Election 1944: Pre-convention news

[NormanStewart]

Votes to keep Roosevelt in sought by CIO

Two million ‘needed to assure election’
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer

Washington –
The most definite statement so far of the CIO’s main political aim in this year’s election is presented in the current publication of the United Automobile Workers, whose president, R. J. Thomas, is a member of the CIO Political Action Committee.

This main aim is to assure reelection of President Roosevelt, or the triumph of another “progressive Democrat.” This hardly will be a surprise to politicians, but the fact has never been officially stated up to now.

The “secret” comes out in an explanation of why “CIO Political Action Committees must round up a minimum of two to three million votes to assure a close but certain margin of victory.”

Cites 1940 vote

This is why, according to the UAW analysis:

The President had 27 million votes in 1940 as against about 23 million for Willkie. Roughly seven million men in the Armed Forces might vote for the President or a progressive Democrat, according to Gallup Poll estimates. The deduction of the soldier vote would have the following effect: Democratic 20 million as against Republican 20 million.

If only a few workers who have moved to new communities and states for war jobs vote, the Democratic vote would be further reduced. The vote totals might then be Democratic 18 million as against Republican 19½ million. That’s why an additional two to three million new votes must be found to guarantee election of a progressive candidate.

Unless the CIO Political Action Committees can scare up this many additional votes, the prospects for a Democratic victory are not bright.

Soldier vote bill criticized

The union’s figures are based on its contention that “at this point, Congress has virtually disfranchised the soldier and sailor.” That is disputed by advocates of the soldier vote bill which Congress enacted, with the President withholding his signature.

The big auto workers’ union, said to be the largest in the world, urges its members to continue efforts to assure voting in the armed services, and also to:

Get workers who have moved to new cities to register and vote. There are from five to 10 million votes involved here.

Induce people who never voted before to register and vote. In 1940, from 10 to 20 million eligible voters stayed away from the polls.

Farm bloc rapped

A reason for the importance of the armed service vote, according to the UAW paper, is that:

Thanks to the lobbying effect of the misnamed farm bloc, a large percentage of draftees are from the metropolitan centers. Far more enlisted men come from the cities than from the rural areas, and cities are normally more Democratic than the rural areas.

The CIO Political Action Committee has been under attack from two Democratic Congressmen, both of whom are described by the CIO unionists as Southern “poll taxers.” Rep. Martin Dies (D-TX), in a report of his investigating committee, criticized the CIO Committee as being subject to Communistic influence.

Wants inquiry reopened

Rep. Howard W. Smith (D-VA) has a request pending before Attorney General Biddle for a reopening of an inquiry into his charge that the CIO Committee has violated the War Labor Disputes Act prohibition of union financial contributions in connection with national elections.

Rep. Smith today said that he had turned over to Attorney General Biddle files which he contends warrant a grand jury investigation.

Biddle criticized

Mr. Biddle informed Mr. Smith last week that the investigation of the committee which Mr. Smith had requested had shown no violation of the section of the Smith-Connally anti-strike law which prohibits political contributions by labor organizations.

Mr. Smith criticized Mr. Biddle’s failure to send an investigator to his office to examine “evidence” which he had on file.

Senator Guy M. Gillette (D-IA), declaring that the Hatch Act limiting campaign expenditures had “a hole in it big enough to drive a team of horses through,” asked for immediate hearings on his bill limiting personal contributions to $10,000 a year.

Door left wide open

He said the present $5,000-a-year limit on contributions to national committees left the door wide open to individual donations to state and county organizations.

Another provision of the Hatch Act, limiting total presidential campaign expenditures to $3 million for each party, Senator Gillette found “wholly ineffective.”

Senator Gillette said he heard that legislation to “patch the holes” in the Hatch Act would drive political contributions under cover, adding:

If we don’t pass something this presidential year, the Hatch Act regarding political contributions will be a dead letter.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 14, 1944)

Letters put MacArthur on political spot

Observers believe he’s ‘available’
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer

Washington –
Gen. Douglas MacArthur has been put in a position where he might properly be expected to explain – to the people, and perhaps to the administration – exactly where he stands in the developing political campaign, whether he is a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.

For, whether he intended it or not, he has been projected directly into political controversy by his correspondence with Rep. A. L. Miller (R-NE), which the Congressman made public.

Makes self available?

Although there have been intimations that the general was a receptive candidate for the nomination, this was the first message from him to come to light bearing upon politics and political issues in the United States.

His two letters:

• Left the definite impression that he was making himself available for a possible convention draft, by his failure to disavow the suggestion by Mr. Miller in a letter which went into details as to how the general should conduct himself and what he should say if drafted by the convention.

• Stamped him as a critic of the Roosevelt administration by his comments on the Congressman’s vitriolic attack upon the New Deal.

