The only good supreme court chief justice and it’s not even close.
OLD CIRCUS GOES ON, BUT WAR HAS FLOOR
Convention subdued and dull, aware that destiny will determine election
‘Phony’ flush of 1940 gone; party evidences that quest is not for ‘big man’ but the epitome of average man
By Anne O’Hare McCormick
Chicago, Illinois – (June 26)
France was falling as the Republicans met four years ago. It was an hour of defeat for democracy and all the traditional whoopee was turned on to make the delegates forget what the disaster portended for the United States.
The Philadelphia convention was lively, noisy and high-pitched. It was marked by contest suspense and an unexpected turn at the end when Wendell Willkie stole the show.
To an American fresh from the war front, that had seemed phony for so long, the peace at home that summer appeared even more phony in the political circuses staged by both parties in the same old way, the phoniest business of all.
They were like shadow-dancing against a brightly painted asbestos curtain that did not hide the spreading fire on the other side.
This convention is not like that. It has no air of carnival. It is dull. It seems to make a point of dullness. The Republican Party seems bent on making a policy of dullness. When one of the stage managers was asked why no effort was made to brighten up the show, his reply was, “The duller the better. We are not out for fireworks or drama.”
Talk in various state bases
The party leaders seem to have the same idea about the candidate. Listening around the various state headquarters, one gets the impression that the last thing they want is a “big man.” They talk as if the ideal quality in a standard-bearer is mediocrity.
Against “the great leader,” “the man of genius,” “the glamor boy,” the convention evidently wants to nominate the personification of the average man. It will not be surprising if the campaign is keyed to this slogan.
This is a listless but not a frivolous convention. The delegates stand quietly and very soberly around the hotel lobbies as they sat in orderly rows at the opening session this morning – waiting for what they know is going to happen. They don’t expect any surprises, and they’re not likely to get any.
The whole aim, indeed, is to avoid the unexpected, and there is no enthusiasm for the predetermined. There is no enthusiasm for Governor Dewey. Most of the delegates express a sneaking preference for someone else, but they will unite solidly behind him because they are convinced by the Gallup polls that he will gather in the most votes.
But this is not the main reason for the apathy everyone feels here. In its well-dressed, well-fed, cheerful way, it is somehow akin to the apathy the Allied armies met in Italy and are meeting in France.
Know where decision rests
The Republicans gathered this year as Americans fight to free a France that has been held in bondage since the convention of four years ago. They gather as the victory of democracy is assured, but they go through the motions more automatically than usual, because they know very well that the coming election will not be decided by anything their candidate will do or say, or by anything the opposition party will do or say.
For Americans, as for the French, the future will be decided by the progress of the war. The next administration will be swept in or out of office on a great tide of war emotion.
The war has the floor. Under the blazing tent, the old circus goes on, but the war is the key in order. Conventions are always middle-aged, and in this one the gray hairs are accentuated because about the only young folk in evidence are the glamor girls serving as ushers and distributors of Dewey badges and groups of soldiers and sailors wandering through the corridors with the air of sightseers, viewing the relics of antiquity.
The G.I.s get a lot of fun out of the show, and they make the politicians look older, more tired and more crumpled than usual.
Thoughts on sons at front
In the Chicago Tribune Sunday, the Russian offensive was backed off the front page by the convention, but this order of priority was not observed by the city of Chicago or the delegates themselves.
The people in the streets are uninterested in the proceedings. In the stadium, the scalpers cannot sell the unused tickets. As to the delegates, most of them are thinking more of their sons at the front than of the debate in the Resolutions Committee. That is what they talk about under the blare of mechanical music that celebrates the end of each speech.
The atmosphere is heavier but more real than it was four years ago. The ballyhoo, the cavorting, the stale oratory, and the fake stampedes that enliven our quadrennial political festival belong only to the folkways of the United States. Yet even as a show, what is going on in Chicago is as important as any battle and the actors sense it.
“Isn’t this what the battles are for?” said a woman delegate from Minnesota to a soldier boy making sport of the convention songs.
“You said it, Ma,” answered the G.I. “Bring on the calliope. You bet we’re fighting to be free to choose, elect, and fire our governors in any old way we please.”
Punch, iced and non-kick, is put into Bricker drive for delegates
His headquarters has homey Ohio touch – Dewey buttons, large size, in boom as they are found fine as ash trays
By Meyer Berger
Chicago, Illinois – (June 26)
The only genuinely warm spot at his convention, when you’re out of the sun or get from under the stadium kliegs, is Bricker headquarters.
The men and women from Ohio have spread a gentle, homey glow in this political wasteland. They have daily concerts by a female string trio, an adult male chorus, and an extraordinary boy choir, brought on from Columbus.
This afternoon the Ohio women were political Florence Nightingales. With the thermometer mercury knocking its head at the top of the glass, they passed out life-giving iced punch which went all the better for the smiles they added for kicker.
An emotional woman visitor at this afternoon’s reception, sipping her third glass of punch, sighed from ‘way down her capacious bosom when the boy choir finished “Beautiful Ohio.” “I don’t really need this refreshment to get cool,” she told a friend. “Every time I hear those children, I get goose pimples, just like winter.”
The punch was non-alcoholic.
The demand for Dewey buttons, large size, shot ‘way up today. Political writers suddenly discovered, in this world of war shortages, that the big buttons make swell ashtrays.
The disappointing turnout for the morning session at the stadium caused gloom in the most astonishing places.
Chicago’s sewer superintendent, Tom Garry, who has charge of the stadium, came in from the half-filled arena shaking his head. He had tried to tell the Republican committee how to jam the place to get a good showing in the first newsreels and news photos, but it seems they were suspicious. Tom’s staff could not understand his solicitude over the weak Republican display, because he is a Mayor Kelly Democrat. “Politics don’t figure in my thinking,” the sewer boss explained. “It’s only that my civic pride’s hurt.”
**Chief American Big Horse from Kyle, South Dakota, made the only splash of color on the convention floor. He wore full white deerskin regalia with headdress. Chicago policemen were inclined to frisk the deerskin scabbard he carried, but thought better of it when they found he was a delegate alternate. The scabbard concealed the chief’s pipe of peace. American Big Horse is impressively tall, granitic and unblinking. He is 74 years old and this is his first national powwow. “You like ‘um, Big Chief?” a reporter wanted to know. American Big Horse didn’t stir a facial muscle. He said, “I’d describe it as rather interesting.”
The most melancholy note on the convention floor is the empty space reserved for the Philippine delegates. A wreath hangs on the Philippine standard.
A Bricker promotion man stood in Michigan Boulevard this afternoon staring wistfully at the silver barrage balloon floating over Grant Park. “Swell spot for a Bricker sign,” he remarked. It was just an idea. The balloon is a war bond puller.
Two perspiring delegates from a dry state took aside one of the Chicago policemen guarding Gate 3 at the stadium. “Any place around here a man could get a real drink?” they asked him confidentially. The policeman suspected wagering, or a sight on his hometown, but the delegates were sincere. The policeman waved down Madison Street. “Start across the way,” he directed, “and then stop every 15 or 20 feet. That’s the distance between bars. If you make all the stops, from there to Oak Park and are still on your feet, maybe Mayor Kelly’ll commemorate the deed with a monument in Grant Park.
The delegates entered the stadium a little late.
Other thirsty delegates who got into Billy the Goat’s place on Madison Street, opposite the stadium, got a liberal treatment of lusty old Chicago hospitality.
Billy the Goat is Mr. Slanis, a former Loop newsboy who delights in practical jokes. This morning he befuddled dignified convention visitors with trick beer glasses, which look full but hold no refreshment, with a visiting card that leaves carbon smudges on the holder’s fingers, with an electrically charged cigar box and other surprising gadgets of nonsense.
Each time a customer registered fright or indignation, Mr. Slanis rang a fire gong or sounded a siren just back of the bar and roared with laughter.
New Yorkers, familiar with the ancient custom in their city to have gun-toting celebrants check their guns at the door, were startled this morning when they noticed Chicago policemen checking their guns at the door. “Precautionary measure,” a sergeant explained. “You get some of these Texas or Oklahoma guys tuned up and they’re apt to grab a rod and fire a few shots through the roof.”
March of Progress item: Some delegates are sending back to radio stations in their home districts their own recorded commentary on convention doings.
An Americana shop next to the Chicago Club on E Van Buren Street has its window filled with old-time convention and campaign posters, pictures and literature, including an original Whig Ticket, dated 1840. The embittered shopkeeper who staged this display has not had a single call from a convention visitor. “Might have known better,” he said glumly. “Politicians don’t read.”
Bricker backers still seek votes
Despite declining prospects, campaign is pushed along 800 unpledged delegates
Chicago, Illinois – (June 26)
The declining prospect that Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio can win the nomination as Republican standard-bearer failed today to diminish their persistency with which he and his backers are pressing his campaign.
A statement from his headquarters indirectly recognized the odds against him when Roy D. Moore, Mr. Bricker’s campaign manager, stated that the Governor would not withdraw from the race and that the nomination would be placed before the convention.
Mayor James G. Stewart of Cincinnati has been designated to make the nominating speech for Governor Bricker. He has asked the Ohio delegation, unanimous in its backing of Governor Bricker, to “carry the torch for John Bricker to the end.”
W. B. Horton, secretary of the Chicago Bricker-for-President Club, denounced the Illinois delegation for pledging its vote to Governor Dewey.
Mr. Horton said:
On behalf of the 13,000 new members of the Chicago Bricker Club who have enrolled during the past three weeks, we repudiate the actions of the Illinois delegation, as not representing the sentiment of Illinois Republicans, in pledging their support to Thomas E. Dewey.
We believe this to be true of other Midwestern states included in our membership. Several Illinois delegates have advised us that they only voted for Dewey under pressure. We do not believe this is the time for such action.
We further believe that John W. Bricker, the only avowed candidate for the nomination, is the only real American who can defeat anyone the Democrats nominate. He is the popular choice among Republicans of this state.
Governor Bricker spent most of the day conferring privately with delegates, but made no formal appearances or engagements. His workers spent the day meeting as many as possible of the 800 unpledged delegates.
Plan anti-4th term call
Bolters expect to meet in New Orleans after convention
Atlanta, Georgia (AP) – (June 26)
Anti-New Deal Democrats, who are opposed to a fourth term for President Roosevelt, will meet in a Southern city, probably New Orleans, soon after the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Eugene Talmadge, former Governor of Georgia, said today.
The spirit of the meeting would be to name electors opposed to the fourth term and to arrange for them to run on the Democratic ticket and elect a President and Vice President in the manner prescribed by the Constitution, he said.
