Election 1944: Pre-convention news

[NormanStewart]

Völkischer Beobachter (March 2, 1944)

Die gigantischen Schulden der USA –
Willkie mit der Steuerschraube

dnb. Stockholm, 1. März –
Willkie hat, wie die Time vom 14. Februar meldet, in einer Rede in Neuyork die Steuerpolitik der USA angegriffen. Er fragte:

Was sollen wir den Soldaten sagen? Während sie draußen kämpfen, häufen wir zu Hause Schulden an, und zwar so gewaltig, daß die Soldaten, wenn sie heimkommen, ihr ganzes Leben lang die Zinsen für diese Riesenschulden tragen müssen.

Willkie verlangte dann, daß noch über die von Roosevelt geforderten großen Steuererhöhungen hinausgegangen werden solle und daß jeder Dollar bis zu einer Maximalgrenze besteuert werden müsse. Diese ungeheuren Steuern seien unbedingt notwendig, denn sonst würden die USA nach dem Krieg eine öffentliche Schuld von 300 Milliarden Dollar haben. Allein die Zinsen würden dann 6 Milliarden Dollar ausmachen, also fast ebenso viel wie der gesamte Haushalt des Jahres 1943. Die Amerikaner müßten dann ihren Lebensstandard auf ein Minimum herabschrauben.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 2, 1944)

President is alone on Nebraska ticket

Lincoln, Nebraska (UP) –
President Roosevelt’s name and a slate of national convention delegates pledged to his nomination for a fourth term were entered in Nebraska’s preferential primary late yesterday. Mr. Roosevelt is expected to be the only candidate in the April 11 Democratic primary.

Wendell Willkie and LtCdr. Harold Stassen have been entered in the Republican primary.

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Roosevelt entered in Wisconsin race

Madison, Wisconsin (UP) –
President Roosevelt’s name was entered in Wisconsin’s presidential preferential primary today by Thomas R. King, Democratic National Committeeman and state party chairman. Under Wisconsin law, consent of a presidential candidate is not requited for entering his name in a preferential primary. No other Democratic candidates have been entered.

[NormanStewart]

AFL indicates support for Davis

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (UP) –
Strong indications that the State Federation of Labor (AFL) will support U.S. Senator James J. Davis for reelection were hailed by Pennsylvania Republican leaders today as proof of the GOP’s wisdom in picking Mr. Davis.

AFL President William Green got on the Davis bandwagon more than three months ago at a time when the Republican state leadership had no apparent thought of backing the 70-year-old Pittsburgher and when “Puddler Jim” was refusing to comment on probability of his candidacy.

GOP leaders considered it a tipoff that the state labor group will follow Mr. Green’s lead when James L. McDevitt of Philadelphia, president of the State Federation, announced formally last week that he would not be a candidate for delegate-at-large to the Democratic National Convention.

[NormanStewart]

Editorial: Republican trend?

Republicans are happier about results of the special election in the New York 21st district which they lose, than over some of their victories in recent off-year elections in Kentucky and Pennsylvania. They think the New York test was even a better indication of a possible national Republican trend by next November, because the GOP vote jumped from 33% of the total in 1942 to almost 48% Tuesday in that normally heavy Democratic district.

Significantly, the Republican candidate polled more than the Democratic, who barely slipped in with American Labor Party votes. So, the Tammany leader’s statement that this “is an endorsement by the voters of President Roosevelt’s” record, sounds like the quavering whistle of a boy passing a graveyard.

Certainly, all signs indicate the electorate is swinging away from the administration now. But there is plenty of time for reverse trends before November. If the Republicans count on easy victory and stumble around, they probably will lose. If they provide leadership in Congress, unite on a strong presidential candidate, and keep their campaign on a high level of national interests, they have a chance to win.

[NormanStewart]

In Washington –
OWI will give ‘known facts’ on candidates

Alleged slight to Bricker brings new policy for campaign

Washington (UP) –
War Information Director Elmer Davis has issued a new policy directive for propaganda handling of 1944 campaign news, instructing OWI employees to “get as close to the facts as the facts are known” in identifying candidates for the presidential nominations, it was learned today.

The new policy was an outgrowth of a recent incident in which an OWI news dispatch aboard, concerning Ohio Governor John W. Bricker failed to mention that he was a candidate for the Republican nomination.

Not made public

Under the new directive, the full text of which OWI refuses to make public, only those who have officially announced their presidential aspirations will be designated flatly as candidates. In the case of those being “mentioned” for the nominations of either party, that fact and no more will be stated.

The OWI will have little difficulty in interpreting the policy so far as the Democratic Party is concerned. The only formal Democratic candidate is anti-fourth-termer Governor Joseph B. Ely of Massachusetts, although President Roosevelt is receiving more than “mention” as an aspirant for a fourth term.