In reference to Mr. Millet’s suggestion that he become a candidate and the Congressman’s prediction that he would sweep the country, the general replied, “I do not anticipate in any way your flattering prediction, but I do unreservedly agree with the complete wisdom and statesmanship of your comments.” He did not thrust the offer aside.

Surprises Washington

The whole tone of his letters was patently political.

The revelation of the letters, which Mr. Miller said he released on his own responsibility, was a surprise here because the general hitherto has kept discreetly quiet about the talk of him as a candidate.

His friends have insisted that he did not want to become involved in political controversy in any way, that he would remain in his military role and remain silent, though they have not diminished on this account their campaign to draft him.

The Congressman timed release of the letters – the first of which was written Oct. 2 last year; the second, Feb. 11 – to follow the popular vote rolled up for the general in the Wisconsin and Illinois primaries, which, it is obvious, will be exploited in the campaign.

Ran behind Dewey

The general ran behind New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey in the delegate vote in Wisconsin, where he won three delegates, and his popular vote in Illinois was about half that rolled up by Governor Dewey in the 1940 Illinois preferential primary.

Mr. Miller scoffed at reports that the general might be brought him for “consultation.”

He said:

President Roosevelt and his palace guard are scared to death of the general right at this time. A lot of lesser lights have been brought home for consultation but not MacArthur. They want to keep him as far away from the voters as possible.

MacArthur is the idol of the country. The palace guard has another idol.

Mr. Miller said he had met Gen. MacArthur in this country and in Europe on two occasions but that they were not intimate friends.

He said:

I’m for him because I believe a military man of his stature in the White House would shorten the war – and that’s what we all want.

Organization Republican leaders, for the most part, have been hopping on the Dewey bandwagon.

Vandenberg silent

Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg (R-MI) is the only prominent Republican identified with the MacArthur movement. The Senator was apparently displeased with publication of the letters. He declined comment. Asked if he had received any letters, he retorted: “Ha! Ha! Good afternoon!”

The general has been a political enigma. He has refused to make public statements removing himself from the race when offered the opportunity by visiting interviewers, and left them with the impression the bee was buzzing around him.

Some of his friends have insisted that he didn’t want to make any statement because he didn’t want to give the slightest recognition to politics. Others have the impression he would accept a convention draft.

Maybe he will clear it all up now.

Text of letters from MacArthur

Washington (UP) –
The texts of Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s letters to Rep. A. L. Miller (R-NE) follow:

Dear Congressman Miller:

I thank you so sincerely for your fine letter of September 18 with its cordial expressions of real friendship. I do not anticipate in any way your flattering predictions but I do unreservedly agree with the complete wisdom and statesmanship of your comments.

I knew your state well in the days of used-to-be. I have enjoyed many a delightful hunting excursion there and shall always remember with so much gratefulness the wholehearted hospitality and warm comradeship extended to me on such occasions. Those days seem singularly carefree and happy compared to the sinister drama of our present chaos and confusion.

Most cordially,
DOUGLAS MacARTHUR

Dear Congressman Miller:

I appreciate very much your scholarly letter of January 27. Your description of conditions in the United States is a sobering one indeed and is calculated to arouse the thoughtful consideration of every true patriot. We must not inadvertently slip into the same condition internally as the one which we dight externally. Like Abraham Lincoln I am a firm believer in the people and if given the truth they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring before them the real facts.

Out here we are doing what we can with what we have, I will be glad, however, when more substantial forces are placed at my disposition.

With cordial regard and best wishes,
DOUGLAS MacARTHUR

[NormanStewart]

Bricker assures West on Jap war

Portland, Oregon (UP) –
Ohio Governor John W. Bricker, bringing to a climax the Oregon phase of his campaign for the Republican nomination for the Presidency, last night blasted any eastern hopes for conversion to peacetime industry once Germany is beaten while the West would shoulder the war against Japan.

He said at a dinner rally here:

It has been suggested that as soon as the Germans are beaten, the East Coast can convert its war plants to the production of peacetime goods, leaving the West Coast to finish off the Japs.

I say that is dangerous and wishful thinking which will prolong the Japanese war. The defeat is the Japs is not the sole responsibility of any one geographic section of the country. It is the responsibility of 130 million Americans.

And we ought to have the full support of our Allies as well.

[NormanStewart]

Mistakes blamed for war’s lag

Boston, Massachusetts (UP) –
Former Massachusetts Governor Joseph B. Ely, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, charged last night that mistakes of the “Communist-CIO-New Deal combination” have prolonged the war and cost the lives of American soldiers.

Mr. Ely told a Jeffersonian Democrats’ meeting:

The morale of the German people is sustained by the faults and inadequacies of the Roosevelt administration which will be the cause of sacrificing our sons, brothers, husbands and sweethearts.

