Election 1944: Republican National Convention

[NormanStewart]

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.

[NormanStewart]

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.

[NormanStewart]

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.”

[NormanStewart]

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

[NormanStewart]

The New York Times (June 28, 1944)

REPUBLICANS TAKE PLATFORM QUICKLY WITHOUT CHANGES
Willkie’s attack on foreign policy plank is unheeded – Edge drops floor fight

Hoover says youth rules; calls for all-out drive on New Deal – war on bureaucracy is pledged by Martin
By Turner Catledge

Chicago, Illinois – (June 27)
The Republican National Convention today promulgated a platform of national and foreign policies highlighted by a pledge of post war international cooperation to maintain order, by which it proposes to convince the American electorate next fall that it can be depended upon to win the war, keep the peace and restore prosperity, if returned to power in Washington.

The party’s declarations were, for the most part, in broad terms. The platform left considerable details to be filled in by the candidates. The convention is expected to designate Governor Dewey of New York for President tomorrow.

The prospect that Governor Earl Warren of California would be the candidate for the vice presidency was subject to reappraisal tonight after he told his state delegation that “in good conscience” he could not accept the nomination.

Platform session listless

A few hours after it had adapted the platform, in the most listless and sparsely attended of its sessions, the convention heard its leading elder statesman, the former President Herbert Hoover, hand over leadership of the Republican Party, in the convention’s name, to “a new generation.”

Mr. Hoover shared the honors at a crowded night session with Rep. Clare Boothe Luce. She emphasized the party’s appeal to the “G.I. Joes,” who, as the former President put it, will be returning soon “to demand justification for their sacrifices.”

Earlier in the day, Rep. Joseph W. Martin, House Minority Leader, was elected permanent chairman of the convention and in his speech declared that the Republican Party was the only force that could be depended upon to straighten out the sprawling bureaucracy in Washington.

With these preliminaries out of the way and a platform loaded with appeals to the greatest possible number of voting groups and interests, the convention looked forward to the nomination of presidential and vice-presidential candidates.

Nominating plans speeded

Selection of Governor Dewey for top place on the ticket remained a certainty. Plans were also perfected to go through with the nominations early enough in the day to have the presidential nominee appear for a rousing notification ceremony at the night session. Should these plans go through as made, the convention will then end a day earlier than expected.

Governor Warren’s refusal caused some consternation among convention leaders because of the possibility of a last-minute scramble for the place. Attention began to quickly center on Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio, who, it was understood, would be entirely acceptable to Governor Dewey.

The Ohio delegation went into caucus at a late hour to decide its course. Earlier the delegation had staged a meeting for the forces determined to present Mr. Bricker for the first-place nomination. Leaders then insisted that they would follow the original Bricker-for-President program. Some Midwest delegations were understood to be putting pressure on Mr. Bricker to accept second place.

…

[NormanStewart]

PLATFORM MAKERS SHIFTED A LITTLE ON FOREIGN POLICY
Pledge to nations torn by war is held to enter field of peace aims of our allies

Party’s nominees bound; ‘as a matter of private honor and public faith’ they should accept program
By C. F. Trussell

Chicago, Illinois – (June 27)
The Republican National Convention adopted without a dissenting vote today a 27-point platform which, although it provoked backstage and open outbreaks during the six days it was in the making, lent itself in the final draft to sufficiently broad, if not elastic, interpretations as to win general acceptance for the coming campaign.

Within the document itself was a pledge of good faith which extended beyond the delegates to the party’s candidates themselves.

The pledge of good faith declares:

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.

It appeared to be the convention’s opinion that this pledge could be taken and carried out under conscientious interpretations of the issues enunciated by a wide assortment of candidates.

Similar planks were in the 1936 and 1940 platforms and were revised by the Drafting Committee this year.

…

[NormanStewart]

Bricker now likely for Vice President

Dewey leaders turn to Ohioan when Warren refuses to take nomination
By Warren Moscow

Chicago, Illinois – (June 27)
Following the refusal of California Governor Earl Warren to be a candidate for the nomination for Vice President, Ohio Governor John W. Bricker seemed likely tonight to be the choice of the Republican National Convention tomorrow for second place on the ticket.

Governor Warren’s announcement, made to his delegation this afternoon, caused a quick change in the program of supporters of Governor Thomas E. Dewey for the Presidency.

Bricker confers with aides

After a telephone conversation with the New York Governor, J. Russell Sprague, National Committeeman, and one of the three leaders of the Draft-Dewey movement, said that the New York delegates regarded Governor Bricker as well qualified for the Vice Presidency and would be glad to join the delegates of other states in nominating him for that office.

Mr. Bricker withheld immediate public acceptance of the informal tender, but went into conference with Roy D. Moore and John W. Galbreath, his campaign managers, and it was announced that he would make no statement before late morning.