Dewey description

As a result of the new directive, foreigners who have OWI news available either by radio or newspapers have learned that Thomas E. Dewey is:

The Republican Governor of New York State whose candidacy for the Republican nomination for President is being pushed by many supporters…

Wendell Willkie has been referred to in the past week as:

A Republican presidential candidate in 1940 and candidate for the Republican Party’s nomination in the 1944 election…

In the same story, OWI described Governor Bricker as:

Governor of Ohio and candidate for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination…

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Vote visibility low

Washington (UP) –
The now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t federal war ballot for servicemen was a little less visible today as Senate and House conferees moved into the final stages of work on a controversial soldier vote bill.

House conferees, dominated by advocates of state ballots, won another concession yesterday which curtailed even further the use of the short-form federal ballot backed by the Senate group.

The conferees agreed to write into the measure a provision under which the federal ballot will go only to overseas servicemen who ask for a state absentee ballot but fail to receive it by Oct. 1.

Senator Theodore F. Green (D-RI), a Senate conferee, said work would probably be completed today so that the House and Senate could act on it early next week.

[NormanStewart]

Stokes: Who is Roosevelt’s ‘ghost’?

By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer

Washington –
Who writes President Roosevelt’s messages to Congress has become an apparently important side issue in the bigger issue between himself and Congress because of the tart, stinging phrases sprinkled through recent communications.

Both Democrats and Republicans would like to blame the much-belabored corps of assistants who are lumped together by the opposition as “the palace guard.”

Some Democrats, in self-defense, would like to place responsibility on the President’s numerous aides, for whom they have little more love than the Republicans.

Degrees, no sense

Republicans would like to create the fiction that a bunch of smart young fellows, dripping with college degrees, but bereft of common sense, are running the government. This is all good politics and good fun, with some grains of truth, for we have those young fellows about and some of them are about as described.

But the real truth is that the author of President Roosevelt’s messages to Congress, in the usually accepted sense, is a fellow named Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Asks for drafts

He gets help, of course. He calls for suggestions, asked for memoranda from various officials and departments and even asks for sample drafts of portions of his messages. All Presidents do that in drafting messages.

Mr. Roosevelt takes all this and then dictates his own version, so that it has, in the end, what is known as “the Roosevelt touch,” and it is a Roosevelt product, branded and stamped.

Sometimes he may lift a sentence or a paragraph or more from something prepared for him, and, occasionally you may run into the author, bragging about his contribution at some cocktail bar.

‘Fraud’ is his own

It took only a cursory examination of President Roosevelt’s message on the soldier vote bill to see that someone else had prepared the technical passages, but that the short, ugly word “fraud” was his own.

What is happening is that President Roosevelt is injecting into his messages to Congress those pungent and biting phrases that can be found all through his political speeches. For he obviously is running for reelection, and he overlooks no opportunity.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 3, 1944)

GOP chairmen hit sour note in 29th slate

Fight starts over names of delegates to convention
By Kermit McFarland

Republican leaders in the 29th Congressional district held a more or less riotous meeting in the Penn-Lincoln Hotel, Wilkinsburg, last night and picked a “harmony” slate for the April 25 primary which will have to be made over or there will be no harmony in the district.

The chairmen and vice chairmen of the wards, boroughs and townships in the district overwhelmingly ratified the choice of the county leaders for the Republican Congressional nomination – Howard E. Campbell, East Liberty real estate dealer.

The fight developed, unexpectedly, over the candidates for delegate and alternate delegate to the Republican presidential convention.

Secret ballot taken

Republican County Chairman John S. Herron and the county vice chairman, Mrs. Nelle G. Dressler, were chosen as delegate and alternate, respectively, by acclamation.

But on the selection of the second delegate candidate and the second alternate candidate, there was a secret ballot.

As announced, the result of this balloting gave William P. Witherow, president of the Blawnox Company, 11 votes for delegate and Thomas E. Whitten, Wilkinsburg attorney, 10. For alternate, the vote was: Robert L. Cook, Republican chairman of the 14th Ward, 12, and Adelaide Coly, Young Republican leader, 9.

There was some dispute about the accuracy of this count.

Up to committee

As a result, both the Young Republicans and the Whitten backers are up in the air. They charge that Mr. Herron and Mrs. Dressler picked themselves and that a deal which had previously been made was not kept.

In a previous conference, it was decided that the Old Guard faction would name one delegate and one alternate candidate, and the Young Republicans would name one each. The Young Republicans decided on Mr. Witherow and Mrs. Conly.

Unless the so-called “harmony” committee which has been busy with slate-making for several weeks can patch up the confusion at a meeting tonight, a wide-open contest for delegate may develop in this district.

Local Republican leaders from the boroughs and townships in the 10th legislative district also met last night and selected a slate of candidates for the four Republican legislative nominations at stake in the April 25 primary.

