sovereignty.
This raises the question, which is stressed by the other viewpoint within the party, as to how any country, including the United States, can associate itself in an international organization to keep the peace without giving up some of its freedom of action, or “sovereignty.”
This viewpoint is represented by Wendell L. Willkie; former Minnesota Governor Harold Stassen, who favors a United Nations organization with a parliament and an international police force; Senator Joseph Ball (R-MN) and others.
The Republican Post-War Advisory Council confronted the issue at Mackinac and compromised with its declaration for:
…responsible participation by the United States in post-war cooperative organization among sovereign nations to prevent military aggression and to attain permanent peace with organized justice in a free world.
Landon asks coalition to oust Roosevelt
Knoxville, Tennessee (UP) –
Former Kansas Governor Alf M. Landon last night called for a union of Republicans and Democrats in the November election to oust President Roosevelt and “clean house” in Washington.
In a Lincoln Day speech, the 1936 Republican presidential candidate asserted that:
It is painfully evident to an increasing number of real Democrats that they must turn their back temporarily on the political party of their fathers in order to keep American faith with their sons and daughters.
Mr. Landon attacked the President’s “win-the-war” slogan and said the claim of one man that one party had a monopoly on such a slogan was “the cheapest and sleaziest kind of politics.”
Called an insult
He said:
The President’s attempt to substitute “win-the-war” for the “New Deal” as a campaign slogan is an insult to every member of our fighting forces.
Mr. Landon said the issues which will be decided in the November elections can all be summed up as:
Will our country continue to move toward the national socialistic state which is the objective of the New Dealers, or will we keep the faith? – the faith of our fathers; the faith of our sons and daughters who fight the war.
He asserted:
Fascism is here in America and its name is the New Deal.
‘Hypnotic ringmaster’
Already the big and the petty bureaucrats of Washington are developing all the facets of an arbitrary regime. And that is fascism – no matter by what name it is called by its genial and hypnotic ringmaster.
He charged that Mr. Roosevelt had entered into agreements with foreign representatives without consulting the State Department and added that:
It is a matter of common knowledge that there are entirely too many agencies studying problems, arguing abstract issues, bickering among themselves and interfering with the miracle of production by farmers, labor and business.