THE WEEK IN REVIEW
THE WEEK IN REVIEW ONE of the strangest campaigns in American history neared a noisy conclusion this week as President Roosevelt and Governor Dewey, not to mention their retinues of lieutenants,...
...A peace that is vindictive, Thomas declared, will "poison social relationships...
...Democratic Party officials were elated at the size of the great crowds which greeted him, and they were pleased, too, that the President's braving of adverse Fall weather was providing a reply to whispers about Mr...
...Speaking in New York, the Republican candidate denounced the "personal, secret diplomacy" of President Roosevelt and charged that "we are paying in blood" because of "ill-conceived" proposals by the Treasury Department for dealing with a conquered Germany...
...And Roosevelt, I suppose, would go on with the futile task of trying to appease them both by underwriting their empires with the lives of our sons...
...Thomas accused both major party candidates of ducking basic issues, and of ignoring subjects like imperialism and competitive armaments...
...These days—and I am now speaking of October, 1944—I hear voices on the air attacking me for my 'failure' to prepare this nation for this war and to warn the American people of the approaching tragedy...
...I believe with all my heart in collective bargaining," Dewey declared, "and it must again be free collective bargaining...
...We are paying in blood for our failure to have ready an intelligent program for dealing with invaded Germany...
...On the basis of our Treasury Department's ill-conceived proposals, the German people were told that a program of destruction was in store for them if they surrender...
...In his rather lengthy address at the Waldorf-Astoria that night, the President found himself in agreement with Gov...
...Dewey pointed out that the plan was scrapped after stirring up a "first-class Cabinet crisis," but no alternate plan has yet been produced...
...But I should be false to the very foundations of mjr religious and political convictions if I should ever relinquish the hope, and even the faith, that in all peoples, without exception, there live some instinct for truth, some attraction toward justice, and some passion for peace, buried as they may be in the German case under a brutal regime...
...Continuing to attack Roosevelt foreign policy on the fringes, without ever coming to grips on major, basic issues, Dewey praised results at the Dumbarton Oaks security conferences and repeated his support of a world organization to preserve peace, through use of force where necessary...
...Meanwhile," Dewey pointed out, "Germany's propaganda minister, Goebbels, has seized upon the episode to terrify the Germans into fanatical resistance...
...THE WEEK IN REVIEW ONE of the strangest campaigns in American history neared a noisy conclusion this week as President Roosevelt and Governor Dewey, not to mention their retinues of lieutenants, filled the air-waves with charges and counter-charges and claims and counter-claims...
...Living On The Past' In a speech in Pittsburgh aimed at the labor vote, Dewey contended that the New Deal is seeking to "live on its past" and has not offered "even the pretense of a program for the future...
...So many are the causes of conflict in the world, so keen are the latent rivalries among .the victors, and so provocative of war is imperialism, that if by a miracle all the Germans and Japanese could be destroyed, Stalin and Churchill would go on demanding strategic frontiers and maneuvering for spheres of influence...
...Conceding that the Roosevelt Administration has done "some good things in the past," the New York Governor charged that it is now seeking to "hold office forever in stalemated idleness...
...In discussing Soviet Russia, Thomas said: "Stalin was not so weak that he had to make the infamous deal with Hitler which gave the latter the green light for war...
...It must be bargaining for the rights of working people, and not for the profit of political bosses...
...Dewey argued that American foreign policy today "gives cause for deep anxiety," and he expressed the conviction that "to the extent that we leave our international relations to the personal, secret diplomacy of the President, our efforts to achieve a lasting peace will fail," Denouncing Roosevelt handling of the Polish dispute with Russia, Dewey declared that for all his secret conversations with Josef Stalin, "Mr...
...His frequent use of quotations from Administration sources to emphasize his own points brought the repeated charge that he was tearing words out of their context and seeking to mislead the nation...
...Every people must be assured self-government and where guidance to that end is necessary, it must be under international and not imperial authority...
...But it will be necessary for them to earn their way into the fellowship of peace-loving and law-abiding nations...
...Roosevelt appeared to be going further than Dewey when he called for a provision that would enable the American representative on a proposed world council to approve the use of military force for the suppression of aggression without submitting the question to Congress...
...It is clear," he said, "that, if the world organization is to have any reality at all, our representative must be endowed in advance by the people themselves, by constitutional means through their representatives in Congress, with authority to act...
...Replying to Dewey charges of secret diplomacy, the President made this comment: "After my return from Teheran, I stated officially that no secret commitments had been made...
...They were fighting with the frenzy of despair...
...If we really want peace, the enemy nations should be assured that disarmed, stripped of conquest, and possessed of trustworthy governments, they will be included in the benefits, economic and political, of whatever organizations are set up...
...The German people are not going to be enslaved— because the United Nations do not traffic in human slavery...
...They will be relieved of that burden—• we hope forever...