The four candidates are Paul M. Bardes of Oakmont (former legislator), Dr. Walter Feick (Glassport dentist), Albert E. Beech of Wilkinsburg (an employee of the State Labor & Industry Department) and William P. H. Johnston of Penn Township (an auto salesman).

[NormanStewart]

Veto is hinted of new plans for Army vote

President says existing law may give ballot to more men

Washington (UP) –
President Roosevelt said today the crux of the soldier vote issue is whether more soldiers could vote under existing law or under the proposed legislation evolved by House and Senate conferees.

His press conference comment was interpreted as indicating that he might veto the new legislation if it reaches him in such form that he believes it will reduce, rather than increase, the number of servicemen who will be entitled to voice.

Mr. Roosevelt was asked to express his attitude toward the compromise soldier ballot measure. He said he could not go into details because he had not seen the actual language of the new measure.

Meanwhile, it appeared that the entire issue may be reopened on the floor of the Senate.

Senate-House conferees, by an 8–2 vote, reached final agreement on the issue by restricting use of the federal war ballot to overseas servicemen who have applied for but not received a state absentee ballot by Oct. 1.

*A further restriction provides that the federal ballot will go to such servicemen only if their governors, “as authorized by” the laws of their states, have declared the federal ballot acceptable for counting.

The conference report now goes to both Houses for final action – perhaps next week.

The much-amended bill was denounced by two Senate conferees – Theodore Francis Green (D-RI) and Carl A. Hatch (D-NM).

Senator Green said it would have been better “to have no bill at all than one like that” and indicated he would fight actively against Senate acceptance.

Senator Hatch said:

It does not simplify, but complicate and does not extend the federal ballot but curtails it.

In the voting, three federal ballot proponents – Senator Warren R. Austin (R-VT) and Rep. Eugene Worley (D-TX) and Rep. Herbert C. Bonner (D-NC) – joined with the five original states’ rights adherents in approving the conference report. The others were Senators Tom Connally (D-TX) and Hugh Butler (R-NE) and Reps. John E. Rankin (D-MS), Harris Ellsworth (R-OR) and Karl M. LeCompte (R-IA).

[NormanStewart]

4th term ‘if’ put on issue of ‘emergency’

Democrats’ former publicity chief discusses Roosevelt candidacy
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer

Washington –
Charles Michelson, publicity director emeritus and now adviser to the Democratic National Committee, is significantly on record again today as believing President Roosevelt will seek another term if emergency seems to demand it.

Mr. Michelson’s first recording of that opinion was on Aug. 7, 1938, in a paragraph in his weekly political column, Dispelling the Fog, which is reproduced now in the body of an article published in the current American Magazine. He was talking about a third term that time. Now he refers to a fourth.

The magazine article, entitled “Roosevelt, the Enigma,” discusses a number of things, including the probable political plans of former Committee Chairman James A. Farley.

Bolt doubted

Mr. Michelson predicts that Mr. Farley will not bolt the party if Mr. Roosevelt is renominated but will attempt to prevent his nomination at the convention. Failing that, Mr. Michelson says Mr. Farley will announce that he will vote the Democratic ticket straight and take no further part in the campaign.

This correspondent understands Mr. Farley’s intention to be precisely that.

Mr. Michelson relates a conversation with Mr. Roosevelt as follows:

He said to the President prior to 1940:

I think that you will agree with me that no Democrat but yourself can be elected this year. Would it not be better – in the event of your not being a candidate – to let Jim Farley have the nomination?

If he was defeated, that defeat would be attributed to religious prejudice. If almost any other of the aspirants was nominated and lost, that defeat would be hailed as a repudiation of your administration and the New Deal.

Farley praised

The President replied:

No, that would be most unfair to him. He is too fine a person to be subjected to the humiliation of a bad defeat and the setback that would involve to prospects and career. I do not agree that our party is destitute of available candidates. There is Cordell Hull, for example.

In same position

Mr. Michelson of 1944 writes:

As to Roosevelt’s intentions, I am in the same position as I was five years ago when I wrote:

Of course, I am entitled to a guess, and my guess is that Franklin D. Roosevelt would take a case of the hives rather than four years more of the headache that being President means. It will not be so easy a choice at that.

Circumstances might arise that would make it impossible for him to lay down the burden.

The world may be at war with or without threat of our involvement, or some other equally acute emergency may eventuate that would forbid a change of administration; and the man in the White House is not the kind of an individual who would let his personal desires interfere with what seems to him his duty.

Part left out

There was more to the paragraph in 1938, according to this correspondent’s files, and Mr. Michelson seems to have left out a fairly pertinent final sentence, as follows:

He could not say today, even if he were so inclined, that he would or would not be a candidate in 1940.