Urging defeat of a fourth term, Mr. Ely asked:

Who are the fourth-term proponents? There is Earl Browder, the Communist; Sidney Hillman, the CIO revolutionary, and David Niles and John McCormack of the palace guard. What a strange conglomeration of bedfellows are lying down to sleep in the bed of Thomas Jefferson.

Mr. Ely will head an anti-Roosevelt slate on the April 25 Massachusetts presidential primaries.

[NormanStewart]

Editorial: The MacArthur letters

Gen. MacArthur is the victim of careless letter-writing and of a friend who made public two of the general’s answers to fan mail. That seems to be the net of the incident caused by Rep. A. L. Miller’s publication of his correspondence with the general last fall and two months ago.

Why the freshman Nebraska Congressman, a leader in the Draft-MacArthur-for-President movement, should thus embarrass the general is not clear.

Since the general did not publicly request withdrawal of his name from primaries in which he was entered without authorization, he is in the position of an inactive though receptive candidate. But he has not publicly admitted that much, as has LtCdr. Harold E. Stassen.

Presumably the general’s unwillingness to fight for the nomination, or to participate in public debate, results from his feeling that a man cannot conduct a military campaign and a personal political campaign at the same time. Certainly Gen. MacArthur’s friends and backers – of all people – should respect this.

The private MacArthur statements in the letters are of three kinds:

First, in his October reply to Mr. Miller’s September statement that he could get the presidential nomination and carry every state, the general said: “I do not anticipate in any way your flattering predictions.”

Second, in the same letter, the general told Mr. Miller, “I do unreservedly agree with the complete wisdom and statesmanship of your comments.” This was an apparent reference to Mr. Miller’s assertion that “unless this New Deal can be stopped this time, our American way of life is forever doomed.”

When Mr. Miller in January deplored “this monarchy which is being established in America.” Gen. MacArthur replied to his “scholarly letter” that “we must not inadvertently slip into the same condition internally as the one which we fight externally.”

This, of course, was an extreme partisan implication, as unworthy of the general as Vice President Wallace’s loose “Fascist” name-calling is unworthy of him.

Third, when Mr. Miller criticized the allocation of war supplies to the Pacific, the general replied: “Out here we are doing what we can with what we have. I will be glad, however, when more substantial forces are placed at my disposal.” Like all commanders, Gen. MacArthur naturally would like stronger forces. But that is a decision for the General Staff to make in line with global strategy, not a subject for a subordinate commander to discuss with a civilian.

It is regrettable that Gen. MacArthur wrote these letters, even if they might have been written in confidence. The Allies need great generals, and Gen. MacArthur is one of them. To permit a political indiscretion to detract from his military prestige is seriously unfortunate.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 15, 1944)

Dewey praises teamwork in home state

Governor attacks Roosevelt ‘liberalism’

Albany, New York (UP) –
Governor Thomas E. Dewey, making his second report to the people, said last night that the “cobwebs” of past Democratic regimes in New York State had been wiped out, and that the present state government is “infused with new blood and new energy, filled with a spirit of teamwork between the legislative and executive branches.”

While devoting most of his address to a review of accomplishments by his administration during the last year, Governor Dewey indirectly attacked the Roosevelt administration.

Roosevelt ‘liberalism’ attacked

He criticized:

…that type of personal government which talks fine phrases of liberalism while seeking to impose its will and whims upon the people through centralized bureaucracies issuing from directives from a distance.

Governor Dewey, the leading possibility for the 1944 Republican presidential nomination, said his state administration was attempting to “establish and maintain a genuinely competent and progressive government.”

He continued:

Three immediate and fundamental purposes have guided our work to strength the state government. First, to win the war; second, to prepare for a rapid and smooth readjustment to peaceful pursuits, once complete victory is won; third, to preserve and develop that freedom at home for which your men are fighting abroad.

Workable soldier ballot

Anti-discrimination legislation, drastic revision of the Workmen’s Compensation Administration, new health bills, streamlining of various departments and bureaus, veterans’ legislation and greater aid to the New York farmer were other accomplishments cited by Governor Dewey.

He continued:

Your state administration also took the lead in proposing a simple, workable formula for soldier voting. This soldier ballot will… give every man and woman in the armed services by the simple act of signing his name once, a valid note for every candidate from President to the local officers in his hometown.

Formula for freedom

Governor Dewey said the day would come:

…when free men everywhere, regardless of race, color or creed, can live in freedom, can work at occupations of their own choosing, can raise their children in the traditions of their parents, can worship God in the manner of their own choosing.

He said:

We can, and we must, keep out own society clean of those within who would lead us into paths of narrow or bigoted selfishness.

[NormanStewart]

Merger convention

Minneapolis, Minnesota (UP) –
The Farmer-Labor Party, once spoken of as the “core of revolution in the Midwest,” met in state convention today to vote itself out of existence so its remnants can merge with Minnesota Democrats to reelect President Roosevelt.