It was learned, however, that at least half a dozen party leaders from the larger states would urge Governor Bricker to accept the nomination and his friends believed that under such circumstances he would accept.

…

[NormanStewart]

NOMINATION TODAY SOUGHT FOR DEWEY
Sponsors of draft movement accelerate convention to permit Albany-Chicago trip

Vice Presidency an issue; new national committee is expected to meet tomorrow to elect chairman
By James A. Hagerty

Chicago, Illinois – (June 27)
Supporters of Governor Dewey took steps today to accelerate the Republican convention by nominating the candidates for President and Vice President tomorrow afternoon with both nominees accepting tomorrow night.

Sponsors of the movement to draft Governor Dewey for the presidential nomination expect this to be done unless there are unexpected difficulties in the selection of a vice-presidential candidate.

The Dewey supporters hope to make the nominations for President and Vice President tomorrow afternoon. This will permit Governor Dewey to leave Albany by plane in time to accept the nomination at an evening session.

Under the convention rules, seconding speeches will be limited to four for each candidate. With Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio and LtCdr. Harold E. Stassen, former Governor of Minnesota, the only other candidates to be presented, it is hoped that the nominating and seconding speeches will not take more than three hours and that the roll may be called on the first ballot immediately afterward without recess.

Nomination time is estimated

This would permit the nomination for President to be made by 2 or 3 o’clock in the afternoon, which would give ample time for Governor Dewey to reach Chicago.

Governor Dwight H. Green of Illinois will meet Governor and Mrs. Dewey and his party on arrival at the Chicago Airport and escort him to the Stadium.

Governor Dwight Griswold of Nebraska is scheduled to nominate Governor Dewey. Mayor Theodore R. McKeldin of Baltimore and Rep. Leonard W. Hall of New York have been selected to make seconding speeches.

Other seconds of Governor Dewey’s name will be made by a Midwestern and a woman delegate from the Midwest or Far West yet to be selected. Sponsors of the Dewey candidacy have been somewhat embarrassed by the number of requests from delegates for permission to make seconding speeches but have been obliged by the rules to restrict themselves to four.

Leaders in the campaign to nominate Governor Dewey estimated that he had in sight about 900 votes of the 1,057 total. J. Russell Sprague, New York National Committeeman, was informed today that the Kentucky delegation would not present Governor Simeon S. Willis for the presidential nomination and that the 22 votes of that state would be cast for Mr. Dewey.

Committee to meet tomorrow

If the program of the Dewey group is followed, there will be a meeting of the new national committee Thursday at which a new chairman will be elected. If Mr. Sprague had not declared himself unavailable because of the restrictions imposed by the Nassau County Charter upon his continuing as county executive, a post which he does not want to resign, he would be chosen, it is stated.

With Mr. Sprague unavailable, speculation centers on Herbert Brownell Jr., close friend of Governor Dewey and chairman of the law committee of the New York State Republican Committee, or State Chairman Edwin F. Jaeckle.

Selection of a national chairman from the Midwest would be gratifying to that section, and the name of Rep. Charles A. Halleck, whop placed Wendell L. Willkie in nomination at the Philadelphia convention four years ago, has been mentioned. By party custom, the nominee is entitled to name the national chairman. The New York Governor, however, has let his sponsors know that he intends to consult members of the National Committee and other party leaders before making his suggestion.

---

Mother awaits Dewey

Arrives in Chicago to join son on his great day

Chicago, Illinois – (June 27)
Mrs. George M. Dewey of Owosso, Michigan, who has never witnessed a political convention, will be on hand tomorrow morning when the roll call of states begins for nominees for the Presidency. The mother of the outstanding candidate, Governor Dewey, motored here today with friends from home.

Confronting reporters and photographers in a suite at the Stevens Hotel, Mrs. Dewey answered many questions about her own life as a homemaker and Red Cross worker at Owosso and about the past, present and probable future of her son, whose great day she will share tomorrow.

If he won the election, she was asked, would she live in the White House? She gasped a bit and retorted, “Well, I might not be invited. But I suppose I’d be there at least part of the time.”

Owosso, a town of 16,000, was rather agitated at the prospect of a hometown boy as a presidential nominee, Mrs. Dewey admitted. Her telephone had been ringing without cessation up the time she departed this morning, she said.

[NormanStewart]

NEW DEAL LABELED ‘FASCISM’ BY MARTIN
Tells convention people must give Republicans more help in fight on regimentation

To ‘free Democrats, too; House leader denies charge his party has no program, lists its main points
By James B. Reston

Chicago, Illinois – (June 27)
The Republican Party is fighting the arrogant and bureaucratic dictatorship which is leading the people to national bankruptcy and complete regimentation, but the Republicans must have more help from the people if they are to hold the lines of constitutional government, Joseph W. Martin Jr., House Minority Leader, told the Republican National Convention today.