GOP internal unity urged by Willkie

New York (UP) –
Wendell L. Willkie said in a radio speech last night that the Democratic Party was “falling to pieces” and warned that the Republican Party “must achieve internal unity.”

In his first nationwide network talk since he announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for President, Mr. Willkie said:

The New Deal Executive Department is becoming increasingly petty in its relationship to Congress.

Regarding the GOP, he said:

The Republican Party already has come to many basic conclusions, and it is apparent that steady progress has been made in both foreign and domestic fields. The problem now is to come to definite conclusions and agreements which will be the salvation, not only to the party itself, but to the nation.

[NormanStewart]

Editorial: The compromise is compromised

After almost interminable wrangling, House and Senate conferees on the soldier-vote issue have come up with a compromise plan which nine of the 10 members of the joint committee approve.

But in compromising the extreme views in this controversy, the compromisers virtually compromised out of the picture anything like a simple, uniform system of voting for the Armed Forces.

The new scheme may be better than nothing, but not much.

It does not offer the Armed Forces a maximum opportunity to vote. It does not provide a uniform system, and it is complex and confusing.

The patched-up compromise applies only to overseas forces.

It leaves the garrisons and trainees at home to what are now widely varying state voting laws.

Even so, Rep. Rankin, Mississippi’s tireless obstructionist, continues to shed glycerin tears for the Constitution and to shout against any kind of federal ballot.

Under the compromise as it now stands, federal ballots will be available to:

• Overseas troops from the two or three states which have no absentee-voting laws, and

• Overseas troops from other states who apply by Sept. 1 for state absentee ballots and do not receive them by Oct. 1.

But in earlier case, federal ballots will be furnished only if the governor has certified that the federal ballot is acceptable under state law.

The result is approximately what it was before Congress started to battle over this issue – the state legislatures which gave not already done so will be required to convene and enact new soldier voting laws, meet the overseas problem in particular, and there will be a multitude of different systems, or no system at all in some instances.

This will complicate the Army and Navy delivery problem and make it next to impossible for many in the Armed Forces to vote.

As applied to Pennsylvania, the compromise measure is doubly confusing.

It practically repeals the Pennsylvania law without providing a reasonable substitute.

The compromise says the federal ballot will be distributed to soldiers who do not apply for state ballots before Sept. 1. Under Pennsylvania law, no member of the Armed Forces may apply for a state military ballot before Sept. 18.

The compromise provides for the use of federal ballots in cases where the voters in the Armed Forces do not receive state ballots before Oct. 1. The deadline for Pennsylvania voters to apply for military ballots is Oct. 7, and the present procedure effectively prevents elections authorities from mailing out military ballots much before Oct. 20.

The only ameliorating circumstance on the whole situation is the announced determination of Governor Martin to summon a special legislative session to amend the present law so members of the Armed Forces may vote as conveniently as it is possible for the State to permit them.

[NormanStewart]

Background of news –
Roosevelt-Congress test due

By Jay G. Hayden, North American Newspaper Alliance

Washington –
President Roosevelt confronts at least two issues calculated to disclose whether he is chastened by the Congressional uprising against his tax veto or infuriated by it to the point of precipitating an all-out conflict with the legislative branch.

These issues are (1) the compromise soldier-vote bill, which likely will be sent to the White House next week, and (2) the Slattery-Daniels affairs, which involves both the President’s right to discharge administrative officials and the validity of a Senate subpoena, directed to one of his close personal assistants.

The soldier-voting bill, accepted by all but one of the Senate and House conferees, varies little in its practical effects from the measure which Mr. Roosevelt branded, in a special message to Congress, “a fraud on the soldiers, sailors and Marines.”

The substance of the President’s contention was that reliance on state ballots would disfranchise “the vast majority of the 11 million members of the Armed Forces.” This condition, he said, could be corrected with nothing short of the Green-Lucas-Worley nameless federal ballot bill, which would permit soldiers:

…to cast their ballots without time-consuming correspondence and without waiting for each separate state to hold its primary, print its ballots, and send them out for voting.

Veto threatened repeatedly

All of the latter principles, which the present compromise bill retains, plus the provision for a federal ballot, is applicable to states which have no absentee voting law and to individual soldiers who swear that they applied for state ballots and failed to receive them before Oct. 1. Even in these contingencies, federal ballots would be good only if state governors certify in advance that they will be counted.

In the course of the Senate and House debates, the President’s spokesmen threatened repeatedly that Mr. Roosevelt would veto any bill that did not provide an effective federal ballot, and there is little doubt that this was his settled intention.

The happening since, which may have changed Mr. Roosevelt’s mind, is the tax bill revolt, led by Senator Alben W. Barkley. This development undoubtedly hastened agreement on the state ballot bill. Convinced that if the President vetoes this bill he will be overridden, Republicans were anxious to out it up to him. and it is a foregone conclusion that such a veto would find Senator Barkley again leading the van of opposition.

