Capital Comment

...He damned the old system which the Republican platform would perpetuate...

...Willkie urged "complete medical rare for all...

...There was .neither hamony, nor enthusiasm for their candidates, nor » fighting spirit...

...Now, what kind of a selling talk is that...

...Tha Republicans, Warren said, were in favor of •mployment and prosperity...

...They didn't just dismiss or court-martial Um young soldier who talked (it'a still impossible to learn exactly what they did to him...

...ACCORDING to informed diplomatic circles, that ¦Miup) from General Badoglio to Preaident Roose-*ett last week pledging eternal friendship to the United States and continued efforte on We part to kring together the Kalian and American people was a* mn diplomatic huw-de-do...

...for the veterans...

...Wan-en candidly confessed that his party had no plans for improving or repairing what the New Deal hat brought or failed to bring to the American people in the past decade...

...Only one had proved unfaithful to his trust An even mora amazingly kept war secret is on* which is known to thousand* of men and woman all over the country aimply by the cabalistic terra "Manhattan District" On* of these days, perhapa, 111 he able to toll you the story of what "Manhattan District" is and how that vital war secret ha* been kept inviolate for over a year...

...That's a **ry slight breese by which to r«ad a change in the Political wind...

...to international trade...

...It's a story about the new B-29 super forts that broke into the headlines recently when they bombed Japan...

...And hurt'* bow they handled It...

...Then the Army selected • new secret training »ite, picked a brand now group of trainees, shipped them to the new B-29 training camp under even more cloaely guarded secrecy, and started the whole business from ¦cratch again...

...Anyone with half a brain cell working would hare known that, for domestic reasons at least, America would keep a close tab on what was to be done to or about Italy by the Allies...

...And the big reason for that is the presence here of about six million Italians or Americans of Italian descent...

...To present security and initiative as opposite*, Willkie wrote, is to manufacture a fictitious issue...

...The Republican...

...and kept it for many month...

...A candidate elected on this platform could follow an isolationist policy without repudiating the plank on foreign policy...

...We should begin the moment the war is over to see thst every child in America grows up with the basic necessities of education, good food, adequate clothing, medical rare, and a decent home...

...It was hard to imagine the Republican convention making such a poor impression...

...There appears to be an effort in some quarters to depreciate the stale of relations between the Italian people and the Americans in Italy...

...Contrast this viewpoint with that of the Republican platform...

...To make and guard the peace so wisely that this will be the last time that American homes are called upon to give their sons and daughters to the agony and tragedy of war...

...want to win labor votes away from FDR, but they wrote a plank on labor promptly damned by William Green...

...But for those who are watching for ¦fcoMvalfi atock to start epurting upward after a long downhill trend, tha Taylor victory and the Republican convention are significant straws...

...they want Negro voles, but their plank on lh« abolition of the poll tax will be repudiated by Negro leaders because it proponed a < institutional amendment which would take decades to get adopted, and because Dewey ignored the recommendations of his committee on race discrimination...

...Bat the Republican convention appears to have been even mora of an anti-climax than it was anticipated...

...And that'* how the Mcrtt of the secret weapon waa guarded until wa war* randy to sand the B-29's roaring over unsuspecting Japan...

...they want soldiers' votes, but the soldier-vote bill passed by Congress defrauds most soldiers of the right to vote, and the platform makes no provision...

...It is an eve<i greater blow for Palmiro Tagliatti (formerly Max Krcoli), leader of the Italian Communists, who have attempted to use the prestige of the Soviet Union and the Red Army to chisel their way into control with a handful of followers among the Italian people...

...It may be that some Machiavellian minds see in this a means toward breaking down American policy toward Italy by planting doubts among the American people...

...On the contrary, it U the lateat in the gam* being played by BritUh Mm Mister Winston Churchill to mak* Italy sat...

...It is only to be regretted that we have no national liberal-labor party for which all real progressives could work with unqualified enthusiasm...

...It hasn't worked and it ran never work, for a man whose skilla may permit him to earn only the minimum wage may have live or nix children to rear on that wage...

...Aa Governor Warren of California really put it in hit keynote address, the Republicans actually had nothing more to say than that they are tired of being •ota and want to become ins...

...one bit of good...

...The prime reality in the Italian situation, which the propagandists did not take into account, is that leadei -chip in making policy towarda Italy was from the ¦tart designed to fall to the United States...

...They want the votes of nationalists and Intor-nationalista, but their plank on foreign policy will arouse warm applause from few of either camp...

...The training camp was closed down completely...

...That, apparently, was something the politiros had not figured on...

...Men Without a Party Thk listless, dreary, depressing Republican convention was a political wasteland...