Mr. Martin, who was elected permanent chairman of the convention, emphasized that the Republicans had a constructive policy, based on the Constitution, private enterprise and collaboration with the other countries of the world, to lead the United States back to a “sound, prosperous peacetime basis.”

He said:

We are in more than one war. In one of those wars, our sons and daughters are against the German and the Jap. But there is another war here at home. It is a war between two eternally hostile ideologies. One idea is that of a free society – the society of free men creating their wealth with the instrumentalities of free enterprise under the protection of a representative republic.

The other is the conception of the regimented and planned society living upon vast streams of government debt and taking its shape and destiny from the directives from a bureaucratic elite under the command of a self-inspired leader. You may call it anything you wish. In Europe, they call it Fascism. Here we call it the New Deal.

Fight to ‘free’ Democrats

Mr. Martin sought to distinguish between the New Deal and the Democratic Party.

Mr. Martin said:

The Democratic Party which we have known and with which we have honorably struggled on so many fields. But which was a party of Americans, who believed in the American system, has lost its own powers over its own destiny. The Democratic Party has been captured by a minority, whose philosophy it despises. It has become a prisoner of the New Deal.

Thank God some of its leaders realize this and have had the courage to revolt. This election, curiously, is not merely a fight to put the Republicans into office, but, by a strange twist of fate, it is also a fight to emancipate the Democrats.

After repeating the policy of the Republican Party as defined by the Republican members of Congress in September 1942, Mr. Martin said that whenever criticism was leveled at the New Deal administration, the reply invariably was that the Republicans had no program. He insisted that the Republicans had carefully thought out what they would do when they were elected, and this program could be summed up in part by the following points. The Republicans would, he said:

• Restore to Congress its responsibility and function as the people’s special instrument of control over their government and their public officials.

• Restore responsibilities in matters of local concern to the state and local governmental subdivisions.

• Produce “genuine economy” in government. Mr. Martin said:

To achieve that we will eliminate administrative non-essentials. No one can pretend that under the New Deal there will ever be retrenchment in governmental costs. The New Dealers just don’t believe in it.

• Establish a taxation system that would not only be as simple and equitable as possible but a system designed to “stimulate industry and create jobs for the people,” a system of taxation “on a revenue basis and not for punitive purposes.”

• Under a Republican administration, “labor will retain all the essential rights and just privileges it has gained.”

• Make it possible for private capital to be permitted and encouraged to venture in the post-war period into renewed and expanded production.

• Continue humane and beneficial economic and social advantages.

• Provide “adequate benefits” for the men and women of our military services and make certain they are promptly available.

The House leader indicated that the Republicans would attempt to make the Communists’ support for a “fourth term” an issue in the presidential election. The “coalition” of the Communists with the CIO Political Action Committee in favor of another term for Mr. Roosevelt was, Mr. Martin said, “an insolent challenge” to the people of the United States.

He said:

This challenge has been insolently and boldly issued to the people of America. It presents a vital issue of this campaign.

[NormanStewart]

Democrats deride opponents’ planks

Congressmen in Washington call them an avalanche of words

Washington (AP) – (June 27)
Democratic Congressmen derided, today, Republican Party platform proposals with expressions such as “an avalanche of words” and “a straddle,” while their Republican colleagues applauded the planks as “dandy.”

Rep. Robert Ramspeck (D-GA), House Majority Whip, said that the Republican proposals as approved by the Platform Committee “sound like the same old Republican runaround.” The platform, he said, “is full of ambiguous words from which it is possible to construe almost any meaning desired.”

Rep. Walt Horan (R-WA) expressed approval of the platform throughout. He said:

I think it is a dandy and one of which the party can be proud. It increases my confidence in the Republican leadership.

Rep. Clarence Cannon (D-MO), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, described the foreign policy declaration as “merely an avalanche of words, so stated that anyone could read into it anything they cared to believe.”

Opposing his view, Rep. Marion T. Bennett (R-MO) analyzed the statement on foreign policy as being “as specific and as well outlined as is possible at this stage of our relations with other nations.” He said that it was “a much better plan than as yet advocated by any of the opposition.”

Senator Lister Hill (D-AL) called the foreign policy statement “a straddle to catch both isolationists and internationalists.”

Senator Elbert D. Thomas (D-UT) said he believed that the platform was written “in a spirit of wishful thinking.”

He stated:

The plank on veterans covers ground that already is law. I am glad the Republican Party has made declarations that are very close to the aims of the present administration in regard to peace. That indicates the Republicans in Congress will be helpful in bringing about a fair peace.