DEWEY WILL ‘TIME’ ARRIVAL IN CHICAGO
He will accept tomorrow night if nominated in morning, Sprague says
Trip by plane is planned; Governor, however, would not leave Albany until named by the delegates
By James A. Hagerty
Chicago, Illinois – (June 26)
The arrival of Governor Dewey to accept the Republican nomination for President will be timed to suit the convenience of the delegates to the national convention. This was made known today by J. Russell Sprague, National Committeeman from New York, who has been leading the “Draft Dewey” movement, now approaching success.
Should the Resolutions Committee, as expected, present its report tomorrow evening, or if no fight of sufficient strength develops to prevent adoption of the platform tomorrow night, the Dewey supporters, now in a large majority in the convention, intend to press for nominating speeches at the Wednesday morning session and the continuation of that session to permit balloting and the nomination of Mr. Dewey in the afternoon.
Arrangements for a dash
In that event, every effort will be made to get the New York Governor here in time to accept the nomination at the Wednesday night session.
As Mr. Dewey, according to present plans, would not leave Albany until he is actually nominated, it would be necessary for him to come to Chicago by plane. This will be possible if the nomination is made by three or four o’clock Wednesday afternoon and if priority for plane transportation for Mr. Dewey can be arranged.
In no circumstances will Mr. Dewey’s arrival be delayed until Thursday evening. Leaders of the Dewey movement believe that this would be unfair to the delegates and alternates, many of whom have reservations on trains departing.
After his speech of acceptance, in which he is expected to state his position on leading issues of the campaign, Governor Dewey will confer with members of the National Committee and other party leaders about a new chairman of the committee to succeed Harrison E. Spangler of Iowa.
With Mr. Sprague continuing to insist that he is unavailable because of the provision in the Nassau County Charter that he must give full time to his post of county executive, the choice seems to have narrowed to one between Herbert Brownell Jr., close friend and New Yorker.
Mr. Sprague, who will be reelected to the National Committee by the convention, will be active in the campaign at the New York City headquarters. It has long been the party custom to permit its presidential nominee to name the national chairman.
Reaction to Griswold good
The choice of Governor Dwight Griswold of Nebraska, to make the speech putting Governor Dewey in nomination before the convention, has had a good reaction among the delegates and has been accepted as recognition of the Midwest.
It has not been forgotten by the delegates that Mr. Dewey was born in Michigan and graduated from the University of Michigan.
Rep. Leonard W. Pall of New York’s 1st Congressional district is scheduled to second the nomination of Mr. Dewey.
The nomination for Vice President will probably be made at the Thursday morning session. There is a possibility, however, that if there should be no difficulty in the selection of a candidate – which means that Governor Warren of California will take second place on the ticket – the candidate for Vice President might also be nominated Wednesday and adjournment of the convention come after a three-day session.
With Mr. Dewey’s nomination assured, Messrs. Sprague, Jaeckle and Brownell were busy all day receiving members of delegations who had declared for the New York Governor.
Among these was the North Dakota delegation of eleven, which, at a caucus this morning, decided to vote for Dewey on the first ballot. Delegates were introduced by William Stern, National Committeeman, who assured Mr. Sprague that North Dakota would go Republican at the November election.
Governor Dewey was assured of Connecticut’s 16 votes when that state’s delegation, under the leadership of Governor Baldwin, voted to cast its solid vote for the New York Governor.
Dewey’s air trip linked to radio
Maximum night audience is sought for broadcast – Taft fails to consult Governor
Albany, New York – (June 26)
The speed with which the Dewey bandwagon is rolling along at Chicago made it possible tonight that Governor Dewey would fly to the Republican National Convention to accept the nomination for the Presidency rather than travel by train as originally scheduled.
It was learned that the Governor, if nominated on the first ballot Wednesday, would take the air route of less than five hours, instead of the 14-hour train trip, so that he could broadcast his speech of acceptance in the evening when the widest radio audience can be reached.
On the other hand, travel by train would delay the speech until Thursday evening to obtain the same big radio coverage. And this would prolong the convention beyond schedule.
The plane trip would make it impossible for most of the press corps here to accompany the Governor, and probably only one representative from each of the major news services would be able to cover him en route.
The Governor’s own party will include Mrs. Dewey, his secretary Paul Lockwood, his executive assistant James C. Haggerty, his personal secretary Lillian Rosse, Hickman Powell (an adviser), and State Banking Superintendent Elliot V. Bell,
During the day, Mr. Dewey was in frequent contact by telephone with Herbert Brownell, who is directing the Dewey “draft” at Chicago; Edwin F. Jaeckle, state chairman, and J. Russell Sprague, National Committeeman.
There was no call, however, from Senator Taft, with whom the Governor had volunteered to talk by telephone should his advice be desired on shaping the party’s platform.
The Governor was kept in touch with progress through two state members of the Resolutions Committee: Mary H. Donlon, vice chairman of the committee, and Kenneth X. Mccaffer, Albany County chairman.
The Executive Office here also explained that the Governor’s past expressed views were known to the drafters of the platform.
In the forenoon, Mr. Dewey posed obligingly at routine duties for a battery of newsreel photographers. There he devoted considerable of his time in his office to dictating letters.
The Governor finally quit his office at 6:30 this evening, went to a downtown barbershop for a hair trim, and then went home for dinner. His barber, Pasquale Pugliese, said that the Governor and he talked exclusively about the war. He added:
I didn’t ask him about the convention because I didn’t want to get too personal.
Delegation tells Warren to accept
Californians act as choice of Governor as Dewey’s mate appears certain
By Charles E. Egan
Chicago, Illinois – (June 26)
Selection of Governor Warren of California as running-mate for Governor Dewey appeared a virtual certainty tonight as the Republican National Convention settled down to the task of filling out its 1944 ticket.
Governor Warren, who has insisted that he does not want a place on a national ticker this year, was reported to have received a virtual ultimatum from members of his own delegation. The delegates called on him last night and insisted that he accept the second place on the ticket on the ground that he will help to carry doubtful California for the Republican Party and that he owes it to his state and party to run with Dewey.
Governor Bricker, who is still fighting Governor Dewey for the presidential nomination, was believed to be fading rapidly as a possibility for the vice-presidential nomination if he fails of the higher goal.
The proposal that Senator Harry F. Byrd (D-VA) be named to run with Governor Dewey on a coalition ticket, has also collapsed. The Virginia Senator’s name will not even be proposed to the convention, according to word tonight.
Just who will place Governor Warren’s name before the convention, however, was undecided tonight.
Ask free press plank
Editors urge inclusion in platforms of both parties
Chicago, Illinois (AP) –
The board of directors of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, meeting here tonight, unanimously urged that the Resolutions Committees of both the Republican and Democratic conventions include a plank in their respective platforms on the issue of a free press and unrestricted communications for news throughout the world.
This plank, which has been prepared by a committee named by John S. Knight, president of the society, in cooperation with all the wire services, all the press associations and all the broadcasting organizations, declares that an unrestricted interchange of news and equal opportunity on all world transmission facilities is essential to the building of a lasting world peace.
PLATFORM MAKERS RUSH TO END DRAFT
With agreement on general principles, stress is put on precise phrasing
Care on foreign policy; Taft committee hears pleas of CIO – consents to crop control as last resort
By C. P. Trussell
Chicago, Illinois – (June 26)
The Republican Platform Drafting Committee was racing with the clock late tonight, despite the development of new complications from outside the policy-framing body itself to complete its budget of declarations and pledges to the now formally organized Resolutions Committee by 9:00 tomorrow morning, and for its tests before the convention as a whole before the end of the day.
With the drafting body apparently steadfast in general agreement on principles enunciated in more than a dozen planks at hand or in the making, concentration was upon phraseology and the definitions and interpretations of individual words and passages. The only stumbling blocks, it was reported from the closely guarded executive sessions, appeared as differences arose over the written expressions of principles.
Although the convention swing remained decisively for Governor Dewey, the foreign policy plank was viewed in some quarters close to the drafting group as being “usable” by “almost anybody but Stassen.”
Taft takes drafting helm
With the formal organization of the Resolutions Committee this afternoon, Senator Robert A. Taft (R-OH) became official chairman of both the Drafting Committee and the platform body itself. The committee’s first action was to hear a final series of recommendations from organized labor, as represented by the Congress of Industrial Organizations.
Appearing before the committee was Van A. Bittner, assistant to Philip Murray, president of CIO in his capacity as head of the United Steel Workers’ Union. Mr. Bittner presented to the committee almost the full program adopted in Washington recently by the CIO Political Action Committee, which the Republican platform drafters had declined to hear during the pre-convention hearings. The only part of the PAC’s original platform which Mr. Bittner omitted was a preamble which endorses President Roosevelt with great enthusiasm for reelection.
Since Mr. Bittner’s speaking time was limited in accordance with hearing rules, he did not attempt to read all of the program which he brought along. He concentrated, however, on the full employment plank, which proposes that the federal government endorse the principle of a guaranteed annual wage and encourage its cooperation in collective bargaining agreements.
This, it is learned authoritatively, is not included in the plank submitted to the Drafting Committee last night by the convention Labor Committee headed by William Hutcheson, president of the Carpenters’ Union (AFL).
Mr. Bittner also urged that the National Labor Relations Act be held “intact as is.” The pending Labor Committee’s plank is understood, in its present draft, to call explicitly for amendments to that statute, particularly a change which would prevent the National Labor Relations Board from forbidding the selection of collective bargaining agents by crafts, rather than on a plant-wide or industry-wide basis, as is preferred by the CIO.
As to foreign trade, reciprocal trade agreements are sanctioned only to the extent to which they may be “mutually beneficial” and on condition that they receive Congressional ratification. The foreign trade plank in general tone, it is contended, gives recognition to the protective principle without foreclosing economic cooperation, and, it is agreed, satisfies former Governor Alfred M. Landon, chairman of the committee, who has been friendly toward the trade agreements program, and also the most outstanding of the high-tariff protectionists on that panel.
The Foreign Trade Committee will recommend to the Resolutions Committee that there be no establishment, at this time at least, of an international bank, such as has been projected by the administration. However, it will advocate the continuance of monetary conferences and cooperation on money programs through them.
Maine avoids bandwagon
One delegate says group is not yet sure Dewey ‘is the man’
Chicago, Illinois (UP) – (June 26)
Maine still refuses to climb aboard the Dewey bandwagon.
One delegate explained after the third caucus today:
We want to win the election this fall and to do that we must put the strongest possible candidate in the field. We are not convinced yet that Dewey is the man.
Mrs. Farley finds session dull
Chicago, Illinois (UP) – (June 26)
Mrs. James A. Farley, wife of President Roosevelt’s former campaign manager, was a center of attention today when she took her place in a box at the Republican convention. Mrs. Farley, a veteran of many Democratic conventions who has said that she would vote Republican rather than for a fourth term, remarked that “there doesn’t seem to be as much excitement as we used to have at the Democratic conventions.”
