WENDELL WILLKIE RIDES AGAIN!
Merrill, L. T.
Wendell Willkie Rides Again! By L T. MERRILL THE Hon. Wendell Willkie's voyage of global discovery, so profitable in bobk and movie royalties, happily confirmed Magellan's proof established 422...
...But Mr...
...At Boston, Oct...
...Willkie as their standard-bearer again...
...campaigning, was indicated as a 40 per cent Wisconsin Republican choice compared with Willkie's 20 per cent...
...Willkie wish that the pages bearing these cynical repudiations of sincerity could be expunged from the official record, but they are as much a part of his political shadow that he must drag with him as the clanking chains of old Marley's ghost...
...Willkie, they were soon enough disillusioned after the election...
...Willkie has been the beneficiary in some Wisconsin dailies, what are the results ? A Gallup Poll taken since the first of the year and published Feb...
...We are being edged towards war by an Administration which is alike careless in speech and action...
...But we must know how to preserve it...
...Tom Dewey, without any...
...So such things said from the hustings dealing with solemn matters of life and death for a whole generation of American youth, and accepted at face value by millions of voters as sincere expressions and pledges, are to be lightly laughed off afterwards as "campaign oratory...
...Perhaps, however, it would be unfair to test the candidate by such utterances now nine months old, and which may indeed have been in the nature of more "campaign oratory...
...NYE: One more assertion of yours, that of Oct...
...Laughter] I am very glad you read my speeches, because the President said he did not...
...Laughter...
...The author of these words was Wendell Willkie...
...who say one thing and do another...
...Roosevelt's views, if millions of voters thought they were voting for a stable non-interventionist in the person of Mr...
...it is a matter of choice on my part not to go over campaign speeches...
...Douglas MacArthur, who is doing a job in the Pacific that precludes any gallivanting around in a private car on personal political campaign trips, was only five percentage points behind the ambitious Hoosier schoolboy, later of Wall street and Hollywood, in preferential ratings of Wisconsin Republicans...
...vote-catching leadership, the leadership of compromise, the leadership of expediency—these lead us nowhere...
...WILLKIE: You ask me whether or not I said that...
...As to the charge of instability of Mr...
...Within a few weeks he was plugging for Roosevelt interventionist policies, and his testimony on Feb...
...To begin with, we shall not undertake to fight anybody else's wars...
...Our boys shall stay out of Europe...
...WILLKIE: It might be...
...All the more surprising are these highly organized personal forays and sorties in view of Mr...
...Then this further colloquy: "SEN...
...All the subsequent traveling showmanship tends to belie a sense of genuine assurance on his part that he has the nomination in the bag or that millions of those he left holding the bag last time are as willing to hold it again...
...I have a real fear that this Administration is heading for war, and I am against our going to war.' " At Kansas City, Sept...
...MR...
...One day he is an interventionist, the next day he is an isolationist...
...SEN...
...Willkie's hard-boiled air of assurance last Fall when he laid down his policies in arbitrary fashion before Congressmen of his party at Washington with a take-it-or-leave-it air...
...Willkie's current foray into Wisconsin follows a previous lure tour last November that apparently did not have all the desired effects, though it was carefully and scientifically organized and lavishly financed...
...American political history hardly affords any parallel spectacle of an ambition-bitten aspirant bumping around at such a hectic pace trying to reinflate his sagging pre-conven-tion prospects...
...Willkie, between your foreign policy and that of the Administration?' Answer: 'One difference is my determination to stay out of war...
...These open the way to chaos, not to progress...
...NYE: Do you still agree that that might be the case...
...SEN...
...The Willkie Shadow Mr...
...NYE: Do you still agree that that-might be the case...
...SEN...
...4 primary...
...He was my opponent, you know...
...Willkie's charms and lures and "campaign oratory," and people of the Badger state are now getting a second generous dosage during the final fortnight preceding Wisconsin's Apr...
...S, 1940: "I believe that we should keep out of war at all hazards...
...He added, "I do not see any reason of discussing it and raking up old acrimonies...
...More Than Hints It may be that by putting on the heat the candidate can thaw out some of his 1940 midwest support that definitely became a frozen asset soon after November, 1940...
...Here was a situation obviously calling for fuller personal exposure of the unappreciative Wisconsin electorate to Mr...
...The coy and cagey Gov...
...Well might Mr...
...MR...
...At Chicago, Oct...
...Contrastingly disappointing may be his current American tours of discovery insofar as they reveal that the shape of Willkie support in the United States is neither as well rounded nor as cohesive as it was in 1940 and indeed that in some places it has become appallingly flat...
...It was a bit of campaign oratory...
...Despite the whooping and booming of which Mr...
...Willkie's view just "campaign oratory...
...23, 1940: "Question: 'What is the difference., Mr...
...11, 1941, before the Senate Foreign Relations ] Committee, revealed that what so many had thought were utterances of principle and conviction had been in Mr...
...Willkie, like the groundhog, has a shadow—the undetachable shadow of his 1940 campaign and its cynical denouncement—which must stalk visibly with him wherever he goes on the Midwest stump circuit...
...CLARK of Missouri: You would not have said anything abeut your opponent you did not think was true, would you...
...Willkie's checkup agent, who came into Wisconsin after he had left last Fall, must have discovered that flattered or dazzled Wisconsin editors have given him a better "break" than any other GOP Presidential aspirant—though this would not be the first time Wisconsin editors had climbed on the wrong horse and ridden off somewhere without great results in pulling their readers, or the masses of the people, with them, particularly in medium-sized cities where one-newspaper monopoly has enabled editors to flout obvious popular trends...
...WILLKIE: Oh, no: but occasionally in moments of oratory in campaigns we all expand a bit...
...This from the official record of the hearing: "MR...
...How would he stand up in the Wisconsin primary under the criteria prescribed in the following message to a national church convention at Detroit last May: "The leadership of men who . . . cynically violate the simple moral principles and verities...
...MR...
...Fred Rodell, writing of the campaign in the current Ilaxper's Magazine, says Willkie was "an ardent internationalist, fully in sympathy with the Roosevelt foreign policy" but he "threw out isolationist hints in isolationist strongholds" because "the thing was to use the right words in the right places and pound them across.'* Certainly stronger than mere hints were such Willkie utterances as these: At Cleveland, Oct...
...30: 'On the basis of his'—that is, Roosevelt's— 'past performance with pledges to the people, you may expect we will be at war by April 1941, if he is elected.' "MR...
...Wendell Willkie's voyage of global discovery, so profitable in bobk and movie royalties, happily confirmed Magellan's proof established 422 years ago that the world is round and made in one piece...
...WILLKIE: You ask me whether or not I said that...
...It is not a good omen for an early thaw...
...WILLKIE: As to the statement about the President, in the course of the campaign I made a great many statements about him...
...14, 1940: "Franklin D. Roosevelt has handled foreign affairs in the last seven years in a bungling and incompetent way...
...12, 1940: "We can have peace...
...23 indicated that only one out of five Wisconsin Republicans wanted Mr...
Vol. 8 • March 1944 • No. 13