Coincidentally, it is certain that unless Jonathan Daniels, one of the President’s secretarial “selfless six,” recants his refusal to testify before a Senate agricultural subcommittee, he will be cited for contempt by overwhelming vote of the whole Senate next week.

Further, the Senate may try Mr. Daniels and sentence him, if convicted, to its own basement lockup – a course which Congressional lawyers say would put him beyond reach of a presidential pardon.

Precedent recalled

A precedent for this course was provided in the case of William McCracken, whose trial and conviction by the Senate itself on a charge of contempt of one of its committees in 1934 was sustained by the Supreme Court.

More often the Senate has preferred to turn its contumacious witnesses over for prosecution by the Attorney General in the regular courts. That procedure was rendered ridiculous in this instance when Ugo Carusi, executive assistant to Attorney General Francis Biddle, appeared as legal counsel for Mr. Daniels, while he defied the senatorial questions.

An even more interesting court clash will eventuate if the President follows through with an attempt to remove Harry Slattery, the rural electrification administrator whose testimony got Mr. Daniels into hot water. Mr. Slattery declared that Mr. Daniels three times tried to persuade him to quit, once offering him a lucrative State Department job abroad as an inducement.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 4, 1944)

McNary’s successor to be named today

Salem, Oregon (UP) –
Governor Earl Snell of Oregon said he would announced an interim appointment to the senatorial vacancy created by the death of Senator Charles L. McNary (R-OE) later today.

It was believed Governor Snell had considered resigning to accept the appointment. He is expected to be a candidate for the GOP senatorial nomination in the May primaries.

[NormanStewart]

Soldiers’ vote likely to feed discord fires

President’s test for bill rules out compromise of Congress
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer

Washington –
The issue between President Roosevelt and Congress is likely to be raised again over the soldier-vote bill.

Congress is expected to complete action on the measure late next week by approving the conference agreement compromising differences between House and Senate versions, and it will then go to President Roosevelt to sign or to veto.

Mr. Roosevelt has seemingly prescribed his test for the bill by saying that the crux of the matter is whether more soldiers will be given a chance to vote under existing law, passed in 1942, or by the new bill.

More then than now

Two of the Senate leaders in the fight for a federal ballot, Senators Green (D-RI) and Hatch (D-NM), claim that more soldiers would get a chance to vote under present law than under the new bill.

An analysis of the bill shows it is not much of an improvement on the original “states’ rights” measure passed by the House which President Roosevelt bluntly labeled “a fraud.” Congress evidently won’t be able to work up much public sympathy, for this reason, and also because of the devious course it took to arrive at this solution, after long delay.

Closer than tax bill

The bill has a closer personal relationship to more people than did the last tax bill, the veto of which was made a cause célèbre when Senator Barkley, the administration leader, became the champion of Congress against the President.

Senator Barkley, incidentally, is a staunch ally of the President on the soldier-vote issue. Both Secretary of War Stimson and Secretary of the Navy Knox expressed skepticism about administering voting under diverse and complicated state laws.

The soldier-vote bill would give the President another opportunity to make political capital against Republicans, for a majority of them in both branches joined with Southern Democrats behind the “states’ rights” bill.

At home and abroad

Under the conference bill, no soldier in this country could get the simple federal ballot, but would have to vote under absentee voting laws of his state. The 1942 act waived payment of poll tax and registration, but the present bill leaves the judging of votes strictly to the states.

Soldiers abroad can get a federal ballot only if they have applied before Sept. 1 for a state ballot and have failed to get one by Oct. 1. But they can’t get a federal ballot then unless they have applied for a state ballot.

Congress has failed, after all these weeks, to make voting by soldiers simple and easy.

[NormanStewart]

4 leading GOP candidates line up for Wisconsin test

Willkie only one to enter full slate of delegates, but Stassen, MacArthur and Dewey are ‘in’

Madison, Wisconsin (UP) –
Four camps were lined up in Wisconsin today to battle for delegates to the Republican National Convention in the April 4 presidential primary, the first real test of strength for presidential aspirants, but Wendell L. Willkie, the 1940 GOP standard bearer, had the only full slate of 24 candidates in the race.

The others were well-armed, however, and the expiration of the deadline for filing petitions last night left Gen. Douglas MacArthur, boosted as a “favorite son” by supporters who listed his address as Milwaukee, running a close second to Mr. Willkie with 22 candidates in the field.

Willkie plans tour

Supporters of LtCdr. Harold E. Stassen, former Governor of Minnesota, had 20 candidates pledged to his support and Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York, had 15, despite his request that his name be withheld. In addition to 20 candidates pledged to LtCdr. Stassen, Minnesota’s former chief executive had the unofficial support of Acting Governor Walter S. Goodland.