Platform victory is won by women
Two planks are adopted by Resolutions Committee – three Senators oppose one
By Kathleen McLaughlin
Chicago, Illinois – (June 26)
Reports coming out of executive sessions of the Resolutions Committee engrossed feminine delegates to the Republican convention today, now that gossip has almost ceased about the probable nominee. Two planks of special interest to the women’s group have been written into the document, according to reports, one of them over the protests of Senators Taft (R-OH), Danaher (R-CT) and Milliken (R-CO).
One provides for submission to the states by Congress of an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution. This plank has become almost a tradition in both major parties. A similar declaration was written into the 1940 Republican platform, but failed of acceptance by the Democrats. Sponsored at first by members of the National Woman’s Party only, it has of late years been endorsed by such organizations as the National Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs.
The second plank, reflecting the growing concern of working women in this country over their status after the war, recommends equal job opportunities for men and women, “without discrimination in rate of pay because of sex.”
Modeled almost verbatim after the law recently enacted by New York State through the efforts of Republican Assemblywoman Miss Jane Todd, this proposal has received enthusiastic endorsement by organizations of women.
Resignation of two women members of the Republican National Committee, Mrs. Grace Reynolds of Indiana (who was manager of the Women’s Division in Wendell Willkie’s preliminary campaign), and Mrs. Paul Fitzsimons of Rhode Island, rose speculation as to their successors at the luncheon at which Miss Marion Martin, head of the women’s division of the party, was hostess to incumbent and newly elected and appointed National Committeewomen.
Editorial: The Republican keynote
Governor Warren’s keynote speech last night to the Republican convention follows pretty closely the long-established bipartisan pattern for such addresses. The gist of this, for the party in power, is to claim credit for all good things as of its own creation, and for the party out of power to blame the in’s as the source of all misfortune. Governor Warren does the latter with such gusto that by the time he has finished with Mr. Roosevelt, he has no time left for Hitler and Tōjō. If one searches this speech for a reason why 10 million young Americans are now in arms, why half that number will soon be abroad and why the whole economy of the country is geared to war production, one comes out with little more than a single sentence near the close: “The cries of anguish from the victims of Axis tyranny violate our sense of justice.” No doubt Mr. Warren felt it unnecessary to labor such familiar points as Axis aggression against the United States itself, which was the reason why we went to war, or the character of the enemies against whom we fight. But certainly one good ringing paragraph on the inescapability of our involvement and the essential purposes for which we fight would not have been out of place in a keynote sounded at the very crisis of the greatest struggle for national survival in the lifetime of the American people.
So much for the chief omission. On the positive side, there are some good points, reassuring in what they promise. Mr. Warren pledges the unlimited support of the Republican Party to a victory in the field so complete that before the fighting ends, American troops will be “bivouacked along the main streets of Germany and Japan.” He promises that this time the fruits of victory will not be wasted through inaction: It is the purpose of the Republican Party “to make and guard the peace.” And again: “We [Republicans] are prepared to take a definite stand against aggression, not merely to denounce aggression, but to resist it and restrain it. That calls for effective cooperation with all the peace-loving nations of the world.” To which our allies, as well as the great majority of the American people themselves, will say Bravo!
Finally, on the domestic side, Mr. Warren vigorously attacks the administration for its evident belief that the private-enterprise system in this country has deteriorated to a point where its weaknesses can be offset only by more and more governmental direction and more and more public spending. He calls for a post-war economy in which the government encourages private enterprise to provide full-scale employment. At the same time, he warns the Republican Party not to look for a road back to the status quo – “there is no status quo to which we could or should return” – and he specifically asserts, apparently with the major legislative measures of the New Deal in mind: “We do not propose to deny the progress that has been made during the past decade. Neither do we aim to repeal it.” On these points, the keynote speech presumably forecasts the platform.
The Free Lance-Star (June 27, 1944)
GOVERNOR WARREN SEEN LIKELY AS RUNNING MATE WITH DEWEY
California may reach decision tonight
Choice of Dewey is held assured
Chicago Stadium, Chicago, Illinois (AP) –
The Republican National Convention rushed toward climactic development today. Platform drafters announced agreement, and it was learned that Governor Earl Warren of California might say, by nightfall, whether or not he was in the running for the vice-presidential nomination or moving definitely out.
Heavy pressure was being brought to bear on the big Californian to announce that he would take second place on the ticket running with Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York if the nomination is offered. On the platform, where he acted as temporary chairman before turning the gavel over to Rep. Joseph W. Martin (R-MA), permanent presiding officer, he was the center of clusters of party prominents.
Governor Thomas E. Dewey, assured of the presidential nomination, was reported making preparations to come here on short notice, possibly by tomorrow, to accept. Many more than the votes required to nominate were already his.
The platform-drafting Resolutions Committee approved a foreign policy plank retaining the pledge to enforce future world security by an international agency employing “peace forces.” This pledge had been criticized by Wendell Willkie and others, including 15 governors.
Willkie’s statement of criticism, released in New York last night, caused a stir when word reached the convention and led to new speculation on the possibility Willkie might bolt the party he led on the campaign of 1940. He kept his own counsel on this point.
Former President Herbert Hoover, arriving for a major address before the convention tonight, predicted agreement on a plank and praised the speech in which Warren last night predicted that the state victories won by Republicans in the last two years will extend to the nation in 1944.
Urge acceptance
Some clearing of the vice-presidential picture impended members of Governor Warren’s own delegation were reported urging him to state he will accept second place if offered it.
Supporters of Governor John W. Bricker for President, still fighting for the nomination, contended “steamroller tactics by the Dewey camp” was reacting in the form of new expressions of interest in and support for the Ohioan.
Warren, the most discussed possibility for second place on the ticket, told the delegation before the convention opened Monday that he did not want his name placed in nomination or a California vote if someone else nominated him.
With the renewed pressure on Warren – and amid discussion also of Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio, Governor Dwight Griswold of Nebraska and Governor Dwight Green of Illinois – the convention looked for some sign of a trend and decision today.
California called a caucus at which, it was learned, Warren’s position was under discussion. Warren himself has taken the position. He was elected in California on a platform calling for the development of projects that will require years. Moreover, he has insisted he can be “of more use” to the party in California than in Washington. But he is a staunch party man.
Martin opens parley
Today’s convention program in the big steaming Chicago Stadium bulged, starting with the address of Rep. Martin, permanent chairman of the convention, and followed tonight by speeches of former President Herbert Hoover and Connecticut’s Rep. Clare Boothe Luce.
Appearing fit and ready, Mr. Hoover arrived from New York with the declaration that he’d give his best for a Republican triumph in November. He told reporters:
I am going to stay in this fight until I die. The fight is for everything that is precious to the American people.
The third session of the convention was slowly getting underway.
Hoover active in GOP campaign
Chicago, Illinois (AP) –
Arriving to address the Republican convention, Herbert Hoover said today that he would participate vigorously in the election campaign.
The only living former President told newspapermen as he stepped from his train:
I am going to stay in this fight until I die. The fight is for everything that is precious to the American people.
Hoover would not say whether he expected to “barnstorm” for the Republican ticket, but left no doubt that he would contribute all his energies to the Republican ticket. He said, “The prospects for a Republican victory this fall are good.”
Foreign policy plank drafted by GOP body
By Jack Bell
Chicago, Illinois (AP) –
The Republican Platform Committee approved today a foreign policy plank retaining the pledge, criticized by Wendell Willkie and others, to enforce future world security by an international organization employing “peace forces.”
It rejected protests of Willkie and 15 Republican Governors that this language was not sufficiently plain.
The Platform Committee inserted a promise that the party would bend all efforts to bring home members of the Armed Forces “at the earliest possible time after the cessation of hostilities.”
Committee officials, releasing only a portion of the platform immediately, said it would be laid before the convention during the afternoon. They hoped to complete the draft during the day.
Provision approved
In another portion of the platform dealing with the maintenance of post-war Armed Forces, however, the committee approved a provision some members interpreted as a gesture toward those, like Willkie, who have been demanding that the United States join an international organization with military force to preserve peace.
The platform declared at this point for “the maintenance of post-war military force and establishments of ample strength, for the successful defense and the safety of the United States, its possessions and outposts, for the maintenance of the Monroe Doctrine, and for meeting any military commitments determined by Congress.”
The latter pledged to have Armed Forces available for any use approved by Congress suggested the possibility of a military allotment to an international organization to enforce peace, some said.
Fight is seen
A fight on the foreign plank might be carried to the floor by some of the governors who asked for more specific pledges.
As it was approved by the committee, the foreign plank pledges prosecution of the war to “total victory” and proposes to achieve peace aims “through international cooperation and not by joining a world state.”
It favored “responsible participation” by this country in a “cooperative organization among sovereign nations” to prevent aggression and said such an organization “should develop effective cooperative means to direct peace forces to prevent or repeal military aggression.”
Senator Warren Austin (R-VT), chairman of a foreign affairs subcommittee, predicted that the final draft would produce “complete harmony” in the Resolutions Committee.
Although Austin and other platform drafters called Willkie “mistaken” in his stand on the plank, there was evidence that backers of Dewey had no relish for any situation that might cost Willkie’s November support of the New York Governor, if the latter becomes the presidential nominee as expected.
Martin installed as GOP chairman
Says day of reckoning for New Dealers is at hand
Chicago, Illinois (AP) –
Rep. Joseph W. Martin (R-MA) took up the gavel as permanent chairman of the Republican National Convention today with a declaration that his party would “save constitutional government at home” and “build an enduring peace.”
Martin, House Minority Leader, told the delegates the “day of reckoning” was at hand for the New Deal because people are “tired of bungling and fumbling, waste and extravagance, arrogance and bureaucratic dictatorship.” Even some Democrats have rebelled, he said.
He went on:
We have seen the head of the Communist political party in this country, Earl Browder, merge his political party with Sidney Hillman’s CIO Political Action Committee in a drive for a fourth term for President Roosevelt, and the election of a Congress that will be subservient to the will of those organizations.
It presents a vital issue of this campaign. Do the people want these radical organizations, with their avowed purpose to remake America, to control the Presidency, to secure a “rubber stamp” Congress, and to nominate… our government? Of course they don’t.
Martin outlined the course he believed the Republican administration would pursue and concluded:
We will save constitutional government at home and, on the firm foundation of freedom and individual opportunity, we will build an enduring peace.
Martin said:
The first thing the Republican Party will do when it comes into power will be to restore to Congress its responsibility and functions…
He promised a “genuine economy in government,” and a tax system as simple as possible, equitable and designed to stimulate industry and create jobs.