Both the Farmer-Labor Party and the state Democratic Party opened simultaneous conventions in different hotels for the purpose of joining forces under a new hyphenated organization to be known as the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.

Permanent convention officers were named and the nearly 400 delegates began caucusing for district committeemen. The Democrats expect to complete merger arrangements today.

Elmer Benson of Appleton, former U.S. Senator and last Farmer-Labor governor, pleaded for fusion of the two groups and attacked former Governor Harold E. Stassen and Senator Joseph H. Ball as “plain American Fascists.”

He said:

The Stassen-Ball crowd was largely responsible for the defeat of Wendell Willkie in Wisconsin. That means they are tied up with the Hoover-McCormick crowd, that they are agents of the capitalistic group that wants to destroy our present national administration. These people are plain American Fascists.

[NormanStewart]

Stassen support reiterated

New York (UP) –
Senator Joseph H. Ball (R-MN) reiterated his support of LtCdr. Harold E. Stassen for the 1944 Republican presidential nomination last night and asserted that President Roosevelt and Congress “are not longer working as a team to solve the serious problems facing our country.”

Before the New York Young Republican Club, Senator Ball criticized the asserted lack of teamwork and said:

There is controversy, and often deadlock, on almost every major issue outside the actual prosecution of the war, on which there is unity.

Mr. Ball also criticized the administration for “the present jungle of overlapping bureaus and agencies.”

He said:

I have been on the Truman Investigating Committee for three years and it is a continual miracle to mw how American industry and labor continue to produce the huge volume of war materiel they are producing in the face of bureaucratic red tape and confusing and contradictory regulations emanating from Washington.

Urging the nation to ace speedily in “working out a just peace and the machinery to maintain it,” Senator Ball said:

Let our Republican Party and our nominee for President stand unequivocally for an international organization with the authority and the power to shape the peace now and to maintain it in the future.

[NormanStewart]

Editorial: The phony issue

With each passing week those fourth-termers who hope to make a campaign issue of an imaginary isolationism look sillier and sillier.

Last week, the Wisconsin primary exploded the myth that Midwest Republicans oppose world cooperation. For the international collaborationist Thomas E. Dewey won without running, and the superstater Harold E. Stassen placed second over Gen. MacArthur and Wendell L. Willkie. Now the Nebraska primary – with Mr. Stassen winning easily and an unexpectedly large write-in vote for Mfr. Dewey – underlines the obvious.

This week, the American Federation of Labor urged American participation in world organization for peace and security. The AFL post-war reconstruction committee reported:

The conflicts of today have proved that we can no longer rely on our favored geographical position to maintain our national safety.

It approved an international police force or any necessary means to prevent war, and modification of trade barriers to facilitate exchange of good and services between all nations. It opposed expansionism and imperialism, as well as isolationism, and rejected attempts by any nation to force unilateral solutions to territorial and other problems affecting peace. It stressed the need for international organization to handle health and welfare problems, and to control epidemics and drug traffic.

Of course, the fourth-termers have had no chance of fooling the people with a fake crusade against GOP isolationism since the Mackinac Declaration, and the Republican votes for the Fulbright and Connally resolutions.

All but an insignificant number of Democrats and Republicans support the bipartisan Congressional commitment to a democratic international; organization. The real issue is whether President Roosevelt can deliver on the American mandate and the Allied pledges, or whether European powers will put another league front on the old balance-of-power system.

About the only bright part of this picture is that there is no party division here on the need for effective and democratic world organization. This American unity in foreign policy is a source of great national strength and of world hope in this crisis. For fourth-termers, or any other group, to insist on seeing disunity where unity exists is exceedingly shortsighted partisanship.

[NormanStewart]

Background of news –
Wallace’s trip to China

By Jay G. Harden

Washington –
Rarely have home politics and the war abroad been so tangled up as they are in speculations relating to the trip of vice President Henry A. Wallace to China, cryptically announced to occur “sometime in the late spring or early summer.”

The political implication, which diligent inquiry in Democratic Party circles so far has failed either to remove or amplify, is self-evident. It arises from the circumstance that the vice-presidential nomination has been boiling up as the chief point of contention in the Democratic National Convention July 19, and Mr. Wallace’s prospective tour would seem to synchronize exactly with the time when he should be making his bid for delegate support.

Proceeding from the assumption that Mr. Wallace must be going abroad at President Roosevelt’s request, two diametrically opposite theories as to the latter’s political purpose are advanced.

One of these is that Mr. Roosevelt, desiring to be rid of Mr. Wallace as a 1944 running mate, is providing him with a graceful exit. The counter-conjecture holds that the President, having decided in favor of Mr. Wallace’s renomination, is seeking to build him up as a second horse that, in interest of winning the war, it is imperative not to change in midstream.