...Hoover and Taft and Dewey orated to apathetic delegate*, who feebly cheered hoary phrases covering thinly reactionary purposes...

...Insofar as Willkie lends hi* still strong influence to the GOP, insofar as he and his liberalism are exploited to get votes for reactionary candidates, he will only be helping to defeat the liberal principles for which he has fought...

...W. Martin's labeling the New Deal as "fascism...

...As a counter to that, consider this story about an American soldier in Italy, reported in the Army archives...

...Their promise...

...Northern Italy has had a long Socialist traditlbn and allegiance...

...Not to mention the fact that Wendell Willkie's blast N&iiut the Republican foreign policy plank has not •one the Republican...

...They di*banded the whole B-29 training program, setting everything back by month...

...Liberal Republicans who rtapect the leadership of Willkie and who feel that he and his liberalism were shabbily treated at Chicago are men without a party, Men Without a Party Even those progreuivos who have not bolted with Russell Davenport are still without • political home in which they can feel comfortable...

...The Republicans may have presented the American people with an emptier convention, but it's hard to remember when, and the history books are no help at all...

...Hundred* of man knew the secret...

...The weasel-worded platform is a masterpiece of evasion and meariinglessness...

...Well, who is against that ? And Warren's was termed a "liberal-' speech...

...Everything was going well until one day on* of those young men in an unguarded moment talked about what he was dojng...

...The force* of isolationism and reaction are in the saddle on the moth-eaten elephant—but their political philosophy is disguiied by language designed to catch votes, the best of which is plagiarized from the language of the New Deal...

...Surely he must be a* displeased with the plank on social security adopted by the convention as he is with the foreign-policy plank...

...mean lesi than Roosevelt's pledgee before hie election in 1982 to balance the budget, cut Federal expenditures, lower taxes, reduce the bureaucratic apparatus...

...For example, it promisee to maintain the protective tariff on competitive products and simultaneously pledges the removal of "destructive barrier...

...This is the tactic which gave us Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover—and the depression and unemployment...

...As tlie American and British armies sweep northward, it becomes more and more apparent that a generation of the black plague did not serve to wipe it out...

...We have left the feeding, clothing, shelter, education, and medical rare of our children to be determined by their parents' income alone...

...on every domeitic problem he could take any stand and say he stood oit the platform of t tie GOP...

...Tougher—so f*r as one American soldier is concerned—to the extent of • broken leg and a smashed motorcycle...

...IM conjunction with what the Republicana were doing end failing to do in Chicago, politicos in the national capital grew quite excited this week by the news from Idaho, where the Democrats in that atate rejected the Incumbent anti-New Dealer Senator D. Worth Clark a* the primary and selected as their candidate in his piece Glen H. Taylor, war worker and cowboy singer, who in hia campaign speeches made a point of pledging complete support to Roosevelt...

...Wendell Willkie has likened the ambiguous plank on foreign policy to the one used by Harding in 1920 to kill the League of Nations...

...This particular soldier, a member of a motorcycle corps, had fought with the Americans through every campaign in North Africa, had gone on to Sicily, then the Italian mainland and northward above Rome without suffering a scratch...

...The Democratic Party with all its grievous defects is the lesser evil in this campaign...

...What is true of wiuicie is true 01 every Republican liberal...

...Far that reason, although the Republican convention was regarded as an anti-climax in view of the previous Dewey build-up, politicians here nevertheless looked forward to it as the moment to set off the fuse for a popular Meat that would finally put a Republican in the White House for the Arst time in twelve yars...

...Their joy and enthusiasm reached such a peak, in fact, that they proved tougher to face than the Naxis...

...All of the men who had been ipocially selected were sent back to their original camp...

...As the Allied armies heat their way northward and release more of the Italian population from Nazi bondage, reports in Washington reveal that the allegiance of the Italian people is preponderantly Social Democratic...

...The downfall of Badoglio also represents a blow for Stalin and Soviet policy, which was committed to support of the ex-Fascist Badoglio...

...Now is the time for all good Republican liberals not to come to the aid of their party, but to bolt and ensure the re-election of Roosevelt...

...Nobody knew just what these »*n wero doing...

...In his serie* of articles just before the convention, Willkie presented a social security plan that is more radical than the Beveridge plan for Britain...

...Here is an interring sidelight which illustrates how that has been achieved...

...For if there is «»T point on which there is American unanimity, it •«• the resolve, that thia nation'must never again swap • Wilson, for a Harding...

...Protection against old-age, illness and economic misfortune must be a right for everyone...

...Is there any chance that Dewey, Warren, Biicker, Spangler, Taft, Hoover, and their big-business backers will favor enactment of such a scheme into law...

...This ia demagoguery, simple but not pure—on a level with Jos...

...The children of America are the future of America...

