The Pittsburgh Press (October 18, 1944)
Ball’s vote hangs on foreign policy
Washington (UP) –
Senator Joseph H. Ball (R-MN), who is “on the fence” politically until the presidential candidates elaborate their foreign policy pledges, expects to announce next week which candidate he will support.
By that time, he said in an interview, he will have heard Governor Thomas E. Dewey’s speech on foreign policy before the New York Herald-Tribune Forum and President Roosevelt’s talk Saturday in New York before the Foreign Policy Association.
On these speeches will depend not only his decision, he said, but that of thousands of independent voters.
“That man, Ball,” as some of his colleagues are calling him, believes the paramount issue of the campaign is a decisive, forward-looking foreign policy. He said that the whole purpose of withholding his support of either candidate is to obtain commitments that failed to appear in either the Connally peace resolution or the Democratic and Republican planks on foreign policy.
“There is too much the idea that the world security organization is an accepted thing and that there is no controversy, when there is controversy,” he said. He added that he called for presidential as well as Congressional candidates to state their position “clearly and honestly” so the people will know how to vote on Nov. 7.