...Thomas Blasts Both The foreign policy pronouncements of both Roosevelt and Dewey continued to draw sharp challenge from Norman Thomas, the Socialist candidate...
...Accusing the New Deal of posing as labor's friend, while it was actually turning "collective bargaining into political bargaining," Dewey contended that President Roosevelt deliberately created a crisis in the threatened railway- labor strike in 1943 in order to reap "political cash" and "political profit" for "New Deal City bosses...
...The people want their Government to act, and not merely to talk, whenever and wherever there is a threat to world peace...
...Dewey On Foreign Policy Dewey struck again during this same week—this time on the subject of foreign policy...
...The Railway Brotherhoods, he asserted, were forced to hire Edward J. Flynn, former Democratic National Chairman, at a fee of $25,000 to represent them in their negotiations for a wage increase...
...For we know in our own land how many good men and women of German ancestry have proved loyal, freedom-loving, citizens...
...No bargains will be made with Nazis, he said, and they shall not be left with any shred of control, open or secret, of the instruments of German government...
...Lasting peace, Thomas asserted in an address entitled "We are Losing The Peace," cannot be obtained in the light of the imperial interests of the major powers...
...We bring no charge against the German race, as such, for we cannot believe that God has eternally condemned any race of humanity...
...Roosevelt's health...
...Before reporting for his evening speaking engagement, the President rode in an open car on a 51-mile tour within New York City—all in a chilling rain...
...These same voices were not so very audible five years ago—or even four years ago—giving warning of the grave peril we then faced...
...The issue then is between my veracity and the continuing assertions of those who have no responsibility in the foreign field, or, perhaps I should say in a field foreign to them...
...If we do not catch the international felon when we have our hands on him, if we let him get away with his loot because the town council has not passed an ordinance authorizing the arrest, then we are not doing our share to prevent another world war...
...Roosevelt has not yet even secured Russian recognition of those whom we consider to be the true government of Poland...
...It is "the Stalin and Churchill struggle for spheres of influence," not the machinery of international cooperation that is the great difficulty in the way of a lasting peace, Thomas asserted...
...Anyway in alliance with Hitler he took possession of the little Baltic countries with which he had treaties of non-aggression, and occupied a large part of Poland...
...And, in their climb up that steep road, we shall certainly see to it that they are not encumbered by having to carry guns...
...The Democratic Party, he asserted, had no right to claim social reforms as its property, since a number of gains were made during Republican Administrations...
...He had some excuse but no justification for his conduct in the fumbling power politics of the British and French governments...
...Above all the peace must be non-imperialist...
...No Race Eternally Condemned In an obvious reply to Dewey's charge that insistence on "Unconditional Surrender" is prolonging the war and schemes for dismemberment of Germany are boosting enemy resistance, Mr...
...The security conferences at Dumbarton Oaks, praised by both Roosevelt and Dewey, "merely provided a camouflaged triple alliance," Thomas charged, and declared that it was "preposterous nonsense to believe that existing governments can bind their successors to use parts of competitive armaments to constitute an international force against an aggressor, especially since the aggressor is likely to be one of themselves...
...This was necessary, Dewey maintained, because Flynn "knew his way up the back stairs of the White House...
...Dewey's assertion that international machinery for peace must be established while hostilities are still in progress...
...Most of the polls and many of the experts were leaning toward the conclusion that it was Roosevelt in a tight race...
...We shall not leave them a single element of military power or of potential military power," the President said...
...Probably his principal hope was that the Western Europe powers would destroy one another while Russia sat by...
...Roosevelt declared that there is not and never has been any intention of enslaving the German people...
...But Mr...
...He telegraphed Hitler: 'Our friendship is cemented in blood,' and Molo-tov declared, 'Fascism is a matter of taste...
...In a series of major addresses broadcast to the nation, Dewey swung vigorously, and sometimes wildly at the Roosevelt regime's record during 12 years of office...
...No Secret Commitments' Although he refused to mention Dewey, the President made several unmistakable references to the GOP candidate's campaign...
...Almost overnight the morale of the German people f seemed changed...
...Few of the political experts disputed the fact that Dewey had gained strength since launching his campaign...
...Their guesses were hedged, however, with a vast array of "ifs" and concern over such imponderables as the soldier vote, the extent of civilian voting, the weather on Election Day, the response to the Socialist Party's appeal, etc...
...The Republican contender directed his heaviest fire at the scheme concocted by Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., for reducing Germany to the status of a weak agricultural nation...
...The New York Times, which last week threw its support to President Roosevelt even though it shudders at the domestic record of the New Deal, pointed out that Dewey had achieved a great strategic success in forcing the President to abandon reliance on his role as Commander-in-Chief and to come out "into the open as a political candidate...
...F. D. R. Strikes Back President Roosevelt struck back later in the week, with a major address on foreign policy in New York...
Vol. 8 • October 1944 • No. 44