...One of the amaxing performances of this war i* How certain vital war secrets haVe been kept inviolate, although in some cases thousands of men and women ¦re involved in carrying them out...

...There are no such ItTga numbers of Italians in Britain, Russia or China...

...Leaders who can't manage a convention better than they did can't be entrusted with our nation'* affairs in these crucial times...

...an adequate and uniform system of Federal unemployment insurance...

...Governor Warren, keynoting the convention and the campaign, aaid the Republicans want only "to get our boys back home again—victorious and with all speed," and to "open the door of opportunity to all Americans...

...It served to booat President Rooaevelt'a declining atock for a fourth term...

...It ia not a positive program for either reform or for reaction, though negatively it is thoroughly reactionary...

...The principles of ¦elf-preservation, no less than those of humanity, demand that we place squarely on society the responsibility of making the citizens of tomorrow healthy, energetic, snd educated...

...It adjourned in deepening gloom...

...And it was supposed that as •am a* the Republican campaign rot under war, its very real strength would soon become apparent...

...Then this strange thing happened as, in the van of the American Army," this soldier rolled into a newly liberated Italian town . . . the American boy woke up the next day in a hospital with a broken leg...

...They seem "bent on making a policy of dullness...

...The delegates, reported Anne O'Hare McCormick, "talk as if the ideal quality in a standard-bearer in mediocrity...

...The Army picked specially selected men from Army camps all over the country and sent them quietly to a certain western camp...

...Taxes fall most heavily upon the lowest paid workers, while benefits are largest to the most highly paid...

...Insofar as the Republican platform echoes, feebly, any of his ideas, it is only to obscure the real purposes and policies of the party bosses who hate Willkie as much as they hate Roosevelt...

...Instead of the fuse getting lit, the poor thing seems to have sputtered and gone out...

...According to the official reports, this is what had happened: The civilian population of the town came out en matte to greet their liberators...

...Fooey...

...The last thing they want is a 'big man...

...FDR's Security Plan Two Views: Alexander Kerensfcy and Ely Culbertion Death Is Not Enough S. L. Solon The Nazism of Richard Strauss...................nm utr Money Experts in a Huddle..................aluhthalau The Hutchins Melee in Chicago.............mnml owiu The Socialist Party and War.............ammo §au* awn Labor Unity and Racism....................iuawou *oos»m...

...Badoglio'* maaaafa of friendship was road hare aa an effort »y < 'huirliiii to break down President Rouse -volt's pledge Oat the Italian people were going to be ajfthltled to ebooae their own government in free and democratic elections...

...Military Intelligence quickly learned of the lapse...

...The Pyrrhic victory over Willkie—and all his ideas —added to the dread of defeat in November...

...Benefits must be adequate to provide a minimum sustenance in health and decency, regardless of a man's previous earnings...

...After the B-29's began to roll off the assembly lines, the Army secretly started training men to fly the behemoths of the air...

...The only chance that anything approaching such a plan will be adopted is through the reelection of Roosevelt, Wallace, Wagner, and other liberal Democrats—and then only if the librral-labor force* are $trong enough to compel Con greet and the Adminittra-tion to launch a vew New ileal...

...It may be recalled by constant readers of The New Leader that this pledge was reported in this spare just about f yoat afo as an American policy which eould be relied on at a time when some newspapers, such as FU, were busily spreading the propaganda it..i wt ware making "deals" with Badoglio...

...The Army want further...

...Everything vanished aa though it had never been...

...The ambiguity of thia plank is matched by those on domestic problem...

...This is a necessity "to the well-being of our whole society...

...The Dismemberment of Germany A STATIMINT IY 2S INT I SOCIALISTS...

...To be sure, Taylor beat Clark for the Senatorial Bomination by the slim margin of 216 votes: Taylor gotting > total of 10,711 to Clark's 10,495...

...He criticised the Wagner Murray Oingell bill at "perpetuating the inequities of the present law...

...and his motorcycle smashed...

...It can hardly ba a secret that before the Republican convention, even Administration circles appeared to think that Roosevelt's chances for re-election were teaeh-and-go it boat...

...f«r the Houaa of Savoy and ita eotoria of FaaeiaU who alao aarrad Muaaolini through twenty year* of Italy'* blaekeat yeara...

...So far, only the staunchly democratic policy of the United States government under the leadership or Secretary of State Cordell Hull has prevented Churchill from imposing his imperial will on the Italian people, aad ha* enabled the latter to express their democratic desire* through the creation of the Bonomi cabinet...

...On every single positive point made by Willkie in his series of articles on labor, the Negro problem, planning for postwar prosperity, cooperation of labor, industry, and government, etc., the New Deal Democrats are far closer to him than are Dewey and the COP bosses...