The Pittsburgh Press (October 28, 1944)
Truman raps Dewey plan of foreign policy
Demands repudiation of eight isolationists
En route to Worcester, Massachusetts (UP) –
Senator Harry S. Truman, crossing Governor Thomas E. Dewey’s home state, asserted today that the Republican presidential candidate would have his “last chance” today to repudiate eight isolationist Republican Senators seeking reelection this year.
In a statement prepared for release at the state capital, Albany, Senator Truman continued pounding on the note he has sounded all week – that Governor Dewey could not enforce a “strong foreign policy” without a sympathetic Congress.
Senator Truman said:
This week you have witnessed the spectacle of your governor, the Republican candidate for President, traveling nearly 3,000 miles in a private train surrounded by his brain-trusters and experts to read a farm speech in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Today, he is taking a three-hour drive over to Syracuse to deliver that same farm speech.
He wants no more of Minnesota, for when he got out there to tell the farmers how to run their affairs, he found that everyone, farmers included, was demanding to be told where the candidate stood on foreign affairs.
‘Hiding under bed’
The vice-presidential nominee said Governor Dewey had given four speeches on foreign affairs “but he refused to tell the people whether he was for a Congress that would work for him.”
He asserted that Mr. Dewey was “hiding under the bed trying to get you to rely upon his words at the same time that he refuses to take the action necessary to make those words mean anything.”
Time to act
Senator Truman said:
Now that will not do when the lives of Americans are at stake. The time has come for Mr. Dewey to act. If he will not act this noon when he speaks at Syracuse, I think that we can fairly assume that he has no intention of acting. This is Mr. Dewey’s last chance. Let us hear from him, or let him be judged by his silence.
Mr. Truman moved into New York after branding Governor Dewey and his running mate, Governor John W. Bricker, a “couple of fakers” and assailing the foreign policy record of Ohio’s Republican Senator Robert A. Taft, one of the eight isolationists he has been criticizing. He spoke last night at Akron and Cleveland.
He called Mr. Dewey a “fence straddler” on foreign policy and said Governor Bricker had given an inaccurate picture of the State of Ohio’s finances in comparing Democratic and Republican administrations.
Mr. Truman called Senator Taft “one of nose unfortunate cases where the son is elected because the people remember the outstanding character of his father.”
After a 50-minute stop at Albany, Mr. Truman was scheduled to move on to Worcester, Massachusetts, and motor from there to Fall River and New Bedford. He will return to Worcester tonight for a party rally.