Labor will retain “all the essential rights and just privileges it has gained,” Martin continued, while agriculture will be assured “a commensurate return on investment and labor.”
1944 Republican Party Platform
Introduction
The tragedy of the war is upon our country as we meet to consider the problems of government and our people. We take this opportunity to render homage and enduring gratitude to those brave members of our Armed Forces who have already made the supreme sacrifice, and to those who stand ready to make the same sacrifice that the American course of life may be secure.
Mindful of this solemn hour and humbly conscious of our heavy responsibilities, the Republican Party in convention assembled presents herewith its principles and makes these covenants with the people of our nation.
The War and the Peace
We pledge prosecution of the war to total victory against our enemies in full cooperation with the United Nations and all-out support of our Armies and the maintenance of our Navy under the competent and trained direction of our General Staff and Office of Naval Operations without civilian interference and with every civilian resource. At the earliest possible time after the cessation of hostilities, we will bring home all members of our Armed Forces who do not have unexpired enlistments and who do not volunteer for further overseas duty.
We declare our relentless aim to win the war against all our enemies: (1) for our own American security and welfare; (2) to make and keep the Axis powers impotent to renew tyranny and attack; (3) for the attainment of peace and freedom based on justice and security.
We shall seek to achieve such aims through organized international cooperation and not by joining a world state.
We favor responsible participation by the United States in post-war cooperative organization among sovereign nations to prevent military aggression and to attain permanent peace with organized justice in a free world.
Such organization should develop effective cooperative means to direct peace forces to prevent or repel military aggression. Pending this, we pledge continuing collaboration with the United Nations to assure these ultimate objectives.
We believe, however, that peace and security do not depend upon the sanction of force alone, but should prevail by virtue of reciprocal interests and spiritual values recognized in these security agreements. The treaties of peace should be just; the nations which are the victims of aggression should be restored to sovereignty and self-government; and the organized cooperation of the nations should concern itself with basic causes of world disorder. It should promote a world opinion to influence the nations to right conduct, develop international law and maintain an international tribunal to deal with justiciable disputes.
We shall seek, in our relations with other nations, conditions calculated to promote worldwide economic stability, not only for the sake of the world, but also to the end that our own people may enjoy a high level of employment in an increasingly prosperous world.
We shall keep the American people informed concerning all agreements with foreign nations. In all of these undertakings, we favor the widest consultation of the gallant men and women in our Armed Forces who have a special right to speak with authority in behalf of the security and liberty for which they fight. We shall sustain the Constitution of the United States in the attainment of our international aims; and pursuant to the Constitution of the United States any treaty or agreement to attain such aims made on behalf of the United States with any other nation or any association of nations, shall be made only by and with the advice and consent of the Senate of the United States provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur.
We shall at all times protect the essential interests and resources of the United States.
Western Hemisphere Relations
We shall develop Pan-American solidarity. The citizens of our neighboring nations in the Western Hemisphere are, like ourselves, Americans. Cooperation with them shall be achieved through mutual agreement and without interference in the internal affairs of any nation. Our policy should be a genuine good neighbor policy, commanding their respect, and not one based on the reckless squandering of American funds by overlapping agencies.
Post-War Preparedness
We favor the maintenance of post-war military forces and establishments of ample strength for the successful defense and the safety of the United States, its possessions and outposts, for the maintenance of the Monroe Doctrine, and for meeting any military commitments determined by Congress. We favor the peacetime maintenance and strengthening of the National Guards under state control with the federal training and equipment as now provided in the National Defense Act.
Domestic Policy
We shall devote ourselves to reestablishing liberty at home.
We shall adopt a program to put men to work in peace industry as promptly as possible and with special attention to those who have made sacrifice by serving in the Armed Forces. We shall take government out of competition with private industry and terminate rationing, price fixing and all other emergency powers. We shall promote the fullest stable employment through private enterprise.
The measures we propose shall avoid federalization of government activities, to the end that our states, schools and cities shall be freed; shall avoid delegation of legislative and judicial power to administrative agencies, to the end that the people’s representatives in Congress shall be independent and in full control of legislative policy; and shall avoid, subject to war necessities, detailed regulation of farmers, workers, businessmen and consumers, to the end that the individual shall be free. The remedies we propose shall be based on intelligent cooperation between the federal government, the states and local government and the initiative of civic groups – not on the panacea of federal cash.
Four more years of New Deal policy would centralize all power in the President, and would daily subject every act of every citizen to regulation by his henchmen; and this country could remain a Republic only in name. No problem exists which cannot be solved by American methods. We have no need of either the communistic or the fascist technique.
Security
Our goal is to prevent hardship and poverty in America. That goal is attainable by reason of the productive ability of free American labor, industry and agriculture, if supplemented by a system of social security on sound principles.
We pledge our support of the following:
Extension of the existing old-age insurance and unemployment insurance systems to all employees not already covered.
The return of the public employment-office system to the states at the earliest possible time, financed as before Pearl Harbor.
A careful study of federal-state programs for maternal and child health, dependent children, and assistance to the blind, with a view to strengthening these programs.
The continuation of these and other programs relating to health, and the stimulation by federal aid of state plans to make medical and hospital service available to those in need without disturbing doctor-patient relationships or socializing medicine.
The stimulation of state and local plans to provide decent low-cost housing properly financed by the Federal Housing Administration, or otherwise, when such housing cannot be supplied or financed by private sources.
Labor
The Republican Party is the historical champion of free labor. Under Republican administrations, American manufacturing developed, and American workers attained the most progressive standards of living of any workers in the world. Now the nation owes those workers a debt of gratitude for their magnificent productive effort in support of the war.
Regardless of the professed friendship of the New Deal for the working man, the fact remains that under the New Deal, American economic life is being destroyed.
The New Deal has usurped selfish and partisan control over the functions of government agencies where labor relationships are concerned. The continued perversion of the Wagner Act by the New Deal menaces the purposes of the law and threatens to destroy collective bargaining completely and permanently.
The long series of executive orders and bureaucratic decrees reveal a deliberate purpose to substitute for contractual agreements of employers and employees the political edicts of a New Deal bureaucracy. Labor would thus remain organized only for the convenience of the New Deal in enforcing its orders and inflicting its whims upon labor and industry.
We condemn the conversion of administrative boards, ostensibly set up to settle industrial disputes, into instruments for putting into effect the financial and economic theories of the New Deal.
We condemn the freezing of wage rates at arbitrary levels and the binding of men to their jobs as destructive to the advancement of a free people. We condemn the repeal by executive order of the laws secured by the Republican Party to abolish “contract labor” and peonage. We condemn the gradual but effective creation of a Labor Front as but one of the New Deal’s steps toward a totalitarian state.
We pledge an end to political trickery in the administration of labor laws and the handling of labor disputes; and equal benefits on the basis of equality to all labor in the administration of labor controls and laws, regardless of political affiliation.
The Department of Labor has been emasculated by the New Deal. Labor bureaus, agencies and committees are scattered far and wide, in Washington and throughout the country, and have no semblance of systematic or responsible organization. All governmental labor activities must be placed under the direct authority and responsibility of the Secretary of Labor. Such labor bureaus as are not performing a substantial and definite service in the interest of labor must be abolished.
The Secretary of Labor should be a representative of labor. The office of the Secretary of Labor was created under a Republican President, William Howard Taft. It was intended that a representative of labor should occupy this Cabinet office. The present administration is the first to disregard this intention.
The Republican Party accepts the purposes of the National Labor Relations Act, the Wage and Hour Act, the Social Security Act and all other federal statutes designed to promote and protect the welfare of American working men and women, and we promise a fair and just administration of these laws.
American wellbeing is indivisible. Any national program which injures the national economy inevitably injures the wage-earner. The American labor movement and the Republican Party, while continuously striving for the betterment of labor’s status, reject the communistic and New Deal concept that a single group can benefit while the general economy suffers.
Agriculture
We commend the American farmers, their wives and families for their magnificent job of wartime production and their contribution to the war effort, without which victory could not be assured. They have accomplished this in spite of labor shortages, a bungled and inexcusable machinery program and confused, unreliable, impractical price and production administration.
Abundant production is the best security against inflation. Governmental policies in war and in peace must be practical and efficient with freedom from regimentation by an impractical Washington bureaucracy in order to assure independence of operation and bountiful production, fair and equitable market prices for farm products, and a sound program for conservation and use of our soil and natural resources. Educational progress and the social and economic stability and wellbeing of the farm family must be a prime national purpose.
For the establishment of such a program, we propose the following:
A Department of Agriculture under practical and experienced administration, free from regimentation and confusing government manipulation and control of farm programs.
An American market price to the American farmer and the protection of such price by means of support prices, commodity loans, or a combination thereof, together with such other economic means as will assure an income to agriculture that is fair and equitable in comparison with labor, business and industry. We oppose subsidies as a substitute for fair markets.
Disposition of surplus war commodities in an orderly manner without destroying markets or continued production and without benefit to speculative profiteers.
The control and disposition of future surpluses by means of (a) new uses developed through constant research, (b) vigorous development of foreign markets, (c) efficient domestic distribution to meet all domestic requirements, and (d) arrangements which will enable farmers to make necessary adjustments in production of any given basic crop only if domestic surpluses should become abnormal and exceed manageable proportions.
Intensified research to discover new crops, and new and profitable uses for existing crops.
Support of the principle of bona fide farmer-owned and farmer-operated cooperatives.
Consolidation of all government farm credit under a non-partisan board.
To make life more attractive on the family type farm through development of rural roads, sound extension of rural electrification service to the farm and elimination of basic evils of tenancy wherever they exist.
Serious study of and search for a sound program of crop insurance with emphasis upon establishing a self-supporting program.
A comprehensive program of soil, forest, water and wildlife conservation and development, and sound irrigation projects, administered as far as possible at state and regional levels.
Business and Industry
We give assurance now to restore peacetime industry at the earliest possible time, using every care to avoid discrimination between different sections of the country, (a) by prompt settlement of war contracts with early payment of government obligations and disposal of surplus inventories, and (b) by disposal of surplus government plants, equipment, and supplies, with due consideration to small buyers and with care to prevent monopoly and injury to existing agriculture and industry.
Small business is the basis of American enterprise. It must be preserved. If protected against discrimination and afforded equality of opportunity throughout the nation, it will become the most potent factor in providing employment. It must also be aided by changes in taxation, by eliminating excessive and repressive regulation and government competition, by the enforcement of laws against monopoly and unfair competition, and by providing simpler and cheaper methods for obtaining venture capital necessary for growth and expansion.