Chinese attitude important

A serious feature of this political speculation is the foreign skepticism as to Mr. Wallace’s official standing which it has aroused. For example, a leading spokesman for the Chungking government commented that:

If Mr. Wallace is being sent to China merely to shunt him off, it is an insult to the Chinese people.

From the standpoint of foreign opinion alone, it would seem necessary that Mr. Wallace’s political status be clarified before he embarks on his mission.

There is plenty of reason, entirely unrelated to Democratic politics, why an outstanding American envoy just now should be sent to China. Due to rapidly mounting currency inflation, coupled with severe shortage of food, the domestic economy of that country has been reported very near the point of total breakdown.

Coincidentally, it is said, Soviet Russian encouragement of rebel elements has placed the Kuomintang government of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in serious danger of disruption and that there have long been serious differences between Allied military authorities in the Chinese-Indian theater is well known.

At a meeting of the Kuomintang Central Committee last September Generalissimo Chiang publicly recognized an existing state of armed revolution by calling on the “Chinese Communist Party” to:

…abandon its policy of forcefully occupying our national territory and give up their past tactics of assaulting national government troops in various sectors.

Prestige feared slipping

The subsequent meeting of Generalissimo Chiang with President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill at Cairo, coupled with the naming of Chinese at Moscow as one of the “Big Four,” helped the Chungking government greatly, but latterly its prestige again has been slipping away.

One cause for this decline, State Department authorities say, was the seeming Soviet support of the Chinese Communists, contained in the issuance from Moscow of a blast against the Chiang-sponsored government of the Chinese-Russian border province of Sinkiang.

The report that, after Chungking, Mr. Wallace may go to Moscow suggests that he is being sent to mediate between the Chinese and Russians.

The main American military dissatisfaction arises from the distaste which both British and Chinese have shown for fighting in Burma.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 16, 1944)

Political deal laid to WLB in labor case

‘Special privilege’ to CIO union charged

Washington (UP) – (April 15)
Rep. Clare E. Hoffman (R-MI) today criticized the War Labor Board action in the Montgomery Ward & Company strike as an instance of trading of administrative “special privilege to CIO unions in return for political support for the fourth term.”

The WLB referred the dispute to the White House after ordering renewal of a contract with the CIO Mail Order, Warehouse and Retail Employees Union.

Company officials have contended the union no longer represents a majority of the employees and that the WLB cannot compel employers to sign closed shops or maintenance-of-membership contracts.

Not in war business

Mr. Hoffman argued that Montgomery Ward is not engaged in war business and therefore not within WLB jurisdiction.

Hoffman said:

Nevertheless, the WLB has issued an order which would ultimately, if the usual procedure is followed, compel the employees of that organization to join a CIO union, pay dues and assessments.

Maintenance of membership, which the board ordered for Montgomery Ward employees, does not require workers to join a union, but binds those already members to remain in good standing during the life of the contract. They are usually offered 15 days to resign from the union if they do not wish to be bound by the clause.

Assessments cited

Some CIO affiliates are assessing members $1 each for a political fund, “a part of which is to be used in support of the administration and New Deal candidates for Congress,” Mr. Hoffman said.

He asked:

Is it not logical to argue that the administration and the WLB force employees to join a CIO affiliate, which in turn forces them to work to earn the dollar which goes into the campaign fund of the CIO’s Committee for Political Action and which in turn supports the President for a fourth term and supports those candidates who agree to go along with the President’s program?

[NormanStewart]

Farmer-Labor Party votes ‘own’ death

Minneapolis, Minnesota (UP) –
The Farmer-Labor Party, one of the most persistent of third-party movements, voted itself out of political existence today.

The party, whose tradition extends in a direct line to the Populist Party of the 1890s, joined forces in Minnesota with the Democrats in an attempt to reelect President Roosevelt to a fourth term.

[NormanStewart]

Jap war blamed on dereliction

Administration blasted by Governor Bricker

San Francisco, California (UP) – (April 15)
Ohio Governor John W. Bricker, candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, today blamed the Roosevelt administration for the “disgrace of Pearl Harbor” and declared that the United States “might not have been dragged into the European War if the Pacific War had been prevented.”

In an address before the Commonwealth Club here, Mr. Bricker charged that either the administration’s ignorance of or failure to inform the public of Japan’s fortification of the Pacific mandated islands “is one of the gravest derelictions in all our history.”

He said:

If the American people had known of the islands’ fortification and the sales of war materials to Japan, there would have been such public indignation that it would have either prevented the Japs doing what they did in the mandated islands, or would have resulted in increasing our preparations.

We would have been ready. There was no excuse for getting caught. The war might not have occurred if we had been ready.

[NormanStewart]

Hughes spurns role as GOP keynoter

Washington (UP) – (April 15)
A group of influential Republicans have considered offering to Charles Evans Hughes the important job of keynoting the Republican National Convention, but the former Chief Justice let it be known tonight that he was not interested.

