The Evening Star (November 2, 1946)
‘House-divided’ theme stressed by Democrats
GOP orators rest as campaign goes into home stretch
By the Associated Press
The campaign for control of the Eightieth Congress turned into the home stretch today with Democrats pounding on a theme once expounded by Republican Abraham Lincoln – “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
While Republicans for the most part took an oratorical breather and President Truman maintained his silence, Democratic party leaders urged voters from coast to coast to go to the polls Tuesday and elect a House and Senate which will uphold the Chief Executive on international and domestic issues.
In Kansas City, House Speaker Rayburn declared in a broadcast that the election of a GOP majority in Congress could bring only “confusion which would lead to chaos.”
Mr. Rayburn said the nation’s voters have the choice of two roads: “One leads to the greatest prosperity this country and the world have ever known; the other will bring only confusion in a house divided against itself.”
Barkley appeals to voters
On the same general theme, Senate Majority Leader Barkley said in a radio speech that if the Republicans gained control of Congress “the nation could say goodbye to any bipartisan foreign policy.”
Sen. Barkley accused the GOP of being “shot through with the old isolationist virus” despite “the lip service it pays to international cooperation.”
Sen. Barkley acknowledged that “some of the Republicans in Congress are undoubtedly sincere in their desire for world cooperation.” But he added that “many of the leaders – and these include the most influential men in the party – would quickly turn America back on the road to isolationism if their party should come into power.”
He also conceded that some Republicans “voted on the right side” on final passage of various international measures.
“But before the final vote was reached,” he continued, “many of them sought to scuttle or cripple the measures with every parliamentary device at their maneuver and command. Most of these attempts were defeated only with the overwhelming majority of the votes of the Democrats.”
Wallace backs ‘progressives’
In Chicago, Henry A. Wallace, who was fired as secretary of commerce by President Truman last month in a row over U.S. foreign policy, urged the election of “progressive Democrats,” saying:
“The century of the common man is here. … Not even a Republican victory at this time would delay the trend for long.
“We know that the forces of reaction composed of the traditional unholy alliance of the Republican Party and vested interests are on the march.”
Mr. Wallace, cheered throughout his address at the Chicago stadium, proposed that the United States accept Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov’s “daring challenge” for a world disarmament program, “if we really want peace.”
Daniels assails Republicans
On the southern Democratic front Woodrow Wilson’s old secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, told a party rally at Smithfield, North Carolina, that election of a GOP Congress would “invite a repetition of the betrayal of peace which shamed America” after the first world conflict.
Charging that the Republicans “submarined” the League of Nations in 1919 -21, Mr. Daniels asked: “Will the American people again trust their heart’s desire for world peace to the Republican Party which scuttled the peace after World War I?”
In Welch, West Virginia, Sen. Pepper (D-Florida) told a party rally that the Republicans are “intent on bringing about inflation” and asserted that GOP leaders had “destroyed effective price control and prevented the orderly distribution of meat and other necessities.”
Philip Murray, CIO president, urged workers to repudiate “every reactionary old guard Republican,” and added in a Washington broadcast: “If reaction wins on November 5, it will launch the most vicious as sault on labor’s rights in American history.”
The campaign side issue of Rep. May’s candidacy cropped up when Rep. McCormack (D-Massachusetts), House majority leader, said he endorsed the Kentucky Democrat because Mr. May rendered “valiant service” in getting defense bills through the House in wartime. Mr. May is chairman of the House Military Affairs Committee.
Sen. Barkley also campaigned recently for Mr. May, whose connections with the Garsson munitions combine came under fire by the Senate War Investigating Committee.
The only Republican speaker of prominence was Sen. Brewster of Maine, who drew boos and hisses at Seattle when he told University of Washington students he favors keeping American troops in China.
Sen. Brewster attacked the Democratic Party as “an institution of divided ideas and ideals.”
In Rockford, Illinois, Archibald MacLeish, poet and former assistant secretary of state, asked for an American foreign policy “based on our own initiative – on the kind of world our forefathers would have established.”
Mr. MacLeish said “strange misrepresentations of the American character” characterize the present international policy of this country. “Some flag-wavers,” he said, have presented a picture of a country with “a people so afraid of what Russia will do that it has lost sense of what it must do.”