For the protection of the public, and for the security of millions of holders of policies of insurance in mutual and private companies, we insist upon strict and exclusive regulation and supervision of the business of insurance by the several states where local conditions are best known and where local needs can best be met.
We favor the reestablishment and maintenance, as early as military considerations will permit, of a sound and adequate American Merchant Marine under private ownership and management.
The Republican Party pledges itself to foster the development of such strong privately owned air transportation systems and communications systems as will best serve the interests of the American people.
The federal government should plan a program for flood control, inland waterways and other economically justifiable public works, and prepare the necessary plans in advance so that construction may proceed rapidly in emergency and in times of reduced employment. We urge that states and local governments pursue the same policy with reference to highways and other public works within their jurisdiction.
Taxation and Finance
As soon as the war ends, the present rates of taxation on individual incomes, on corporations, and on consumption should be reduced as far as is consistent with the payment of the normal expenditures of government in the post-war period. We reject the theory of restoring prosperity through government spending and deficit financing.
We shall eliminate from the budget all wasteful and unnecessary expenditures and exercise the most rigid economy.
It is essential that federal and state tax structures be more effectively coordinated to the end that state tax sources be not unduly impaired.
We shall maintain the value of the American dollar and regard the payment of government debt as an obligation of honor which prohibits any policy leading to the depreciation of the currency. We shall reduce that debt as soon as economic conditions make such reduction possible.
Control of the currency must be restored to Congress by repeal of existing legislation which gives the President unnecessary powers over our currency.
Foreign Trade
We assure American farmers, livestock producers, workers and industry that we will establish and maintain a fair protective tariff on competitive products so that the standards of living of our people shall not be impaired through the importation of commodities produced abroad by labor or producers functioning upon lower standards than our own.
If the post-war world is to be properly organized, a great extension of world trade will be necessary to repair the wastes of war and build an enduring peace. The Republican Party, always remembering that its primary obligation, which must be fulfilled, is to our own workers, our own farmers and our own industry, pledges that it will join with others in leadership in every cooperative effort to remove unnecessary and destructive barriers to international trade. We will always bear in mind that the domestic market is America’s greatest market and that tariffs which protect it against foreign competition should be modified only by reciprocal bilateral trade agreements approved by Congress.
Relief and Rehabilitation
We favor the prompt extension of relief and emergency assistance to the peoples of the liberated countries without duplication and conflict between government agencies.
We favor immediate feeding of the starving children of our Allies and friends in the Nazi-dominated countries and we condemn the New Deal administration for its failure, in the face of humanitarian demands, to make any effort to do this.
We favor assistance by direct credits in reasonable amounts to liberated countries to enable them to buy from this country the goods necessary to revive their economic systems.
Bureaucracy
The National Administration has become a sprawling, overlapping bureaucracy. It is undermined by executive abuse of power, confused lines of authority, duplication of effort, inadequate fiscal controls, loose personnel practices and an attitude of arrogance previously unknown in our history.
The times cry out for the restoration of harmony in government, for a balance of legislative and executive responsibility, for efficiency and economy, for priming and abolishing unnecessary agencies and personnel, for effective fiscal and personnel controls, and for an entirely new spirit in our Federal Government.
We pledge an administration wherein the President, acting in harmony with Congress, will effect these necessary reforms and raise the federal service to a high level of efficiency and competence.
We insist that limitations must be placed upon spending by government corporations of vast sums never appropriated by Congress but made available by directives, and that their accounts should be subject to audit by the General Accounting Office.
Two-Term Limit for President
We favor an amendment to the Constitution providing that no person shall be President of the United States for more than two terms of four years each.
Equal Rights
We favor submission by Congress to the States of an amendment to the Constitution providing for equal rights for men and women. We favor job opportunities in the post-war world open to men and women alike without discrimination in rate of pay because of sex.
Veterans
The Republican Party has always supported suitable measures to reflect the Nation’s gratitude and to discharge its duty toward the veterans of all wars.
We approve, have supported and have aided in the enactment of laws which provide for reemployment of veterans of this war in their old positions, for mustering-out-pay, for pensions for widows and orphans of such veterans killed or disabled, for rehabilitation of disabled veterans, for temporary unemployment benefits, for education and vocational training, and for assisting veterans in acquiring homes and farms and in establishing themselves in business.
We shall be diligent in remedying defects in veterans’ legislation and shall insist upon efficient administration of all measures for the veteran’s benefit.
Racial and Religious Intolerance
We unreservedly condemn the injection into American life of appeals to racial or religious prejudice.
We pledge an immediate Congressional inquiry to ascertain the extent to which mistreatment, segregation and discrimination against Negroes who are in our armed forces are impairing morale and efficiency, and the adoption of corrective legislation.
We pledge the establishment by Federal legislation of a permanent Fair Employment Practice Commission.
Anti-Poll Tax
The payment of any poll tax should not be a condition of voting in federal elections and we favor immediate submission of a Constitutional amendment for its abolition.
Anti-Lynching
We favor legislation against lynching and pledge our sincere efforts in behalf of its early enactment.
Indians
We pledge an immediate, just and final settlement of all Indian claims between the government and the Indian citizenship of the nation. We will take politics out of the administration of Indian affairs.
Problems of the West
We favor a comprehensive program of reclamation projects for our arid and semi-arid states, with recognition and full protection of the rights and interests of those states in the use and control of water for present and future irrigation and other beneficial consumptive uses.
We favor (a) exclusion from this country of livestock and fresh and chilled meat from countries harboring foot and mouth disease or Rinderpest; (b) full protection of our fisheries whether by domestic regulation or treaties; (c) consistent with military needs, the prompt return to private ownership of lands acquired for war purposes; (d) withdrawal or acquisition of lands for establishment of national parks, monuments, and wildlife refuges, only after due regard to local problems and under closer controls to be established by the Congress; (e) restoration of the long established public land policy which provides opportunity of ownership by citizens to promote the highest land use; (f) full development of our forests on the basis of cropping and sustained yield; cooperation with private owners for conservation and fire protection; (g) the prompt reopening of mines which can be operated by miners and workers not subject to military service and which have been closed by bureaucratic denial of labor or material; (h) adequate stockpiling of war minerals and metals for possible future emergencies; (i) continuance, for tax purposes, of adequate depletion allowances on oil, gas and minerals; (j) administration of laws relating to oil and gas on the public domain to encourage exploratory operations to meet the public need; (k) continuance of present federal laws on mining claims on the public domain, good faith administration thereof, and we state our opposition to the plans of the Secretary of the Interior to substitute a leasing system; and (l) larger representation in the federal government of men and women especially familiar with Western problems.
Hawaii
Hawaii, which shares the nation’s obligations equally with the several states, is entitled to the fullest measure of home rule looking toward statehood; and to equality with the several states in the rights of her citizens and in the application of all our national laws.
Alaska
Alaska is entitled to the fullest measure of home rule looking toward statehood.
Puerto Rico
Statehood is a logical aspiration of the people of Puerto Rico who were made citizens of the United States by Congress in 1917; legislation affecting Puerto Rico, in so far as feasible, should be in harmony with the realization of that aspiration.
Palestine
In order to give refuge to millions of distressed Jewish men, women and children driven from their homes by tyranny, we call for the opening of Palestine to their unrestricted immigration and land ownership, so that in accordance with the full intent and purpose of the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the Resolution of a Republican Congress in 1922, Palestine may be constituted as a free and democratic commonwealth. We condemn the failure of the President to insist that the mandatory of Palestine carry out the provision of the Balfour Declaration and of the mandate while he pretends to support them.
Free Press and Radio
In times like these, when whole peoples have found themselves shackled by governments which denied the truth, or, worse, dealt in half-truths or withheld the facts from the public, it is imperative to the maintenance of a free America that the press and radio be free and that full and complete information be available to Americans. There must be no censorship except to the extent required by war necessity.
We insistently condemn any tendency to regard the press or the radio as instruments of the administration and the use of government publicity agencies for partisan ends. We need a new radio law which will define, in clear and unmistakable language, the role of the Federal Communications Commission.
All channels of news must be kept open with equality of access to information at the source. If agreement can be achieved with foreign nations to establish the same principles, it will be a valuable contribution to future peace.
Vital facts must not be withheld.
We want no more Pearl Harbor reports.
Good Faith
The acceptance of the nominations made by this convention carries with it, as a matter of private honor and public faith, an undertaking by each candidate to be true to the principles and program herein set forth.
Conclusion
The essential question at trial in this nation is whether men can organize together in a highly industrialized society, succeed, and still be free. That is the essential question at trial throughout the world today.
In this time of confusion and strife, when moral values are being crushed on every side, we pledge ourselves to uphold with all our strength the Bill of Rights, the Constitution and the law of the land. We so pledge ourselves that the American tradition may stand forever as the beacon light of civilization.
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Address by Former President Hoover
June 27, 1944
Delegates and guests of the Republican Convention:
We meet at a difficult time for a political convention. Millions of sons of both Republicans and Democrats are fighting and dying side by side for the freedom of mankind. But it is the part of freedom for which they fight that we should carry on at home. Nothing could be a greater shock to freedom than for us to suspend the national election or the soul-searching criticism which will make the more sure that the war will be won and freedom preserved.
Tonight, I propose to speak to you upon some larger forces which are contending in this world convulsion. And the direction our country should take if freedom of men is to be preserved.
You will, I am sure, permit me to claim some personal experience with these larger forces which are today dominating mankind.
Like most of you coming from forebears to whom hard work was the price of existence, I worked with my hands for my daily bread. I have tasted the despair of fruitless search for a job. I have seen the problems of labor both as a workman and as a manager of industry. Long before the First World War professional work took me to many lands under many governments, both of free men and tyrannies. I dealt with the poverty and squalor of Asia and the frozen class barriers of Europe. I participated on behalf of my country in the First World War. I saw the untold destruction and misery from that war. I dealt with famine among millions. I dealt with violence and revolution. I saw the degeneration and regeneration of nations. I saw intimately the making of the peace treaty of Versailles.
And in all those years of travel to every corner of the earth I landed a hundred times on the shores of my country. Every time it was with deep emotion and gratitude. Emotion, because here was the sanctuary of real freedom. Here was a land of opportunity, a land of wider spread comfort; a land of greater kindliness; a land of self-reliance and self-respect among men. And gratitude, because I had been born in this land.
During another twelve years I was placed by my countrymen where I had to contend with peace and war and where I had to deal with the hurricanes of social and economic destruction which were its aftermaths. I have had to deal with explosion of Asiatic antagonism to the West. I have seen the rising tide of totalitarianism sweeping over the world.
Why do I recite all of this? Because the experience that has come to me, the honors that have been given to me demand of me, that I contribute whatever I can to preserve freedom in America and the world.