The keynoter and the permanent chairman of the convention, which opens June 26, will be selected in Chicago on Wednesday by the GOP Arrangements Committee. House Republican Leader Joseph W. Martin Jr. (R-MA), who served as permanent chairman of the 1940 convention, will do so again this year.

It was reported that Rep. Clare Boothe Luce (R-CT) was gathering strong support as a potential keynoter.

Some GOP leaders are urging that the post be given to one of the party’s 26 state governors, but the difficulty, as one spokesman put it, is that so many governors “have their lightning rod up.”

[NormanStewart]

Eric Johnston: Three Roosevelts at odds – The man, the President, and the politician

Chamber of Commerce admits robust admiration; ruthless politically, but man is kind
By Eric Johnston, North American Newspaper Alliance

This story, reprinted in part from the April American Mercury Magazine, is an interesting appraisal of President Roosevelt by Eric Johnston, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Are you for the New Deal or against it?

Although the question makes no sense, few sensible Americans will refrain from answering it. Most of them, in fact, will proffer a categorical answer with the emphasis of fervor normally reserved for a discussion of the virtue of one’s mother. Approval and denunciation are usually of the blanket type – despite the fact that few New Deal leaders can themselves adequately define the phrase; and despite the fact that the more excited anti-New Dealers who attempt a definition peter out in cusswords.

Quarrels always explode around symbols, and the most potent of these was Franklin Delano Roosevelt himself. Not since Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln, I suppose, has any President been so execrated and so glorified by his own generation. At the risk of upsetting the metabolism of my more unbending anti-FDR friends, I want to confess a robust, non-partisan admiration.

There are, it seems to me, three Roosevelts, one impinging on the other.

Roosevelt the man

There is Roosevelt the man, as fine a specimen as our country has produced. Born into wealth and family, he is a democrat to his fingertips, with a genuine sympathy for the underdog. No ne who has known him intimately doubts the sincerity of his social conscience. Friend and foe alike must be thrilled by the courage and the spiritual vigor that conquered physical handicaps which would have laid lesser men low.

Although there is more than a touch of the snob in his heritage and makeup, he meets all men as equals, whatever their race, creed or station. There is nothing remotely stuffed-shirt about him. He talks easily and racily – on occasion excessively, I must add – in man-to-man spirit. He laughs easily and contagiously, and with equal exuberance whether his friends or his enemies are the butt of the joke.

Let me put this first Roosevelt, the man, into the most elementary terms I can find. If he were not President, but your next-door neighbor, an associate in your business, or a casual Pullman acquaintance, you couldn’t help liking him. You would decide that you want him as a friend, because he is an interesting, amusing, and authentic personality.

Roosevelt the politician

Secondly, there is Roosevelt the politician. Unless you have a special taste for such things, you would be decidedly less enthusiastic about this one. It is, as a matter of fact, the cunning, conniving politician, rather than the man who has been so successful in transforming enthusiasts into detractors: Hugh Johnson, Raymond Moley, Joseph Medill Patterson, Stanley High, James Farley – the list could be extended into at least a prominent score.

Roosevelt understands and enjoys the game of politics as other men enjoy their favorite sport, and he has no more conscience about toppling an opponent than a halfback in the throes of a hotly contested game. He has the shrewdness and a lot of the ruthlessness of the political adept, he thinks in deals, bargains, blocs or votes and pressure groups as naturally as you and I, if we are both businessmen, think in terms of markets, costs, overheads, profits and losses. There are few men in public life, I venture to say, more skilled in dangling the carrot of promises before the eyes of plodding political donkeys. And he is not a man to hand around too long with a lost cause.

Roosevelt the President

Finally, there is Roosevelt the President. In that capacity, I am convinced, he has as keen a sense of the sacredness of his position and the magnitude of his responsibility as any of his predecessors. Those who doubt this are, I fear, unmindful of the psychological effect the Presidency has on a man. I do not believe that any man invested with the dignity of the greatest office in the world could fail to respond to its challenge, or be less than a total patriot. The very title of President of the United States works its magic over the most self-centered and mediocre men – and Franklin Roosevelt is neither of these.

He has an acute sense of his own place in history, and of his obligations to coming generations. In talking to him, I have sometimes had the feeling that he was stepping back a few decades and looking at himself in the perspective of time. Men who knew Woodrow Wilson intimately have told me this trait was especially strong in the Princeton president as White House incumbent. Perhaps it is one of the “occupational diseases” associated with the office; but it has its wholesome side, in that it makes a man President first – Democrat, Republican, New Dealer or whatnot second.

Three characters conflict

Small wonder that these three Roosevelts, confined in one vigorous personality, jostle and contradict one another. The politician intrudes on the President, the President reproves the politician, the man brushes them both aside. They dispute one another and strike compromises, to the confusion of admirers and critics alike.

