The Free Lance-Star (May 30, 1944)
Dewey hits past foreign policy
Says America must no longer sit on the sidelines
Hershey, Pennsylvania (AP) –
Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York says Americans “must not again sit on the sidelines as mere observers and commentators” while new warlords grow strong.
The leading figure in the Republican presidential nomination picture told the 36th Governors’ Conference that “our foreign affairs must be so conducted that disasters like the present one will not recur… the people are determined to join in preventing future wars.”
Holding that civilians are “worried about inefficiencies and bungling” on the home front, Dewey said:
While there has been a maze of regimentation, some necessary, some inexcusable, our strength at home has come wholly from the genius of our free men in industry and the devotion of our workers and farmers to their jobs. Our success or failure after the war will depend on whether we, as a nation, take to heart the lesson the war has taught us.
If we permit the continuance of the regimentation which some so earnestly desire, we shall fail. We cannot practice in peace the centralization which brought totalitarianism to our enemies and be either free or successful.
Dewey asserted that in the pre-war years:
We had a 10-year depression, ended only by the feverish and deadly stimulus of war… no material reason was adequate to explain what happened.
The task of political leaders, he said, is to unify – “to keep and build our newfound faith in God.”