Over long periods the deep-rooted forces in the world move slowly. Then from accumulated pressures have come explosive periods with wars, convulsions, violent change and a train of stupendous problems. And always a part of the complex forces in these gigantic explosions has been the quest of man to be free.
The first of these gigantic explosions which was to shake the modern world began 170 years ago with the American War of Independence and the French Revolution. After those world wars there followed a hundred years of comparative peace in which the will to freedom spread widely over the earth.
Then came the gigantic explosion of the last World War. Again among the forces in that convulsion was the death clash of free men and dictatorship.
Men inspired by freedom were victorious twenty-five years ago and freedom spread to additional millions of mankind. But victorious men failed to lay the foundations of lasting peace. And from the destruction of that world war came unemployment and poverty over the whole world. And in its wake also came instability of governments, lowering of morals, frustration of ideals and defeatism. Out of this desperate aftermath despotism rose again in the grim shapes of Fascism and Communism. By them the freedom of men was defeated over a large part of the earth.
Now we are in the midst of the greatest explosion in all the history of civilization. Again free men are fighting for the survival of human liberty.
By whatever failures of statesmanship the world were brought to this ghastly Second World War, the realistic fact is that we are in it. There is only one way out of war – that is, to win it. And victory will come again to our armies and fleets for the sons of America do not quit. By winning the war I mean absolute victory over the enemy armies. Any compromise with Hitler or Tōjō will destroy all hope of either freedom or a lasting peace. That is our pledge to these thousands of our men who are dying in the islands of the Pacific and upon the fields of Italy and France.
We are fighting not alone for preservation of freedom, but also for the moral and spiritual foundations of civilization. And it is not alone these foundations under other parts of the world which concerns us today. We must look to our American house.
Recently a canvass was made among youth, both in the armed forces and on the home front, to learn what sort of a world they wanted after this war. I may tell you:
They want a home with a family, a dog and an automobile. They want the security and self-respect of a job. They want to be free to choose their own jobs and not to be ordered to them by a bureaucrat. They want to prove their own worth and have the rewards of their own efforts. They want to be free to plan their own lives. They want to be free to undertake their own adventures.
They want the pleasure of creative work. They want the joy of championing justice for the weak. They want to tell every evil person where he can go. They want a government that will keep down oppression whether from business or labor. They want a fair chance. They want peace in the world that their children never need go through the agonies and sacrifices they have themselves endured.
They want to be free Americans again. Unexpressed in all this there is deep in their souls a force that reaches back into a thousand generations. That is, the ceaseless yearning of humankind to be free. Its advance is as sure as the movement of the stars in the universe. It is as real as the law of gravitation. It is as everlasting as the existence of God.
At each of the great rallies of our party in 1936, in 1940 and today in 1944 I have been called to speak upon the encroachments and the dangers to freedom in our country. Each time I knew even before I spoke that our people would not believe that the impairment of freedom could happen here. Yet each subsequent four years has shown those warnings to have been too reserved, too cautious.
The reason why these warnings have been accurate is simple. From the beginning the New Deal in a milder form has followed the tactics of European revolutions which have gone before. The direction being set, the destination is not difficult to foresee.
The violent forms of these European revolutions all have certain methods in common. They seek to destroy every safeguard of personal liberty and justice. Their method was to create centralized government and a single political party. Purge was their political weapon. Their economic system is regimentation through coercion by bureaucracy. Their faith is the negation of Christianity – that the end justifies the means. Their strategy is to make public opinion by falsehood and to destroy opposition by assassination of character through smearing.
Now I ask you a question. Do you recognize any similarity between these practices and the ten years of the New Deal?
Has not every distress, every sorrow, and every fear of the people been used to further fasten some part of these totalitarian practices upon us?
With the blessing of the Attorney General, the Communists and the fellow travelers are spending vast sums to reelect this regime. Would they spend their money to support the freedom of men?
We all recognize that to win this war many liberties must temporarily be suspended at home. We have had to accept much dictatorship of bureaucracy. We must adopt some of the very practices against which we are fighting. In former wars we had no fear of such temporary suspension of liberty. Abraham Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson believed in freedom of men.
Long before the war, in an address on January 3, 1936, Mr. Roosevelt recounted how he had “built up new instruments of public power” which could “provide shackles for the liberties of the people” in any other hands. Freedom is not promoted by shackles in anybody’s hands. We now know the peacetime shackles they provided for the liberties of the people. They put shackles on our farmers. They put them on honest labor unions, on the freedom of workmen, on honest business enterprise. They have done more. These bureaucrats with these “instruments of power” fanned bitter hatreds between labor unions which divided the ranks of labor. And they fanned hate between employers and workmen. They built class conflict instead of national unity.
Can a regime which forged “shackles on the liberties of the people” in peace time be trusted to return freedom to the people from the shackles of war?
Our present rulers have now issued an abridged edition of the Bill of Rights and the other Constitutional guarantees of the citizens from oppression by government. They call the new version the Four Freedoms. The original edition, issued and perfected by the fathers, contains thirty freedoms, not four only. True freedom abides in the whole thirty. They have enriched the soil and the soul of this land for 170 years. Not one or four, but all of them together have brought the greatest advance in civilization in the history of mankind. In this time of crisis to freedom should we amend or abandon any of them?
The Constitution of the United States is a philosophy of government. It is not suspended even by war. But apparently some of these guarantees in our Constitution have not yet been approved by the OPA, the WLB, and the NLRB, the FEC, the FCC and some other parts of the alphabet.
If you happen to get into the clutches of these agencies, you will find a lot of the spirit of even the Magna Charta has been forgotten to say nothing of the Constitution. As an exercise in history, you might read again some of those rights, such as, trial by jury, the right of appeal to the courts; just compensation for property taken for public use; the provisions against search and seizure, taking of property without due process of law and others.
These thirty freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution will survive only so long as their safeguards also survive. I need not remind you of the steady invasion of states’ rights; the packing of the courts; the dictation to Congress; the constant proof that executive officials arrogate unlawful authority.
Only by a change in administration will our returning soldiers find freedom preserved at home.
The price of freedom is not only vigilance as to rights and their safeguards. It also requires vision and action to keep freedom in step with social and economic change that would restrict it.
There is little real freedom for citizens, who, because of forces beyond their control, must go hungry, cold, sick or ignorant. From the very beginning the faith of America has been that we were our brother’s keeper. In earlier time that responsibility was attended to by neighbors, by counties, by municipalities. Many years ago the state governments began to assume a larger part in these responsibilities. In recent years the federal government has assumed a part of the burden in education, public health and by various experiments in old-age pensions and unemployment insurance. But if all these services are to bear the full fruit in freedom, they must be cleared of politics and discrimination. They must be placed upon expanded and firmer foundations.
For the past seventy years the American people have had to engage in battle for freedom on our own economic front. The fertile soil of freedom has grown gigantic business and labor organizations which have immensely increased our comfort and our standards of living.
The vast majority of both business and labor leaders are honest and patriotic. We cannot, however, permit even a small minority of arrogant and irresponsible business leaders to dominate the freedom of men through monopolies, unfair treatment of labor and manipulation of elections. Neither can we have even a small minority of arrogant and irresponsible labor leaders dominating the freedom of men, dictating who can have jobs and manipulating elections. The truly American concept is that we shall maintain freedom from such abuses by a government of law instead of by the whimsicalities of men or the regimentation of men. We do not need to burn down the house of freedom with the fires of totalitarianism to destroy a few rats.
An imperative problem in freedom is rising before us in the transition from war economy to peace economy. We must convert huge plants and find peacetime jobs in industry for thirty million men and women.
We must begin now to make the blueprints of this transition. But before the blueprints can even be commenced, the major question for America must be determined. That is, in what economic and social climate, under what sort of conditions is this transition to be made? Already the New Dealers have planned a large number of Trojan Horses labeled “Liberalism” and “Freedom” stuffed with a mixture of totalitarian economics and with doubtful statistics. The easiest task of government is to suppress individuals, subject them to bureaucracy and subsidizes them to lean on governments – or a political party. If a government has enough power, it can always do that. The hard task of government, and the really liberal task, is to build self-reliance, stimulate initiative, and thereby create men and women of energy, of dignity and of independence. That is the motive power of America.
We will need every atom of this power in the nation, if we are quickly to convert from guns to plowshares in such fashion as to provide jobs and opportunity for all our people. That can never be had by bureaucratic curbing of initiative, class war, or any other mixture of this totalitarianism with freedom. The decision between these philosophies of government must be made now. For the plans must be established now. We cannot be without a peace program as we were without a preparedness program. We owe it to our fighting men that they find no delays in productive jobs.
Only by a change in administration will these gigantic problems be solved in a climate of freedom.
We are faced already with the gigantic problems of making a peace where freedom can live. The world cannot go on like this. Science daily creates more dreadful weapons. Chivalry and compassion has gone out of modern war. Women and children are slaughtered and starved with the same ruthlessness as armed men. We cannot fail again in making peace that sticks if civilization is to survive.
Already during this war we are making the mold in which the new world will be cast. Some of these shapes are already beginning to emerge.
It is obvious that the hot fires of nationalism are rising out of the emotions of this war just as they do from every war. The Communist internationalism of Russia has been driven out by the nationalist aspiration to free Mother Russia and expand the Empire. Other United Nations are demanding the independent resumption of their possessions. Mr. Churchill has stated that he did not become His Majesty’s Prime Minister to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire. I am sure that if the Republican Party comes to power it will not be to liquidate either the economic welfare or the independence of the United States.
It is obvious from the rise of nationalism that ideas of world super-government, no matter how idealistic, are already dead from these cold blasts of realism. Peace must be based upon cooperation between independent sovereign nations.
It is obvious that three great dominant centers of power will emerge from this war – that is, the United States, Great Britain, Russia and possibly China as a fourth. And France will someday return as a major power.
It is obvious that there must be some sort of world organization to preserve peace. It is proposed that, like the League of Nations, it shall have a general assembly representing all peaceful nations and a council in which the great centers of power have a permanent part. If the general assembly is not to be a mere debating society, it should be split into three divisions – one for Europe, one for Asia and one for the Western Hemisphere. And each region should be given the primary responsibility for peace in its area before the central council is called upon. Especially should that responsibility be imposed on Europe where the dangers of world wars come from.
It is obvious that there must be a long transition period from war to stable peace. Before any organization to preserve peace can succeed, the foundations of political and economic reconstruction of the world must be laid in such a manner as to allay the causes of war. Unless these foundations are securely laid, any temple dedicated to preserving peace will be built upon sand. That was the disaster of the League of Nations. A good league has never cured a bad peace.