The plank calling for an end of rationing and price-fixing was described by Rep. Brent Spence (D-KY), chairman of the House Banking Committee, as “designed to gain a few votes, and it means nothing.”

Mr. Spence said:

Anybody knows that the program is only temporary and will be discontinued as soon as the emergency is over.

[NormanStewart]

Platform praised by party leaders

Some want Dewey to clarify it as Senators, Governors voice general satisfaction

Chicago, Illinois – (June 27)
The reaction here to the Republican platform was favorable.

Criticism about the “ambiguity” of the party’s declaration on foreign policy was prevalent earlier, but after the platform was approved, Governors, Senators and other delegates said they were satisfied with the main features of the declarations.

Governors of some Eastern states, who had been expected to be critical of what Wendell Willkie has termed the “ambiguity” of the foreign policy pronouncement, were unanimous in declaring that they would “go along” with the committee’s final report.

Governor Edge of New Jersey, who had threatened a floor fight on the plank said he would not raise his voice against it. He decided to rely upon the interpretation which Governor Dewey would put upon the declaration.

Senator Reed (R-KS), while abiding by the party declaration, said he thought that the statement on foreign policy might have “contained fewer words” and expressed the wish that the party had adopted the Mackinac statement as “far more succinct and expressing Republican feelings better.”

Framers voice satisfaction

Senator Taft, chairman of the Resolutions Committee, which has labored since Wednesday to draft the platform, declared himself “well satisfied” with it and added:

The declarations presented to this convention have been framed with more care and greater seriousness than ever were devoted to the platforms of any previous conventions.

Senator Austin (R-VT), head of the group which shaped the foreign policy plank, said that the platform would “represent a marked advance in both domestic and foreign policy toward the establishment of security, peace and prosperity.”

Senator Danaher (R-CT), commending “the mutuality we seek among nations,” said:

The platform is a remarkable achievement and presents sound and cogent American doctrine. The people will support us, as our views are their views.

Senator White (R-ME) praised the platform as “dealing soundly and effectively with the problems of America and the world.”

Senator Ball (R-MN) said the foreign policy plank was not in terminology which he would have chosen, but that he considered it a strong statement, particularly if the candidate endorsed “the positive and not the negative implications.”

Senator Hawkes (R-NJ) maintained that the party’s expression on foreign policy was in line with the sentiments of most Americans.

Rep. Hamilton Fish (R-NY) approved the foreign policy plank as reflecting the determination of the American people “to win the war and go a long way to preserve the peace through international cooperation.”

Edge cites Dewey’s approval

Governor Edge of New Jersey made no secret of his disapproval of the foreign policy plank, but expressed his faith in Governor Dewey’s interpretation of it.

He said:

From a layman’s standpoint the platform, especially on foreign policy, could be clearer. However, I am informed that Governor Dewey has accepted this text, and further I am quite positive that our nominee-to-be will carry out the pledges made in his speech on foreign relations to the newspaper publishers two months ago.

I have every confidence that Governor Dewey will enlarge and amplify the party’s position on this foreign policy plank, just as other nominees have done in the past with involved platform expressions.

The appearance of the Governors of many of the leading Republican states before the foreign policy subcommittee last night apparently resulted in helpful changes. Certainly, there can be no question that by an adequate force Governor Dewey means a military force when necessary.

Governor Saltonstall of Massachusetts expressed satisfaction with the platform in its entirely but added that he would be interested in hearing Governor Dewey’s interpretations of one or two of the planks, including that on foreign policy.

Governor Martin of Pennsylvania said that the platform was “all right” and that the foreign policy plank “embodied the Mackinac Charter.”

Governor Sewall of Maine termed the platform “a good document, the best statement you can reasonably expect in view of the conflicting opinions” and Governor Blood of New Hampshire declared that it was “one of which the Governors can unite and elect Dewey.”

[NormanStewart]

Predicts Dewey victory

Arthur T. Vanderbilt sees ‘handsome majority’ in November

Chicago, Illinois (AP) – (June 27)
Arthur T. Vanderbilt of New Jersey, delegate-at-large and dean of the New York University Law School, one of the men behind the campaign to make Governor Dewey the Republican presidential nominee, predicted today that he would win by a “handsome majority” in November.

Mr. Vanderbilt said:

Our best friends smiled three months ago when we said Dewey would be nominated on the first ballot, but everybody concedes it today. They will probably smile when we say he will be elected in November, but personally I haven’t the slightest doubt.