Obviously, Mr. Willkie will be the only one of the four who will make an out-and-out bid for support in the primary. He is scheduled to spend 12 days stumping the state.

Governor Dewey’s repudiation of the slate bearing his name apparently had little effect, with the exception of cutting the number of candidates to 15. Two of those who dropped out filed as uninstructed delegates, but let it be known they still backed the New York Governor. The Dewey-for-President committee counted two more supporters in another uninstructed delegate and one anti-Willkie candidate.

Bricker bides his time

Standing on the sidelines in the race was Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio, who is seeking Wisconsin’s second-choice convention votes. His backers have had some success among Dewey forces and Governor Bricker planned to better his support with a two-day speaking tour of the state in June.

In the Democratic race, 33 candidates pledged to re-nominate President Roosevelt, as approved at the state convention, are seeking that party’s 26 votes at the national convention.

In addition, 14 independents, who “deplored attempts of various extremists to invade the party,” filed petitions under the label “Stop politics – win the war.”

[NormanStewart]

Next job for MacArthur poses political problem

Americans in Pacific are on the move, and new decisions must be made soon
By George Weller

George Weller is recuperating in the United States from illness suffered after spending several years in the Southwest Pacific.

Gen. MacArthur

The two MacArthurs – presidential possibility and Pacific generalissimo – are moving solely into a new focus as a result of the transpacific drive toward Truk by the U.S. Navy.

While adherents of the general’s presidential candidacy are driving hard on his behalf in the United States, the changing pattern of war is throwing into question what his new duties in the Pacific will be.

However separate they ought to be, Pacific and presidential drives are commencing to mesh wheels.

As long as Gen. MacArthur’s forces had not yet reached Rabaul in their two drives up the Solomons and the island of New Britain, it might with justice be said that he had not yet attained milestone No. 1 on his journey back to the Philippines.

Japs weakening

But now Rabaul is weakening.

Fighters over its volcanic harbor are growing less, none having been seen in the last seven daily raids.

And in the Navy’s vicious strike at Truk, there is an anticipation that this stronghold may soon be taken by the hard driving task force under Adm. Nimitz which the Japs have left unchallenged.

As Truk approaches neutralization, Rabaul’s defenses against Gen. MacArthur decline.

Most, if not all the Jap fighters – the yardstick of resistance in airpower – come down the system of island stepping stones from Japan through the Bonins and Carolines, via Truk to Rabaul. If Truk goes, Rabaul cannot be far behind.

Political aspects

When Rabaul goes, two elements begin to appear in the campaign by Gen. MacArthur’s supporters for the Presidency which have hitherto been lacking, namely:

• From having been a hero only, Gen. MacArthur becomes a victorious hero.

• The immediate aim in a military sense of Gen. MacArthur’s drive for the past two years is achieved, and it becomes a matter of decision on the part of his superiors, Gen. Marshall and President Roosevelt, what duties are to be assigned to him next.

The first element is most important to those Republicans who are anxious to have a strong, and not merely a martyred MacArthur, as their candidate.

It is the second element which deserves closer study.

Below the spearhead of the Navy’s transpacific drive, whose goal Adm. Nimitz says is “bases in China” and which necessarily involves first bases in the Philippines, there are two zones of Jap conflict, the “Southwest Pacific,” which takes in all Australia and the Dutch East Indies, and the “South Pacific” which takes in New Zealand and the intervening islands up to the Solomons. Two years ago, Gen. MacArthur was ordered out of the Philippines to take command of the former and last year the latter was also committed to his care, as the two zones converged on Rabaul.

What is next?

However, Gen. MacArthur’s drive has never recovered any territory west of Australian-mandated New Guinea.

The entire left flank of the Southwest Pacific has remained exploited only by harassing raids by long-range bombers.

Being topped by the Navy’s drive on his right flank, with Adm. Nimitz moving westward in between him and the Philippines, what will Gen, MacArthur next be told, after the fall of Rabaul, to do?

It is almost certain that whatever his next orders tell him to aim at, they can be interpreted, by those who wish to do so, as having political significance.

Three possibilities

There are, roughly, only three possibilities of what may be done by Washington with Gen. MacArthur:

If progress by the Navy continues to be rapid into the mandated islands, he may be assigned the Army and air side, possibly even a stronger command in this drive toward the Philippines.

He may be asked to mount an offensive on his western flank, through the Arafura Sea and Indian Ocean where Timor and the Kei, Aroe and Tenimbar Islands were all captured by the Japs after the general had assumed command in Melbourne. This assignment would be important, for it eventually would involve cutting off the Japs from important oil sources. But it would be difficult, for the western and northern coasts of Australia are inhospitable places for mounting an amphibious invasion.

Gen. MacArthur might be transferred out of the Southwest Pacific and given a command elsewhere. Such a command, to be in line with the general’s only expressed military hopes, would have to be on a Jap front.