It is obvious that the great centers of power in Washington, London, and Moscow will dominate these vital political and economic settlements no matter what peace preserving machinery is set up. Their approach to these settlements must be that of trustees for all nations not their selfish interests. They must not become a disguised military alliance or become the scene for power politics or balance of power. The whole history of the world is punctuated by the collapse of such methods into renewed wars.
It should be obvious that there can be no lasting peace unless the productivity of the world is restored. That can come only by exertion from within nations and from political settlements which give them a chance. The United States must furnish food to thousands of starving towns and cities ravaged by the enemy. We should have long since been feeding the undernourished children, for compassion is not dead in America. The United States can be helpful to all mankind, but it is certain we cannot finance a world WPA.
It is obvious the American people have but one purpose in this war. We want to live in peace. We do not want these horrors again. We want no territory except some Pacific island bases that will protect the United States. We want no domination over any nation. We want no indemnities. We want no special privileges.
But we do want the freedom of nations from the domination of others, call it by whatever name we will – liberation of peoples, self-government or just restored sovereignty. We want it both in the cause of freedom and we want it because we know that there can be no lasting peace if enslaved peoples must ceaselessly strive and fight for freedom.
There are constants in the relations between nations that are more nearly to be found in their history, their surroundings, their ideals, their hearts, than in the declarations of their officials. Foreign relations are not sudden things created by books or speeches or banquets. The history of nations is more important than their oratory.
The ideal of freedom for other people’s lies deep in American history and the American heart. It did not arise from Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points or from the Atlantic Charter. It was embedded in the hearts of the American people by the suffering and sacrifice with which they won their own independence. It was in response to the cry for liberation and freedom of peoples that we established the Monroe Doctrine, which we fought the Mexican War, the Spanish War, and the First World War and now, after twenty years, we again sacrifice the sons of America to the call of freedom.
Without this spiritual impulse of freedom for others we would not have engaged in a single one of these wars. Had we not been concerned with the freedom of China, we would not have been attacked at Pearl Harbor. Only because freedom was in jeopardy in all Europe are we making this gigantic effort.
Therefore, the American people are not likely to welcome any settlements which do not include the independence of Poland as well as every other country which desires to be free from alien domination. Americans do not want this war to end in the restriction of freedom among nations. It is obvious that the United States will emerge from this war the strongest military, and thus political, power in the world. Our power to bring freedom to the world must not be frittered away.
During the past month Forrest Davis has published a circumstantial account of the Tehran Conference. It is said to have been authorized. It has not been denied. It relates to President Roosevelt’s new peace method, called by him, The Great Design. A peace method under this same name, The Great Design, was proposed by Henry IV, a French monarch, some 350 years ago. It has some similarities to Mr. Roosevelt’s idea.
We are told Mr. Roosevelt had this Great Design in mind during his recent conference at Tehran.
So far as these published descriptions go this method is power politics and balance of power diplomacy. That is not the diplomacy of freedom. And worse still apparently the United States is to furnish the balance between Britain and Russia. If that be the case you may be sure that we will sooner or later gain the enmity of both of them. The basis of lasting peace for America must be friendship of nations not brokerage of power politics.
There may have been no political commitments at Tehran. But certainly since that Conference we have seen a series of independent actions by Russia which seem to be the negative of restored sovereignty to certain peoples. Certainly the Atlantic Charter has been sent to the hospital for major amputations of freedom among nations. The American people deserve a much fuller exposition of this Great Design.
And the Tehran Conference raises another question. Under our form of government the President cannot speak either for the Congress or the conclusions of American public opinion. The only way for America to succeed in foreign relations is by open declaration of policies. They must first have seasoned consideration and public understanding. These do not come by secret diplomacy. America cannot successfully bluff, intrigue or play the sordid game of power politics.
Nothing contributed more to the tragedy of Versailles than the suspicion and misunderstandings which arose when the heads of states sought to persuade and beguile each other in secret. Such unchecked bartering results in implications, deductions and appeasements will rise to plague us.
Direct conferences by heads of state and their military leaders on military questions are useful. But under our institutions and our public opinion negotiation in political matters with our allies should be conducted by Secretaries of State. The President of the United States is far more influential delivering considered judgments from the White House. The voice from that pulpit is far more potent than any beguilement in private conversation in some foreign city, or any personal power diplomacy.
President Wilson also had a “great design” most of which was lost by the blandishments and pressures of personal negotiation. Every thinking American views with great apprehension a repetition of 1919. America needs a change in administration to get out of personal power diplomacy
There is a force for freedom as old as life itself which will emerge with new vividness from the complexities of the times. Not only life but freedom itself must find regeneration from youth.
In every generation youth presses forward toward achievement. Each generation has the right to build its own world out of the materials of the past, cemented by the hopes of the future.
Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die. And it is youth who must inherit the tribulation, the sorrow and the triumphs that are the aftermath of war.
This convention is handing the leadership of the Republican Party to a new generation. And soon to support these younger men there will be an oncoming generation who will differ from all others. Twelve million young men matured far beyond their years under the supreme tests of war will be coming home. To them will be added the other millions of young men and women serving in the shops, on the farms and in the offices. They also, by the responsibilities they have shared, have had their minds and understanding advanced beyond their age. From the tremendous experience in this war this new generation will have grown in responsibility, in dignity, in initiative and skills.
And these young men who are offering their lives on the beaches and in the mud, those who are fighting in the air, those who battle on the seas, will return to demand justification for their sacrifices and for the sacrifice of their buddies who have died. They will insist upon a reckoning and they will be stern and hard faced. They will reject the easy language of politics, the straddling and compromises, and the senseless phrases of skilled ghostwriters. And they will be watchful of political leaders lest they again be led into the giving of the blood and risking the future of their families from failures in international statesmanship. Today, more than any new generation that we have known, youth will demand a voice in its own destiny.
I rejoice that this is to be. Youth can bring the courage, the ideals and confidence which can erect a new society in America upon the debris of two world wars. We need their courage as never before.
We, the older generation, who have learned something of the great forces in the world, can advise and counsel. The issues are not new, and we can distill principles from the experience of the past. But youth must act and the past can never wholly point the way through the changing future.
And let me say this to the many younger Republicans in this convention. On each election night, I read of able young Republican men and women who are chosen by their countrymen to positions of trust and eminence. I see men whom I have known since they cut their eye teeth in district politics, rise to state and city government, to the Congress, and to the Governorship in their state. From that I know that our party is a living institution recruiting from the oncoming generation its brilliant men and women and setting them to work for the good of our country. And it is through this living institution, the Republican Party that I call upon the younger generations to take up the weapons for American liberty to fight the good fight in the manner and according to the lights of their own time.
And may I say this to youth: You have a great material heritage. You are receiving millions of farms and homes built by your forebears. There have been prepared for you magnificent cities, great shops and industries. But you have even a greater heritage. That is a heritage of religious faith of morals and of liberty. There is no problem which confronts the nation that you cannot solve within this framework.
You in your own manner can lead our people away from the jungle of disorderly, cynical and bitter ideas, the topsy-turvy confusions, the hopelessness and lack of faith and defeatism that have haunted this nation over these dozen years. You can lead our nation back to unity of purpose again.
We of the older generation know that you will carry forward. We wish you to carry the torch bravely and aloft. Carry it with the dauntless assurance of your forebears who faced the chill of the ocean, the dangers of the forest and desert, the loneliness of the pioneer to build upon this continent a nation dedicated to justice and liberty and the dignity of the individual man. Watch over it. Vigilantly guard it. Protect it from foes, within and without. Make for this a sanctuary and dedicate it to God and all mankind.
Youth of the Republican Party! I, representing the generation of your fathers, greet you and send you forth crusaders for freedom which alone can come under a Constitutional Republic – a Constitutional America.
We, who have lived long, turn our eyes upon your generation lovingly with hope, with prayer and with confidence for our country.
Address by Rep. Clare Boothe Luce (R-CT)
June 27, 1944
We have been called together in a time of historic crisis to choose die next President of the United States. Plainly the honor of speaking to you in this hour so fraught with consequence has come to me because I am a woman. Through one woman’s voice our Party seeks to honor the millions of American women in war-supporting industries, the millions in Red Cross work, and the thousands upon thousands in civil service, in hospital and canteen and volunteer work. Our Party honors the women in the armed services and our truly noble Army nurses. Their courage has written a new chapter for American history books. Above all we honor the wives and sisters and sweethearts and mothers of our fighting men. The morale of the home front has been largely in their keeping. They have kept it to the height of the morale on the battlefront.
And yet, I know and you know that American women do not wish their praises sung as women any more than they wish political pleas made to them as women. They feel no differently from men about doing their patriotic jobs. They feel no differently from men about the ever-growing threats to good government. They feel no differently about the inefficiency, abusiveness, evasion, self-seeking, and personal whim in the management of the nation’s business, which are little by little distorting our democracy into a dictatorial bumbledom. And certainly, they feel no differently about pressing this war to the enemy’s innermost gates, or creating from the sick havocs of war itself, a fair and healthy peace.
But there is one thing that women feel, not differently but more deeply about than men. That is the welfare of their sons and brothers and husbands in the service.
In this crowded convention hall, it is rare to see a woman without the little red and white pin whose blue star shows that somewhere on land, in the air, at sea, there is a man in uniform who is very dear to her. It is no more than the truth to say that he is dearer to her than all else in the world. To speak of what is closest to the mind and heart of an American woman today is inevitably to speak of the man who is known affectionately at home, and fearsomely on every battle front, as G.I. Joe.
American women want these minutes and, yes, every minute of our thought and concern to turn on this fighting man. His hopes, his aspirations, his dangerous present, and his still uncertain future, are uppermost in their minds.
Now, G.I. Joe’s last name is Legion, because there are about 12 million of him. What his immediate wants are today, his generals know best. Mostly they are more tools, and better tools, which will increase his margin of safety and multiply his chances of victory. To the filling of these wants, all Americans are pledged to the limit of their capacity.
But this convention is gathered together to consider not so much G.I. Joe’s immediate wants, as to clarify what his wants are likely to be in the next four years, and to plan to meet those wants.
Before this convention is done it will clearly interpret his long-term wants in keynote and platform, and to the honoring of them our candidate will pledge himself.
The great Norwegian, Ibsen, said, “I hold that man most in the right who is most closely in league with the future.”
We shall prove to be most in the right in November. For here the Republican Party will choose the man most closely in league with G.I. Joe’s future as he and his family see it.
We know that Joe himself is not thinking of his future wants at this hour. He is too busy engaging a desperate enemy. If you asked him today what he wants of the future, he would probably say, “I want to go home, or course. But I want to go home by way of Berlin and Tokyo.”
