A Case of Campaign Oratory?

...Another question discussed anxiously by all rational Americans during the campaign was that of Roosevelt's declining strength...

...When he said that Roosevelt is a "push-over" for Stalin, and that is why Stalin is eager to see him elected, he spoke an unvarnished truth...

...Governor Dewey gsve informed and vigorous expression to The New leader's pre-campaign policy...

...The New Leader has constantly, up to the beginning of the campaign, advocated an opposite policy...

...Anothkr momentous issue before us was that of of the Communist infiltration...

...I thought it waa about equally divided between Dewey and the President, although in the matter of appeal to sub-rational motives the President's windup on an intimate conversation with God gave him, perhaps, a alight edge over the Governor...

...By accepting this nomination the man (Dewey) classified himself...

...Wh»t has brought it about that Hillman's crime against democracy in joining the Communists to jockey for power in the Democratic Party, preceded by his hetrayal of democracy in joining the Communists to kill the Artierirsn 1-abor Party, haa dwindled to the size of a grudgingly admitted "error...

...Sad to see this mulish suicidal will to self-delusion creep into The New Leader...

...Bright high school oratory" was its name for such grave statements of truth...

...Since it defines the principal issue at stake not only in the United States, but throughout the world, a serious reply to this charge was called for from" any paper asking a vote for a sixteen-year term...

...What ha has said since dees net count...

...its editors accused him of "avoiding all the real issues and attempting to stampede the voters by an appeal to sub-rational motives...

...Worse that that, it was greeted with an explicit back-down by T*» New Leader from ita own high place and mission...

...The anxiety was aggravated by his acquiescence in the nomination for Vice-President of a man inexperienced in executive office and unknown to the public—except as an offspring of the infamous Democratic machine of Pendergast in Kansas City...

...It said no serious thing...

...There is not a word in Dewey's address in Boston about the menace of Communist infiltration which could not be matched in The New leader's editorials, contributed articles, dispatches from its Washington correspondent, and columns under the title "Where the l%q Ends...

...Is this yea anting issues fairly and cleanly...

...The Roman republic, moved by the same danger, elected two executives at a lime...

...He presented it, moreover, without the slightest exaggeration...

...On this issue, again, Governor Dewey presented The New Leader's pre-campaign position with vigor...

...In view of this editorial back-down, the anonymoui article "PAC Is Not Communist" looks bad indeed...

...Another momentous question which The New Leader (until the campaign began) kept in the forefront of ita criticisms of the President, is whether or not the United States shall use its dominant diplomatic position in a hard-headed effort to stop the march of Communist totalitarianism through the world...

...Except for the gaff about Berle, which was quite obviously a blunder—for no candidate would intentionally lay himself open to such a comeback—his own speeches struck me as rather above than below the usual not-too-high American average...

...No single one of my friends and neighbors failed to note with anxiety a loss of vigor in his recent speeches...

...That is absolutely true, end is a momentous criticism of the President...

...Here again The New Leader gave no leadership...

...In the light of its past, The New Leader's statement that in "playing up the red scare" Dewey waa "avoiding the i eal issues" ran only honestly be described as stultifying...

...In other words, in our search for economic security we may lose forever our personal and political freedoms...

...Hill, "the CommunirU have little real power...

...As a contributing editor I feel bound te> state that they failed dismally in this endeavor...

...To see this paper, in the eier* rabid thirst for votes in a transitory struggle for position, turn round and join those ridiculing the same :j«d scare" was painful to ita frienda—to those of them, »t least .least, who value reason and integrity...

...Don't be footed by false labels, by empty words and high-sounding phrasee...

...Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of liberal-minded democrats voted for Dewey, and did so for the most serious reasons imaginable...

...Exactly where Dewey touched frankly the very problem which has troubled The New Leader most...

...Who is this Stephen Hill, "veteran newswriter," who obliterates with shallow and disingenuous whitewash all the stains left on the PAC hy The New Leader's previous vitriolic attacks...

...Let me mention a half dozen of the vital issues about which all thoughtful Americans were exercised during the campaign (no matter how they voted), and on which Dewey expressed the opposition view with sincere force and no little eloquence...

...It denounced Sidney Hillman—six months running—for his crime against democracy in joining the Communists to form the PAC and jockey for power in the Democratic Party...

...The President'* policy toward Stalin is one of appeasement...

...One waa the issue of the lt-year term of office...

...Another vital question in the Campaign was whether the United States is to have a foreign policy or not, and if so, whether that foreign policy is to be kept under the hat of the chief executive and a few of his social friends...

...And why...

...The New Leader was supposed to engineer this contact, not sabotage it with the campaign oratory of "veteran newswriters" who kid themselves that they are not middle-class...

...If I had wanted to do that, I should have done itbelieve it or not—during the campaign...

...Is it because of any force now confining or acting against them"' "The Communists have little real power because the first time they really step out of line the National CIO headquarters * ill swat them down...

...His campaign, moreover, reached a lower level than any wa have been plunged down to in nearly half a century...

...New leader Ignored Vital Election Issue, Eastman Contends By Max Eastman THE editors of The New Leader said in their election issue that they had "tried to maintain a balance amid the usual campaign oratory and present the issues . . . fairly and cleanly...