[NormanStewart]

MRS. LUCE ASSAILS ‘BUMBLEDOM’ TREND
She says women no less than men resent practices ‘distorting our democracy’

Hails ‘G.I. Joe and G.I. Jim;’ declares party best fitted to serve men who return and vindicate men who die
By Kathleen McLaughlin

Chicago, Illinois – (June 27)
Once again, a woman had the last word, and Rep. Clare Boothe Luce, who spoke it, also made it the most effective of the evening at the Republican National Convention. Her ringing address was undeniably the peak of the program as she arraigned the Democratic Party and warned her own party to prepare for the homecoming of the G.I. Joes.

Spotlighted by many kliegs, the playwright and legislator was a cynosure of attention from every corner of the crowded hall. She was simply clad in a short-sleeved, navy dinner dress, with a crisp white plastron caught at the throat into a narrow white bow.

Her voice, clear and penetrating, reached every point in the hall and the close of her speech found the crowd on its feet acclaiming her with shouts and waving banners while Chairman Martin summoned a mixed chorus to serenade her with “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.”

Theme of war and peace

Addressed to the convention but aimed beyond the tiers of delegates and visitors at all the women of the country whose hears and thoughts are with their men in uniform, her speech carried an indirect plea for support of the man the Republicans will nominate as the man best fitted to insure a quick homecoming and a secure future for those in the Armed Forces.

Proclaiming her credo that “American women do not wish their praises sung as women any more than they wish political pleas made to them as women,” Mrs. Luce asserted that women “feel no differently from men about the ever-growing threats to good government.”

She declared:

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.

The G.I. Joes, she insisted, wanted the country to be secure from here out, not only because, no matter how confused people at home were, he knew what he was fighting for, but to vindicate and avenge G.I. Jim, his pal who was “immobilized by enemy gunfire – immobilized for all eternity.”

Memorial for ‘G.I. Jim’

Of G.I. Jim, she said:

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.

The objective of the convention, she went on, was to nominated a candidate for President “who will make sure that Jim’s sacrifice shall not prove useless in the years that lie ahead.

She added:

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.

She flung a direct challenge at the Roosevelt administration by questioning whether the war might not have been averted or whether, once proved inevitable, it might not have been lessened in horror by better preparation.

She noted that Republican Presidents had been “overconfident” during the 1920s that sanity would prevail abroad.

She added:

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. No Republican President gave these promises which were kept to their ears, but broken to their hearts.

[NormanStewart]

President laughs again when asked ‘the’ question

Washington – (June 27)
President Roosevelt laughed off the fourth term question again today.

A reporter asked at his news conference if there was anything he could say today on the Democratic candidate for President.

The President threw his head back and laughed, then turned to the questioner and said, “So they saddled that one on you today.”

It had been some time since “the” question had been asked. Some correspondents, knowing the President’s way of sometimes blanketing Republican convention news with major news of his own, had thought that the eve of Governor Dewey’s nomination might strike him as an opportune time to make his announcement.

But Mr. Roosevelt apparently thought otherwise.

[NormanStewart]

Spellman wrote verse quoted by Mrs. Luce

Chicago, Illinois – (June 27)
Archbishop Francis J. Spellman of New York was the author of the four stanzas of blank verse which Mrs. Clare Boothe Luce quoted in her address to the Republican convention tonight.

Written by the prelate on his return to this country after his tour of battlefields and war areas abroad, to express his impressions of the supreme sacrifice made by so many young Americans, the lines were sent by him to Mrs. Luce on the occasion of the death of her daughter, Miss Anne Brokaw, in an automobile accident in January.

In quoting them, Mrs. Luce did not indicate their origin.

[NormanStewart]

Editorial: The Republican platform

The two-party system under which American democracy operates requires compromise. Both the Republican and Democratic parties are in fact coalitions to many minor parties. If they are to avoid being pulverized into fractions, their right wings and their left wings must somehow get together. The extreme position is not practicable and cannot be expected. But this does not mean that a party platform ought to be a mere bundle of promises to catch votes. There are certain broad principles and major issues on which the electorate is entitled to expect clear and unequivocal declarations, and that is particularly true in times like these. It is in the light of its positions on such principles and issues that a platform should be judged.

Foreign policy

The Republican Party pledges (1) “prosecution of the war to total victory,” (2) “full cooperation with the United Nations,” (3) “Pan-American solidarity,” (4) “maintenance of post-war military forces and establishments of ample strength” (but without mention of a system of compulsory military service for this purpose), (5) restoration to “sovereignty and self-government” of the victims of aggression, (6) treaties for our enemies “based on justice and security,” (7) no American membership in “a world state,” but instead (8) “responsible participation by the United States in post-war cooperative organization among sovereign nations” which “should develop effective cooperative means to direct peace forces to prevent or repel military aggression.” To this, the party adds a demand that all treaties and commitments be ratified under the present constitutional requirement for a two-thirds vote of the Senate.