The President soars to peaks of patriotism; the politician condescends to vituperation and small vengeances that grieve his friends; the man shows streaks of generosity, horseplay, pettiness, vanity, like all sons of Adam. Had Roosevelt been more the statesman-President and less the politician, his administration might have been less embittered his reforms on a more constructive and more enduring level.

If I were to summarize the evils of the New Deal, as I would list the following:

• Its unfortunate resort to the language, techniques and philosophy of class conflict, at a time when the urgent need has been cooperation.

• Its attempts, all too successful on occasion, to legislate by administrative decrees, substituting government by officials for government by law.

• Its clear tendency to excessive centralization, whereby it has intruded upon the prerogatives of the states and, more important, the prerogatives of the people.

• Its deleterious emphasis upon negative and defeatist ideas and procedures, such as “made” work, plowing-under, spread work, measures against saving and investment. The very habit of productivity, the faith in abundance has been hurt by such insistence on curbing, restricting, beating down the creative urge of man.

Despite excesses in their practice, I approve the principle of many phases of New Deal policy.

Relief for all Americans in distress, because of unemployment or other reasons, seems to me a matter beyond doubt.

The same holds true for relief to farmers hard hit by economic dislocations. Distress in agricultural regions is less evident than in urban centers, but it is nonetheless real.

The protection of labor’s right to collective bargaining, a field in which the New Deal has advanced onto new ground, remains as a permanent gain.

The Security Exchange Commission, in the same way, can be made a stout support for the capitalist system.

These and a good man many other New Deal measures can be absorbed and brought into alignment with a freely functioning private enterprise world.

The designation New Deal has been ostentatiously abandoned by the President, indicating a trend “to the Right,” to use an expression that is not altogether accurate. But the facts compassed by the New Deal, good and bad, are with us. The time has come to sift reality from legend, to examine the crucial Roosevelt Era without passion or bitterness, so that we may retain the constructive elements and repudiate the destructive tendencies.

[NormanStewart]

House voice on peace demanded by Bloom

Washington (UP) – (April 15)
Chairman Sol Bloom (D-NY) of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, tonight called on both major political parties to go on record as favoring ratification of all international agreements and treaties by a simply majority of both branches of Congress.

Declaring that the House, as well as the Senate, should have a voice in drafting the peace treaty and other agreements with foreign countries. Mr. Bloom urged that a plank advocating such procedure be written into both the Democratic and Republican platforms.

The Constitution empowers the Chief Executive, “by and with the advice of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur.” Mr. Bloom would have international “agreements” subject to ratification by simple majority of both House and Senate.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 17, 1944)

MacArthur opens door to draft by Republicans

Sole ambition is to help win war by fulfilling ‘such duty as may be assigned to me’

Allied HQ, Southwest Pacific (UP) –
Gen. Douglas MacArthur, in a statement interpreted as meaning that he would be available for the Republican presidential nomination if drafted but would not seek it, said today that his sole ambition was to aid in winning the war “by the fulfillment of such duty as has been or may be assigned to me.”

Gen. MacArthur, in a statement on his correspondence with Rep. A. L. Miller (R-NE) who urged him to run, said his letters were not intended for publication, that they were not politically inspired and that he repudiated the “sinister suggestion that they were intended as criticism of any political philosophy or of any personages in high office.”

He said the American election system was of “so imposing a nature as to be beyond the sphere of any individual’s coercion or decision,” and added in conclusion:

I can only say, as I have said before, I have not sought the office nor do I seek it. I have devoted myself exclusively to the conduct of the war.

My sole ambition is to assist our beloved country to win this vital struggle by the fulfillment of such duty as has been or may be assigned to me.

Two years ago, Gen. MacArthur said he was not a candidate; in March 1942, when he arrived in Australia, he said: “I began the war as a soldier and I will end it as one.”

Last year, when American politicians started demanding that Gen. MacArthur declare his intentions, he said, “let’s get on with the war.”

Hence Gen. MacArthur’s statement today tended to confirm the growing impression in the best-informed quarters here that he would not seek the Republican nomination but would accept it if the party drafted him.

The final sentence of his statement, regarding duty that might be assigned to him, was taken to mean that, if drafted for what he believed the country’s good, he would accept.

‘Personal correspondence’

Gen. MacArthur said:

My attention has been called to the publication by Congressman Miller of a personal correspondence with him.

Their perusal will show any fair-minded person that they were neither politically inspired not intended to convoy blanket approval of the Congressman’s views.

Mr. Miller, urging Gen. MacArthur to run, had said that “unless this New Deal can be stopped this time, our American way of life is forever doomed” and that “I am certain that this monarchy which is being established in America will destroy the rights of the common people.”