...They never are between Democrats and Republicans, and that invariably gives rise to a lot of hokum «" both sides...

...i^noi 11 hit momentous question at issue in the campaign was whether we are going to make it our conscious effort to achieve economic security without losing our political liberties, or whether in our zeal for economic reform we shall continue to encroach recklessly upon those liberties...

...Now, in all this there exists an obvious danger to our fundamental freedoms...

...Ia this debate in The New Leader or refutation by smear-work in the Daily Worker...

...It waited until after the election to admit that "this was a serious campaign about vital issues," but even then gave ita readers no glimpse of those issues...

...No doubt the detached liberals need contact with the Isbor movement, but no more than the labor movement needs contact with detached liberals...

...That is the reason...

...Hasn't every fellow-traveler, every Communistfronter, every dupe and fakir, from the beginning of the Trojan horse policy to this day mouthed this same phrase: "We'll use them as long as they are with us, and when they step out of line, then we'll swat them down...

...The sobering fact is that Dewey's campaign oratory was on a higher level than The New Leader's...

...Not once in all the past twelve years has the New Deal faced this situation frankly and courageously...

...The points at issue between him and the President, although vital, were not numerous...

...And haven't we heard that before...

...It gave them this: "Thomas E. Dewey represented dangerous and reactionary forces...

...He "mouths New Deal phrases in order to conceal reactionary purposes/' "The whole substance and manner is false and phoney...

...The danger is that in accepting the support of Government in certain broad aspects of our economy we may slip by stages into complete Government control of our lives...

...On this issue also—up to the moment of its capture by Campaign Oratory— The New Leader gave real leadership to the liberals and the labor movement...

...The New Leader, which so bitterly denounced, and indeed renounced, Roosevelt when he first cracked down on Wallace, should have been more disturbed, not less, than others about this question...

...zation waa greeted with boos and catcalls...

...In this cause—rwhich is in the long view the cause of democracy and civilised morals—The New Leader has been denounced and ridiculed for playing up "the red scare," until ita insistence upon the authentic and genuine reason* for alarm had come to seem, to those who really know the facts, heroic...

...And to see The New Leader, "America's Liberal-Labor Weekly," link this blind folly with a slur upon "intellectuals"—in favor, we must suppose, of "dynamic actionists"—is really alarming...

...If those statement* had bean made before the campaign by some American public man of Dejtey, eminence, a shout of jubilation and praise would hav( gone up from The New Leader office that could h»»» been heard in Albany...

...I am not advocating a vote for Thomas E. Dewey...

...Look at the Latin American countries, or at any of the dictatorships in Europe, and you can see what cornea of brushing aside the limitation, whether legal or traditional, upon the term of office of the chief executive...

...How is it that the identification of "some 80 Communists in the PAC . . . most of them in New York and California" from being a sinister portent has become (with a hush-hush as to the posts they occupy) a trivial parenthesis in a hymn of praise to the PAC for its freedom from just this taint ? "Even in these two states," sings Mr...

...Their attitude was one of blind rabid partisanship—the partisanship of those lass anxious about human destiny than about their own position in the edifice of power...

...The New Leader, which in the past has tried to be as wise and witty on the same subject, had no word to say...

...It denounced Sidney Hillman for his treachery to democracy in joining the Communists to capture the American Ijibor Party...

...I am urging The New Leader, in future crises of opinion, to "maintain a balance" and "present issues fairly and cleanly-" I am asking its editors-in-charge to stick to the method of human debate as against the method of the waifpack, the totalitarian, the mob-emotion method, in supporting the new Liberal Party...

...But one need net go back so far...

...When spoken by Governor Dewey it was greeted with that well-timed silence which is so important an ingredient of "the usual campaign oratory...

...Nothing haa so honorably distinguished this p>(m among liberal publications, and won it so much loyalty and admiration both from labor men and intellectuals as its heroic struggle against Communist infiltration and the Administration'a acquiescence in it...

...Undoubtedly it was disturbed, but its solution was to pretend that there was no question at all...

...The headline itself ignores the real problem, or meets it with a play on words, in the best tradition of the Communist-fronters...

...This issue waa explicitly posed in the last sentence of the Republican platform, and the opposition side was ably presented by Governor Dewey...

...For the sole reason that the paper had sold its uimt to the job of winning an election, this eminent hdy in what is soon to be the chief task of democratic eirilj...

...With one-Man government aweepiag over the world and democracy engaged in a last-ditch Bght in ita Anglo-Saxon aUoaghold, this iaeae waa momentous...

...In many directions the free market which old-time economists talked about is gone...

...In agriculture, in labor and in money we are committed to some degree of Government intervention in the free workings of our economic system...

...The opposition's standpoint on this issue was not only wisely, but wittily, presented by Governor Dewey...

...The Greeks were so intelligently aware of the danger of wag terms that they elected officials for one year only...

...But The New Leader had nothing to say to them...

...Only partisans who had derided not to think could ignore, as The New leader did, the gravity of this issue...

...This same truth was welcomed by The New i.ckcici with vociferous applause when suggested by its friend William C. Bullitt in a recent news article from Italy...

...In playing up the red scare and the President's age Dewey was avoiding all the real issues and attempting to stampede the voters by an appeal to sub-rational motives...