There are two points here which we find disappointing. We are sorry that the Republican Party did not take this excellent opportunity to propose a constitutional amendment for the ratification of treaties by plain majority vote, so as to put an end to the evils of minority obstruction which have bedeviled American foreign policy for a generation. And we are sorry that the party lacked either the foresight or the courage to propose a democratic system of post-wat compulsory military service; for without the aid of such a system, it is simply not going to be possible for the United States to maintain military forces “of ample strength” for its post-war responsibilities. But considering the program as a whole it seems clear that the action proposed is about what the American people expect and will approve. Certainly, this country is not ready now (nor is any other major power) either for membership in a “world state” or for an “international police force” in the sense of a military establishment independent of existing sovereign governments. There is no issue here between Republicans and Democrats. President Roosevelt has already taken the same position, regarding the fundamentals of organizing peace, which the Republicans now take.

It is true that the formula in which the Republican Party has stated its own method of organized peace – “responsible participation in post-war cooperative organization among sovereign nations to… develop effective means to direct peace forces” – is a jumble of words into which it is impossible to read any concrete meaning. It is also true that there are holes in this pledge as wide as several barn doors, through which Mr. Dewey, if elected, could make an easy exit if he chose to make an exit. But there are three things to be said here. First, it is difficult for a minority party, out of power and lacking a benefit of conferences with the governments of other nations, to write a very concrete plan for so large and complex a problem as the organization of world peace. Second, no platform pledge, in any case, can be made so tight as to leave no loophole if the party does not really mean to keep its word. And third, the real meaning and degree of integrity of this particular pledge can only be gauged by the interpretation and the emphasis which Mr. Dewey gives it.

By this, we do not merely mean what Mr. Dewey says when he goes to Chicago to accept the nomination. We mean what Mr. Dewey continues to say, in speech after speech, as the campaign develops. For it is clear that there are sections of the country in which strongly isolationist Republican newspapers and Republican Senators with monumentally isolationist records will attempt to whittle away the platform pledge until it means nothing. They will dwell long and lovingly on such words as “sovereignty,” “no world state” and “looking out for American interests and resources.” And they will

Mr. Dewey will have no alternative but go into these newspapers and Senators on their home ground, if he wishes either to give real meaning to his party’s pledge or to obtain a mandate from the electorate for position action in the event of his election.

Domestic policy

On the domestic side, the best sections of the platform are those which deal with the question of post-war reconversion and which put their emphasis on the necessity of encouraging a revival of the private enterprise system which has always provided the great bulk of employment in this country and for which government-sponsored projects can never provide a satisfactory substitute.

For the rest it must be said that the domestic platform consists largely of special inducements to special groups, plus a liberal borrowing of planks from the New Deal itself. Prominent among the former group, and presumably designed to win the support of American farmers and some American industrialists, is a proposal which would seem to jeopardize the whole structure of Secretary Hull’s tariff agreements, since it implies that in future such agreements should be restricted only to those directly “approved by Congress” – which would mean, as experience has proved, no agreements at all. Among the issues borrowed from the New Deal are practically all of the major legislative enactments of the last ten years, plus a plentiful sprinkling of new subsidies and public works. At the same time, though the government’s responsibilities and activities would be larger than ever, if this program were adopted in its entirety, expenditures are to be cut, taxes reduced as soon as the war ends and the “sprawling, overlapping bureaucracy” somehow diminished.

All this is disappointing because, instead of sharpening differences between present administration policies and proposed Republican policies and proposed Republican policies, its net effect is to blur them. the section on labor is an outstanding illustration of this. The administration’s labor policy is extremely vulnerable and the Republican platform is thoroughly justified in criticizing the conflicting jurisdictions of federal labor agencies. But the Republicans show no courage whatever in dealing with basic issues of policy. There is no demand for union responsibility, for example, commensurate with union privileges. So far from any demand for amendment of the Wagner Act, the platform “accepts the purposes” of that act by name, together with the Wage and Hour Act. It appears that it is the “perversion of the Wagner Act by the New Deal” that is the evil. Rather than any unbalance in the act itself. Going further, the platform demands that the Secretary of Labor “should be a representative of labor” – that is, a union leader, presumably named by the unions themselves. On the same pressure theory of government, the Secretary of Agriculture should be named by the farm organizations, and the Secretary of Commerce should be a representative of business named by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce or the National Association of Manufacturers.

But in the scramble for the “labor vote” the worst declaration of all is this: “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.” This is written as if there were no such thing as a total war going on, no such thing as an inflation danger, and no such thing as a price-control policy. To remove the wage controls would blow off the price ceilings. The greatest danger to the anti-inflation program at this time is that the administration may be tempted for political reasons this fall to break the Little Steel formula. Instead of standing firmly against such a step, the Republicans in this declaration actually put pressure or the President to take it. What will the Republican Party itself have left to say if he does it?