Short of an overall command of the whole Pacific War – a step that could not be taken without a careful sounding of Navy susceptibilities – the only front left is China.

[NormanStewart]

American First conclave

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania –
Gerald L. K. Smith, national director of the America First Party, said today the party would hold its first national convention in St. Louis March 25.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 5, 1944)

Attorney appointed McNary’s successor

Salem, Oregon (UP) – (March 4)
Governor Earl Snell today appointed Guy Cordon, Republican attorney from Rosenburg, to the interim vacancy in the U.S. Senate, succeeding Charles L. McNary, Republican floor leader who died last week in Florida.

Mr. Cordon will serve only until November, when an election will determine who will fill the four remaining years of Mr. McNary’s term.

Mr. Cordon, 53, has spent a major portion of his time in recent years in Washington as attorney for a group of Southern Oregon land grant counties and for interstate association of public lands counties, composed of 11 Western states.

[NormanStewart]

Editorial: It’s up to the states

House and Senate conferees, under the tireless flailing of Mr. Rankin of Mississippi, have now compromised and re-compromised the soldier-ballot bill until it is acceptable even to Mr. Rankin, which is passable evidence that the hodgepodge measure falls far short of making it easy for the troops to vote.

The responsibility is thrown back upon the state legislatures.

It may be that most men in uniform are not overly excited today about voting. Other, and urgent, matters are on their minds. But it is reasonable to suppose that as the nominating conventions come and go, and the election draws near, the Armed Forces will work up an active interest in the outcome.

If we were politicians, we would not like to risk letting the idea get around that we had helped either actively or passively to prevent the fighting men from voting.

Some think that those soldiers and sailors who are permitted to vote will vote preponderantly for the Commander-in-Chief. Some think they will vote more or less the same way as the folks back home. As far as we are concerned, such considerations are not appropriate to the issue.

The issue, as we see it, is simply this: If anybody is entitled to vote in a presidential election in a war year, it is the men who are fighting the war.

Congress having flopped its job, it’s up to the legislatures to get busy to that end.

[NormanStewart]

Perkins: Labor in the election

By Fred W. Perkins, Press Washington correspondent

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania –
This is a report on results of a trip through much of the Midwest, which included interviews with a cross-section of labor leaders on the political situation, particularly the 1944 presidential part of it.

These “galloping” endeavors produce the conclusion that the Roosevelt support is considerably down among the rank-and-file in certain important segments of organized labor, including the railway brotherhoods and some big units of the American Federation of Labor. A recession is reported even in parts of the CIO, but the men who ought to know this sentiment best declare that, in the end, organized labor as a whole will go almost as solidly for a fourth term as it did for the second and third terms.

Another conclusion is that the only Republican, among the men now being discussed as the nominee of that party, who has a chance of cracking the labor vote enough to bring about an approximate balance, is Wendell Willkie. That was the only Republican name which did not produce jeers among the interviewed labor leaders.

Willkie program

Mr. Willkie is said to have mapped out a program that might prove attractive to the rank-and-file of labor, but he has not announced it in full. It is based on a full recognition of all the rights that labor won under the New Deal, plus more tangible recognition for labor in the government.

In Chicago, Raymond McKeough, former ardent New Deal Congressman and late unsuccessful candidate for the Senate, was found busily forming a “grassroots” organization on behalf of the CIO Political Action Committee. He is regional director for Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin.

Mr. McKeough admitted he faced a stiff fight – “the toughest in the country,” he said – to insure the electoral votes of the three states for the probable Democratic nominee.

He said that in the Midwest as in the rest of the country where it will operate politically the CIO will address its appeal to the farmers and the public in general – will try to prove the theory that what helps labor helps everybody.

They’ll ‘come around’

Cincinnati furnished reliable information that the rank-and-file of railway workers are still displeased with Mr. Roosevelt because of the administration’s handling of their recent age controversy and strike threats. An authority on this subject told of being almost thrown out of the kitchen of a railway dining car when he suggested to the half-dozen chefs and their helpers that he supposed they were still for Mr. Roosevelt as in the past.

But this authority thought these men eventually would “come around.”

Cleveland provided the most tangible evidence of an effort to subordinate the internal troubles or organized labor on behalf of a united political front. Jack Gill, a leader in the international setup of the Typographical Union (not affiliated with either AFL or CIO), was one of the main promoters of a meeting Thursday night on behalf of political unity.

Mr. Gill expressed the view that labor unions would make “a tragic mistake” if they allowed their internal differences to divide their political support.

He pointed out:

For nearly 12 years, the national Congress was doing things for or on behalf of organized labor. Now, as shown by the Connally-Smith law, it has started to do things TO labor.

He said:

I believe labor as a whole will support Roosevelt, but if I had to take a Republican, I’d choose Willkie.