And this tremendous and heroic want of Joe’s to sail into the roadsteads of Yokohama, and march by the waters of the Rhine, is alone a greater guarantee of the future security of our nation, than any guarantee we can offer. This is Joe’s gift, beyond price, to America. We have come together here to nominate a President who will jealously and prayerfully guard that gift all his years in office.
Joe wants his country to be secure, from here out, because no matter how confused some people may be at home, there is no doubt in Joe’s mind what he is fighting for. Joe knew it the minute he landed on foreign soil. A fellow named Col. Robert L. Scott wrote it in a book called God Is My Co-Pilot. And it was never said better by any man – “Know what we are fighting for? …It’s the understanding that comes when you’ve seen the rest of the world, when you’ve seen the filth and corruption of all the hell-holes Americans are fighting in today… Then you know… for it’s seared on your soul – that we have the best country in the Universe… You know that you have everything to live for and the Japs and Germans have everything to die for.”
We are come together here to nominate the kind of President who in the years ahead will keep Joe’s America – America: That is to say, a country in which a man and woman have everything to live for.
But wait. If today you asked Joe, in the heat of battle, why he wanted to get to Berlin and Tokyo, why he wanted to keep America, America, you might get a very unexpected and sobering answer. He’d say that the biggest reason was that he wanted to vindicate and avenge G.I. Jim. And because G.I. Jim is the biggest reason today that Joe is fighting like a man possessed of devils and guarded by angels, we had better talk of him in the time that remains to us.
Who is G.I. Jim? Ask rather, who was G.I. Jim? He was Joe’s pal, his buddy, his brother. Jim was the fellow who lived next door to you. But “He shall return no more to his house, neither shall his place know him anymore.” Jim was, you see, immobilized by enemy gunfire, immobilized for all eternity.
But Jim’s last name was not Legion. You read casualty lists. You have seen Jim’s last name there: Smith, Martof, Johnson, Chang, Novak, LeBlanc, Konstantakis, Yanado, O’Toole, Svendson, Sanchez, Potavin, Goldstein, Rossi, Nordal, Wroblewski, McGregor, Schneider, Jones. . . You see, Jim was the grandson and great-grandson of many nations. But he was the son of the United States of America.
He was the defender the of the Republic, and the lover of Liberty. And he died as his father died in 1918, and their fathers in 1898, 1861, in 1846 and in 1812, in 1776. He died to make a more perfect union, “that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
His young bones bleach on the tropical roads of Bataan. white cross marks his narrow grave on some Pacific island. His dust dulls the crimson of the roses that bloom in the ruins of an Italian village. The deserts of Africa, the jungles of Burma, the rice fields of China, the plains of Assam, the jagged hills of Attu, the cold depths of the Seven Seas, the very snows of the Arctic, are the richer for mingling with the mortal part of him. Today his blood flecks the foam of the waves that fall on the Normandy beachheads. He drops again and again amid the thunder of shells, while silently down on the tragic soil of France the white apple blossoms drift over him. Yes, even as it was in 1918. Or, nameless phrase, tantalizing and inscrutable as the misty black and bottomless pit of time, Jim is just “Missing in action.” Then all that marks him anywhere is a gold star in the window, and the tears that are silently shed for him.
There are many gold stars on the women sitting in these halls. To all who loved Jim, even more than to those who love Joe, everything we do and say here must be reasonable and inspiring.
We are come together here to nominate a President who will make sure that Jim’s sacrifice shall not prove useless in the years that lie ahead.
For a fighting man dies for the future as well as the past; to keep all that was fine of his country’s yesterday, and to give it a chance for a finer tomorrow.
Do we here in this convention dare ask if Jim’s heroic death in battle was historically inevitable? If this war might not have been averted? We know that this war was in the making everywhere in the world after 1918. In the making here, too. Might not skillful and determined American statesmanship have helped to unmake it all through the ‘30s? Or, when it was clear to our Government that it was too late to avert war, might not truthful and fearless leadership have prepared us better for it in material and in morale, in arms and in aims? These are bitter questions. And the answers to bitter questions belong to time’s perspective. Being human, we Republicans are partisan. But being partisan, we risk being unjust if we try to answer these questions in days so fateful. But this, even as partisans, we dare say: The last twelve years have not been Republican years. Maybe Republican Presidents during the ‘20s were overconfident that prosperity would last at home, and that sanity would prevail abroad. But it was not a Republican President who dealt with the visibly rising menaces of Hitler and Mussolini and Hirohito. Ours was not the administration that promised young Jim’s mother and father and neighbors and friends economic security and peace. Yes, peace. No Republican President gave these promises which were kept to their ears, but broken to their hearts. For this terrible truth cannot be denied: these promises, which were given by a government that was elected again and again and again because ft made them, lie quite as dead as young Jim lies now. Jim was the heroic heir of the unheroic Roosevelt decade: a decade of confusion and conflict that ended in war.
In war itself, Jim learned hard and challenging truths that his government was too soft and cynical, in peace, to tell him. In battle he learned that all life is risk; that a fellow has first to rely on himself, before his comrades can rely on him; he learned that perfect teamwork is possible only after a man is witting to stand up to the worst alone. Jim found out that a large part of his security lay in his own willingness to take a lot of responsibility for it. That being the case, he asked no more than the best tools, a chance to use his own brains in the pinches, and the kind of leaders who were willing to risk their skins a little, too, when the pinches came. Of course all this knowledge, born in the struggle to survive, will be of more use to Joe, the veteran, than to Jim. For in the end Jim also learned that the only perfect democracy is. the democracy of the dead.
But Jim did not complain too much about his government. Sure, mistakes, awful mistakes, had been made by his Government. But Jim figured that anybody can make mistakes. Maybe his friends and neighbors had made them, too. How could his friends and neighbors tell that they had been going for some promises that could not, or should not, be kept? How could they tell that some of them were never spoken to be kept? Maybe they’d have talked differently, acted differently, voted differently, if they’d known- all the facts. But maybe they wouldn’t. Anyway, Jim has taken the rap for everyone, from the man in the White House, down to the man in the house around the corner. And it was OK with him. Jim was ready to pay with his life for his countrymen’s mistakes, anytime, if it gave the homefolks and good old Joe and his family, a fresh start on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, in a world wiped clean of the Nazi marauders and Japanese spoilers.
If Jim could stand here and talk to you, he’d say:
Listen, folks, the past wasn’t perfect. But skip it. Get on with the business of making this old world better. You’ve got the land, the tools, the know-how, and big bunches of people who want to pull together. No country ever bad more. And you’ve got great and friendly nations who want to pitch in with you, like they pitched in with me and Joe to fight the Japs and Germans. Take your hats off to the past, but take your coats off to the future. I didn’t look back when I struck the beaches. Is it tougher at home for you fellows?
This is what Jim would say if he could stand hare and talk to you. Well, I suspect Jim is at this convention, although he is no longer, you understand, a Republican or a Democrat. But a man who dies to keep America just might like to stay on a bit to see whether or not he’s really succeeded. So, if Jim were here, it might be the most natural thing in the other-world. Maybe he was brought here by some friend who knows his way around American presidential conventions. Yes, maybe he was brought here by Gen. George Washington. All Americans know that the General’s spirit has watched over every gathering where Presidents have been picked for 147 years. And if that is the case, then Jim has learned a lot he never knew before about American Presidents. For example, while Jim always knew from the history books that the General was a soldier without blemish, now he knows that Washington was a President who, if he erred, as all Presidents do, erred with integrity. He knows that Gen. Washington might have become America’s king, and that President Washington might have stayed in power all his days, the early days of our weak and infant Republic. They were days of terrible crisis and stupendous emergencies. Wild disorders of frontier life, political confusion worse than any we know, marked Washington’s last years in office. And there were great social and economic injustices still to be corrected. Then every man said that George Washington was the indispensable man. Who understood and could better save the new Liberty he had given a new nation? Jim always knew that Washington so loved his country and the institutions that he helped to author, that he refused more than two terms. That was a tradition Washington’s spirit never saw broken at any president-making gathering until it was broken by the man who promised in this very city 12 years ago that “happy days are here again,” who promised peace, yes peace, to Jim’s mother and father. But Jim knows now why Washington is calm, even so. Why? Well, Washington knows better today than he knew a century and a half ago, that no one man can save our nation’s institutions. And no one man can wreck them. He knows that the people alone can save or destroy their country’s institutions. But free men always have another chance to make their own history, because, in peace or in war, free men must always choose their President. Among free men, a political choice is inescapable. Even those who refuse to choose and stay home from the polls, make a choice: They choose not to choose. This is the noble paradox of a Republic.
Oh, yes, Jim and his friend, the father of his country, want us to choose well, as well as we know how here: they want us to choose a man who would rather tell the truth than be President; to choose a man who loves his country and its institutions more than he loves power. But they do not want us to pretend that any one Republican, more than any one Democrat is indispensable. They want us to think as Americans. And as Americans, they want us to raise here a “standard to which the wise and honest can repair.” They know that the event, today as yesterday, is in the hands of God.
And this we will do, for Jim’s sake. And then we can say, before all our fellow citizens, that his spirit and Washington’s spirit will be happier here than at the Democratic Convention.
Then Jim can exultantly say:
I am the Risen Soldier, I have come
From a thousand towns, the city blocks
The factories, the fields of this fair land…
Many am I,
Yet truly one, the Son of many streams
That poured their wealth into the common cup
The wide and golden cup of Liberty…
I am the Risen Soldier; though I die
I shall live on and, living, still achieve
My country’s mission – Liberty in Truth…
Lord, it is sweet to die – as it were good
To Live, to strive for these United States,
Which, in Your wisdom, You have willed should be
A beacon to the world, a living shrine
Of Liberty and Charity and Peace.It is as Americans that we are gathered here. We come to choose a President who need not apologize for the mistakes of the past but who will redeem them, who need not explain G.I. Jim’s death but who will justify it. Apology and explanation must suffice for the next convention that meets in this city.
We Republicans are here to build a greater and freer America, not only for, but with millions of young, triumphant boastful G.I. Joes, who are fighting their way home to us.
Let the next convention that meets here point to Joe’s homecoming with foreboding. Let another Party call Joe, who has saved us, “the terrible problem of the returned veteran.” Another candidate, not ours, can hold his return as an economic club over the heads of the people. We are Americans! We say, “Joe, we welcome you. So hurry home, Joe, by way of Berlin and Tokyo. We need you to build this greater America.”
| Wednesday, June 28 |
|---|
| Convention called by Governor Warren at 10:15 a.m. |
| Nominations for President of the United States |
| Roll call on presidential nominations |
| Nominations for Vice President of the United States |
| Roll call on vice-presidential nominations |
| Convention called at 8:15 p.m. |
| Continuation of roll call |
| Convention called at 10:15 p.m. Thursday, with Thursday program subject to change |