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.