Gen. MacArthur called these letters wise, statesmanlike and scholarly and said Mr. Miller’s description of conditions “is a sobering one indeed and is calculated to arouse the thoughtful consideration of every true patriot.”

In his statement today, Gen. MacArthur said:

I entirely repudiate the sinister interpretation that they [his letters] were intended as criticism of any political philosophy or of any personages in high office.

The letters, Gen. MacArthur said, were “amiable acknowledgements” to a Congressman’s letters “containing flattering and friendly remarks to me personally.”

Warns of misrepresentation

To continue them otherwise, he said, was to misrepresent the intent.

Gen. MacArthur said he had not received Mr. Miller’s third letter, urging him to announce his candidacy, and commented:

The high constitutional processes of our representative and republican form of government in which there resides with the people the sacred duty of choosing and electing their Chief Executive are of so imposing a nature as to be beyond the sphere of any individual’s coercion or decision.

Then he continued with his final paragraph saying that he did not seek office but would do the duty assigned him.

Regrets publication

Well-informed quarters expressed belief that Gen. MacArthur obviously regretted the publication of his letters and felt that he had been put on the spot.

Of Mr. Miller’s letter saying that “unless this New Deal can be stopped our American way of life is forever doomed,” Gen. MacArthur had written that “I do unreservedly agree with the complete wisdom and statesmanship of your comments.”

Mr. Miller’s second letter, saying a monarchy was being established in the United States, Gen. MacArthur had called scholarly.

It was felt here that publication of the letters had done Gen. MacArthur no service and, in fact, would seem to be the very thing his supporters would want to avoid because it might antagonize some people.

Finally, it was felt here that the whole Miller affair was a teapot tempest because Gen. MacArthur never had more than an outside chance and that was lessened by Wendell L. Willkie’s withdrawal.

Out here, so far from the United States, it had been felt that any chance for Gen. MacArthur would have been in a Dewey-Willkie deadlock but that now it appeared that Governor Thomas E. Dewey probably would be nominated on the first ballot.

When Mr. Willkie announced his withdrawal, one MacArthur supporter commented:

I’ll bet the Democrats are laughing like hell this morning. Willkie has won the election for them by assuring the nomination of the one man they are sure to beat.

[NormanStewart]

Johnston denies he’s in politics

Detroit, Michigan (UP) –
Eric Johnston, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who has frequently been mentioned as Republican presidential material, denied today that he had political ambitions and asserted that he was doing a job for business in which politics had no part.

[NormanStewart]

Bricker: Great era near

Los Angeles, California (UP) –
Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio will arrive today for a 36-hour visit to wind up the West Coast lap of a swing around the country to spur his nomination as Republican candidate for President.

He will deliver three major addresses and confer with Republican leaders before returning to Columbus, making a brief stopover in Phoenix, Arizona, to attend a special session of the Arizona Legislature.

Mr. Bricker, speaking before the California Republican Assembly at San Jose last night, said he was convinced that America “is at the threshold of its greatest era.”

He said:

Let us have faith that in the period ahead, America may help bring a better life and greater freedom to the peoples of the world, that the wounds of war and bitter hatreds which follow may be healed.

Earlier, in a press conference at Sacramento, Mr. Bricker said he was “shooting at the top” and would not be satisfied with being Vice President.

[NormanStewart]

Washington opinion –
MacArthur puts self on ‘available’ list

Vandenberg, leading supporter, silent

Washington (UP) –
Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s statement on American political affairs was interpreted here today as indicating his availability for a draft to the Republican presidential nomination despite his decision not to press active candidacy.

Political observers counted it significant that Gen. MacArthur did not specifically eliminate himself for consideration as the GOP’s 1944 standard-bearer, although his statement could have been a vehicle for such an elimination.

With ‘availables’

The statement thus appeared to place Gen. MacArthur alongside New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey and LtCdr. Harold E. Stassen as “available” for the Republican nomination. Of the leading GOP possibilities, only Ohio Governor John W. Bricker is an announced candidate.

Gen. MacArthur’s statement was issued primarily to clear up his part in the publication of correspondence between him and Rep. A. L. Miller (R-NE), an active MacArthur-for-President supporter who released the letters last week.

Gen. MacArthur said the letters were neither intended for publication nor politically inspired, strongly implying that Mr. Miller had violated confidence by revealing them to the press.

Vandenberg silent

Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg (R-MI), a leading MacArthur supporter, declined to comment on the general’s statement.

Rep. Hamilton Fish (R-NY) said:

It bears out Gen. MacArthur’s earlier assertions that he is not a candidate for office. He might accept it if were offered to him – as anyone would.

Senator Styles Bridges (R-NH) said he thought the letters made public by Mr. Miller:

…indicated MacArthur’s availability but his statement that he is interested solely in winning the war must be taken at face value because of the magnificent and courageous job that he has done.