We have become accustomed to national platforms intended as a catch-all for votes. The present one is unfortunately typical of these. But as the nominee of his party, Mr. Dewey will still have the opportunity to improve the platform by a sensible interpretation of ambiguous pronouncements and by courageous supplement of his own.

[NormanStewart]

Editorial: Mr. Willkie’s two campaigns

Mr. Willkie’s final effort to obtain what he believes to be a necessary clarification of the foreign policy plank of the Republican platform failed, but he went down fighting. Mr. Willkie is a good soldier in any cause in which he believes.

Four years ago, Wendell Willkie polled 22,304,765 votes, not quite 5,000,000 short of the number that went to President Roosevelt. This year his campaign for the nomination failed, and there was evidence that much of his regular, dyed-in-the-wool Republican following had dwindled away.

Nevertheless, Mr. Willkie may feel that he stands high in the respect of his countrymen. He always had courage and sincerity. Four years of world tragedy taught him much and deepened his convictions as they broadened his sympathies. During the pre-nomination campaign he did all that a man could do, bravely and unselfishly, to awaken his countrymen to the desperate need of a decline plan to maintain a just peace after this war is over. More than any other individual he is responsible for such progress in this direction ads the Republican Party has made. Whatever his future career, public or private, he has deserved well of the American people.

[NormanStewart]

GOP NOMINATES DEWEY-BRICKER TICKET

New York Governor Dewey for President!

Ohio Governor Bricker for Vice President!

[NormanStewart]

Address by Ohio Governor Bricker
June 28, 1944

I am deeply grateful to the many friends who have expressed their loyalty to me, far more important than that, to the cause for which I have tried to stand. I have traveled throughout the United States for the last six months preaching to the best of my ability the gospel of Republicanism, which is the gospel of Americanism.

I have talked with you in your homes and your public meetings. I have talked with you privately, and I know the heart, the feeling, the longing, and the determination of the people of America, expressed through the representatives assembled here to preserve, not only for America but for the whole world, the blessings of free government and liberty as we have them here in America.

There has been a magnificent response everywhere to the preaching of fundamental American constitutional doctrine. Everywhere Republicans have come, and come enthusiastically, and Democrats have come by the thousands to Republican meetings.

Time and again I have said throughout this country, to the Democratic friends who are supporters of our cause, that the old-line Democrats, the Jeffersonian Democrats, and the Republicans have so much in common now; neither side has anything to say about what goes on in Washington today.

A thousand times I have said to you and Republicans everywhere that this is an hour when personal ambition should not prevail, that the party is greater than any individual ambition. In this hour, when the nation calls for unselfish service, the Republican Party unselfishly goes into the campaign to redeem free government that the world may be better tomorrow.

A thousand times I have said to you that I am personally more interested – and this comes from the depths of my heart – that personally I am more interested in defeating the New Deal philosophy of absolutism which has swept free government from the majority of countries throughout the world; I am more interested in defeating that than I am in personally being President of these United States.

I say to you today that it is the first duty of every Republican, as of every patriotic American citizen of every political party, to do all in its power to promote the war effort and bring speedy victory, that our boys may soon come home again.

I would not be here today, pleading the cause of the Republican party, if I did not believe with all sincerity in my heart that the best thing that could happen, the one thing that would bring speedy victory, a better world in which to live, better international relations, would be the election of a Republican President and a Republican Congress this fall.

Industry, under the impetus of such a victory, would produce as it never produced before. Labor would work as never before. When victory comes, we should have a stable, consistent economic tax policy in this country which would give greater hope of return than possibility of loss.

Labor would work as never before because it knows, as you and I well know, that this government cannot reach out its tentacles and take a strangle hold on one segment of society unless ultimately every segment of society comes under the domination and dictates of government.

Agriculture would be encouraged as nothing else could encourage it – by a Republican victory – because a bureaucratic government would be taken off its neck and farmers again could till the soil as independent farmers of America have always tilled the soil.

Appreciative as I am of the devotion to the cause which I have tried to represent of the many that are gathered here, I understand it is the overwhelming desire of this convention to nominate a great, a vigorous, a fighting young American, the noble and dramatic and appealing Governor of the State of New York – Thomas E. Dewey.

He charged the ramparts of crime and took them. He took over the government of the great State of New York, the largest state of the Union, and what a magnificent job he has done as Governor of that state! He understands not alone domestic problems, but international issues. The relationships of the nations of the world of tomorrow are going to be more trying than they ever have been before, and we cannot separate our domestic policies from our international program.

The hope of a better tomorrow lies in Thomas E. Dewey becoming the leader of the Republican hosts who will free us from the clutches of bureaucracy next January.

