The Evening Star (December 7, 1945)
Green asserts Truman is defeated in every diplomatic skirmish
CHICAGO (AP) – Gov. Dwight H. Green of Illinois charged before the Republican National Committee today that the Truman administration had “suffered the most humiliating defeat in history” by losing “every skirmish” on the international diplomatic front.
In a vigorous address possibly presaging his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in 1948, the Illinois governor asserted, “We have been told that we should not raise our voice against the rape of Java by the British and Dutch for fear of offending some voters.
“We have been told we must not even protest against the shameful betrayal of Poland for fear of offending Russia’s following over here.”
Republicans must make up their minds in the first peacetime meeting of the National Committee in four years, whether they are going to fish or cut bait, he declared.
Wants leverage used
“It must be our vigorous policy to use the leverage afforded by the discussion of forgiveness of lease-lend, or of requests for new loans and every other peaceful means to speed the liberation of the people of these nations.”
The governor’s speech came as Republican committeemen gathered to approve what most of them regarded as a generalized police statement issued by House and Senate Republicans.
Gov. Green came forth with far more than the “welcoming” speech for which he had been marked down on the program.
He told the National Committee it ought to “propose a complete about face from the weak and vacillating Truman New Deal diplomacy which has suffered the most humiliating defeat in American history.”
Sees Four Freedoms violated
“With the greatest military force in the world,” he declared, “it has lost every skirmish on the diplomatic front. The Four Freedoms and the Atlantic Charter not only have been disregarded, but specifically violated.”
Declaring that American diplomacy under President Truman “has become the abject servant of British, French and Communist imperialism,” Gov. Green said that “power politics again rules the world and the Truman administration had stood helplessly by.”
Without offering any specific solution for the international problem, the Illinois governor turned to a discussion of domestic issues with the assertion that the “time has come to bring national expenditures down to the tax receipts of our national government.”
He urged that Congress enact legislation “requiring full publicity to all deals for disposal of surplus war goods or alien property.”
Of the labor-management controversy, he said: “We believe that most of our labor conflicts could be settled promptly if management and labor were free to negotiate in their own interests.”
He noted that war veterans are “coming home to the greatest housing shortage in the history of America,” and said this was “produced by New Deal policies both before and during the war.”
“The people are tired of doubletalk,” Gov. Green declared. “No party can be all things to all men. Let us Republicans be true to ourselves and our honest beliefs. I predict that if we do that, we shall gain 10 votes for every one we lose.”