Farther south in Ohio, at Columbus, the CIO State Industrial Council has announced formation for the first time of all branches of organized labor in “a broad political front.”

Pittsburgh dope

John L. Lewis, international president of the Mine Workers, is not expected to be in any way favorable to Mr. Roosevelt. He supported Willkie in 1940, but the precinct results indicate the miners didn’t follow him. Mr. Lewis will not support Mr. Willkie this year, which is said to be all right with Mr. Willkie.

In Pittsburgh, “Chick” Federoff, head of the Steel City Industrial Union Council, said he favored a union for political purposes with the AFL, and that his group will try to make plans in a meeting next Tuesday. But John A. Stackhouse, secretary of the Pittsburgh Central Labor Union, said that organization had just decided to set up its own political committees, with no plans for active cooperation with any other labor group.

At the other end of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia groups of both the AFL and CIO organized a “united front” last year, and hope to continue it.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 6, 1944)

Anti-New Deal Democrats can’t decide on strategy

Program to block fourth term is developing along two different and almost opposite lines
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer

Washington (UP) –
Anti-New Deal Democrats appear today unable to make up their minds on strategy to prevent President Roosevelt’s renomination for a fourth term.

The belief that he will seek renomination is sufficiently indicated by the organization of pre-convention machinery to block him. But the program is developing along two different and almost opposing lines.

Former Secretary of War Harry H. Woodring, who left the Roosevelt Cabinet in 1940, is promoting a “third party” movement or general conservative Democratic bolt of Mr. Roosevelt’s candidacy, should he be renominated.

Indicates plan solidly founded

To this end, Mr. Woodring helped set up a Jeffersonian Democratic Conference which met last month in Chicago. After conferences last week in New York, he indicated that the third-party plan was solidly founded and that there were half a dozen or so Democrats who would be available to contest the presidential election as a Jeffersonian Democrat.

It is obvious that any Jeffersonian-Democratic presidential candidate who could take 100 or so electoral votes from Mr. Roosevelt next November would have obtained his defeat if the election were at all close.

Mentioned by Mr. Woodring as potential candidates are former Democratic National Committee Chairman James A. Farley, Senator Harry F. Byrd and former Massachusetts Governor Joseph B. Ely. Inclusion of these men among potential third-party candidates appears to shadow the whole program. Mr. Farley has told intimates that he would not bolt the Democratic Party even if Mr. Roosevelt were renominated.

Ely in different position

Mr. Byrd has already announced that he is not a candidate for the presidential nomination. Mr. Ely is in a somewhat different position. Moving boldly in Massachusetts against a fourth term, anti-New Deal Democrats have entered a slate of convention delegate candidates who would be pledged to Mr. Ely’s nomination for the Presidency. That was announced Feb. 20. It looked like a bolt or third-party threat.

But it appears now that Mr. Ely will not permit his name to go before presidential preference primaries in other states. therefore, the strategy in Massachusetts seems to coincide less with Mr. Woodring’s third-party plan than with the effort of other anti-New Dealers to obtain control of a big block of convention delegates for a convention floor fight against Mr. Roosevelt’s renomination and a do-or-die effort to prevent a New Dealer being nominated for Vice President in the event Mr. Roosevelt heads the ticket again.

Many Democrats, especially Southerners, who might be willing to fight Mr. Roosevelt’s renomination in the convention would not bolt the party to vote against him.

A leader of the Stop-Roosevelt group believes that there is some hope of preventing the President’s renomination by the strategy of preventing his supporters from lining up solid blocks of Roosevelt-instructed delegates and defeating him on the convention floor. He estimated that eight and possibly nine Southern states would send uninstructed delegations to the Democratic convention.

It is on that strategy of uninstructed or favorite-son candidates that non-bolting anti-New Dealers are relying. If they can’t lick Mr. Roosevelt in the convention, they will probably not vote against him.

Bricker: Local government No. 1 issue

Jacksonville, Florida (UP) –
Governor John Bricker of Ohio, candidate for the Republican nomination for President, said today that the big issue in the 1944 presidential election was whether local self-government shall prevail or “shall we continue the trend toward central autocratic control by the federal government.”

In Jacksonville to address the Florida State Republican Convention, he advocated simplification of the tax laws and a reduction in taxes.

Governor Bricker said that we must reduce the national debt. He said reduction of the national debt could start now with the elimination of needless boards and bureaucrats and that reduction in the federal payroll would not hurt the prosecution of the war but would help it.

Governor Bricker added:

Congress long ago should have provided laws to prohibit strikes during wartime. Congress should have provided a board before which misunderstandings could be adjudicated with fairness to both sides.

Advocating limitation upon presidential tenure, Governor Bricker said:

…continued occupancy of the highest seat in the land is a powerful weapon in the hands of the “ins” because of the desire of federal employees to hold their jobs and increase their authority.