The Pittsburgh Press (September 23, 1944)
‘Unpreparedness’ laid to New Deal
Bridgeport, Connecticut (UP) –
Rep. Clare Boothe Luce (R-CT) charged last night that America’s war preparedness was hampered until Germany attacked Russia in June 1941, by influential New Dealers and present members of the CIO Political Action Committee “who burp noisily whenever Joseph Stalin gets indigestion.”
“That is one reason why we are taking such a long and bloody time to defeat Germany and Japan today,” she said.
Opening her reelection campaign in industrialized Bridgeport, Connecticut headquarters of the PAC, Mrs. Luce asserted that Bridgeport PAC director Sam Gruber was one of 63 lawyers of the American Peace Mobilization who in 1940 sent telegrams to President Roosevelt and the House Military Affairs Committee calling for defeat of the Selective Service Bill.
Recalling that PAC chairman Sidney Hillman and even President Roosevelt had pledged complete liberation of Poland two years ago, she asked the reason for their “strange silence” about the restoration of a free Poland in the face of Russian opposition now.
Mrs. Luce described her Democratic opponent, Attorney Margaret Connors as a “New Deal rubber stamp” and offered her own record in Congress as evidence she was “neither reactionary nor isolationist.”