Time and again I have said that as this campaign goes on my heart and soul will be behind it, regardless of who might be nominated here today. Let me say to you that the best President of the United States to build a better international order tomorrow will be the best American President.

He shall speak for the people of America through the platform which has been adopted by this convention, one of sound American doctrine, which will preserve our form of representative republican government and which will bring a Republican victory this fall.

I am conscious of the fact that it is the desire of the great majority of the delegates to this convention to nominate the gallant righting Governor of the State of New York for President. I believe in party organization, as expressed in this legally constituted representative body of my party.

I believe a Republican victory is not only necessary this fall to preserve the Republican Party, but it is necessary likewise to preserve our two-party system. To preserve a representative system of government here in America, and likewise necessary to preserve the Democratic Party.

I appreciate the support which has been accorded me by the delegates from Ohio, especially the support which they have given in the last few days; but I am now asking them not to present my name to this convention, but to cast their votes, along with those of the host of friends I have here, for Thomas E. Dewey for President of the United States.

[NormanStewart]

The Free Lance-Star (June 28, 1944)

GOP NOMINATES DEWEY
Bricker named running mate for New York chosen on first ballot at convention

Nominee to fly to Chicago to make acceptance talk

Chicago Stadium, Chicago, Illinois (AP) –
A 1944 Republican ticker headed by Governor Thomas E. Dewey for President, with Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio as his running-mate, was nominated in a whirlwind session today by a national convention that gave Dewey all its votes save one and made it unanimous for Bricker.

Dewey immediately arranged to fly here from Albany and appear before the convention to deliver his speech of acceptance at 9:00 p.m. CWT.

The nominating session recessed at 1:56 until 8:00 p.m. CWT.

A lone delegate from Wisconsin, Grant Ritter, 55-year-old farmer of Beloit, cast his vote for Gen. Douglas MacArthur, explaining “he’s still my candidate. We didn’t get an opportunity to present him.”

A committee hurried to telephone Governor Dewey at Albany where he awaited formal notification before going ahead with plans to rush here for his speech of acceptance – tonight, if weather does not interfere with a trip by plane.

Martin wires news

At the same time, Rep. Joseph W. Martin of Massachusetts, convention chairman, dispatched the following telegram to Dewey:

May I on behalf of this great Republican convention advise you of your nomination as President.

Heartiest congratulations. We know you will make a winning President.

Even before the roll call, shortly after Dewey’s name was placed in nomination by Nebraska Governor Dwight Griswold, Wendell L. Willkie, the 1940 nominee, whose possible attitude toward a Dewey candidacy was a subject of conjecture, drafted a message of congratulations from New York. A bulletin over the Associated Press wire at the platform brought word of the gesture.

Governor Bricker, playing the key role in a harmony move that developed overnight, announced his own withdrawal as a presidential candidate as soon as Dewey’s name was placed in nomination.

Bricker speaker

In a dramatic convention appearance to tremendous applause, at the termination of a rousing demonstration which greeted the nominating speech for Dewey, the tall Ohioan strode to the speaker’s stand, looked steadily over the vast reaches of the teeming convention hall and said:

I am deeply grateful to the many friends who have expressed their loyalty to me, far more important than that, to the cause for which I have tried to stand.

I am personally more interested – and this comes from the depths of my heart – personally I am more interested in defeating the New Deal philosophy of absolutism which is threatening Americans today; I am more interested in defeating that than I am ever of being President of these United States.

I understand, as you do, that it is the overwhelming desire of this convention to nominate a great, a vigorous, a fighting young American, the noble and dramatic and appealing Governor of the great state of New York – Thomas E. Dewey.

Praises record

There were cries of “no” from some of the Bricker boosters, as the Governor continued:

What a magnificent job he [Dewey] has done as Governor! He understands not only domestic problems, but their involvement in international issues. The relationship of the world of tomorrow are going to be more trying than they ever have been before.

Thomas E. Dewey will become the gallant leader of the Republican hosts which free America and return American to the Republican democracy next January.

Bricker thanked the Ohio delegation for its support, saying:

I am asking them not to present my name to this convention, but to cast their votes, along with those of the host of friends I have here, for Thomas E. Dewey for President of the United States.

No sooner had Bricker turned from the platform than Chairman Joseph W. Martin announced, “I now introduce Senator Ball of Minnesota.”

Proud of Stassen

Ball led the campaign on behalf of LtCdr. Harold E. Stassen for President. He said:

Ours has been a clear fight. We are proud of Cdr. Stassen…

As long as there was the slightest chance of Stassen’s nomination, we were determined to present his name to this convention. Governor Bricker’s eloquent statement has eliminated any chance that existed. Minnesota’s delegation has therefore decided not to present Stassen’s name to this convention.

…