Three Views

Last week millions of U. S. citizens, each in his own way, came to terms with the world crisis. They met it bitterly or without concern, sadly or stoically, with a vague conviction that they could see it through or with a dark foreboding of its outcome. But they met it. In Washington President Roosevelt sent to Congress a bill whose vast powers made the crisis unmistakable. Sometimes men were hesitant about the terms on which they met it. Sometimes they met it with an outburst of rage. More often they met it with tentative approval, coupled with a sidelong glance at the President on whom great powers to deal with it would be conferred.

No observer could pin down the vast mass of undefined reactions that followed each other, quick as thought, over the U. S. public mind. No single observer tried. Yet last week three men stood out like characters in a political drama who symbolized three different attitudes toward the crisis, three different ways to meet it.

One of the three men was President Roosevelt, who without fanfare asked Congress for greater powers than any President has held. One was Wendell Willkie, who accepted the need for a concentration of Presidential power but asked for assurance that it would be returned to the people, who gave it. One was Alfred Landon, normally the least bitter of U. S. speechmakers, who in a tense and impassioned address accused both Franklin Roosevelt and Wendell Willkie, in the light of last week's events, of having deceived the people in the Presidential campaign. Not since the campaign itself had U. S. opinion swung and twisted so wildly.

Roosevelt. At his press conference President Roosevelt outlined the bill that would give him power to obtain and transfer war supplies to Britain and her allies. The bill would give him very broad powers, he said, but someone had to have authority to act quickly in the world crisis; he did not want the power it would grant, but someone had to have it so that quick action could be taken. Even as he went on to talk gravely to reporters of the need for speed, of the kind of action likely to be undertaken under the authority of the bill, of his hope that Congress would quickly pass it, the bill itself was read to a startled Congress.

The powers delegated to the President were enormous (see p. 15). Yet there was less discussion of them than of President Roosevelt. The issues and charges of the campaign--the fear of dictatorship, the distrust of the Third Term, the charges that a continuation of the New Deal would mean a collectivized state--came back like echoes that blurred arguments before they were clearly heard. As in the last days before the election, the headlines swam together: Wheeler Charges--War Plans Alleged--Hoover and Dewey Oppose --Capital Startled--Senator Johnson Calls Bill a Monstrosity. Now as then the acrimony was begotten by mutual distrust between the President and a substantial minority over his use of political power. Said distrustful Columnist Raymond Clapper: "When he is proposing to take power from Congress, Mr. Roosevelt is all eager for quick action. When it is for him to yield up some power, then the matter must be weighed very deliberately...."

London. Said Alfred Landon, who has backed the President in aid to Britain, who threw his delegates to Wendell Willkie at Philadelphia: "If Mr. Willkie had revealed [his position] before the Republican National Convention he would not have been nominated, and if Mr. Roosevelt had revealed it before election he would not have been re-elected."

Soft-spoken Alfred Landon, who ran to his own defeat almost without harsh words, had never made a more bitter charge than that. Last week voters, looking backward over the hectic days when they had made their decision between Roosevelt and Willkie--reviewing the arguments, remembering the atmosphere--found that the issues had not prepared them for the crisis they now faced. The campaign itself had gone through cycles of plain-speaking and warning, followed by periods when the emphasis was all on keeping out of war. There had been no time when Wendell Willkie and Franklin Roosevelt had declared that the U. S. should risk war to insure British victory, no time when they had said flatly that the course they advocated involved risk of war. Perhaps they deceived themselves. Certainly they deceived all those who wanted to be deceived. Although in his acceptance speech Wendell Willkie had warned that no man could foresee the future clearly enough to promise peace, and had promised to outdo Adolf Hitler in any contest Hitler chose ("Energy against energy, production against production, salesmanship against salesmanship . . .") he did not preach an active crusade against Hitler, whose morals he deplored. Although Franklin Roosevelt had spelled out the menace to the U. S. in appeasing Hitler, he did not point out how far aid to Britain might have to go. Voters who could look back without rancor could find one reason for which they could hold neither candidate responsible: most of them had not wanted to hear it.

Willkie. In Manhattan Wendell Willkie made the first announcement of his plans: a forthcoming trip to England. But he had more to say. In characteristically forthright words he reminded and reassured many a fearful citizen that democracy could go into war-harness with its eyes open and its head clear.

"The so-called 'lend-lease' bill now before Congress asks for an enormous grant of executive power. Under a democratic system, in which the people's power is preserved by limiting the powers of government, every such grant of power should be jealously scrutinized. . . .

"I have examined this bill in the light of the current emergency and I personally have come to the conclusion that, with modifications, it should be passed. . . .

"This is a critical moment in history. The United States is not a belligerent, and we hope we shall not be. Our problem, however, is not alone to keep America out of war but to keep war out of America. Democracy is endangered. And the American people are so aware of the danger that they have endorsed the policy of giving full and active aid to those democracies which are resisting aggression. . . .

"It is the history of democracy that, under such dire circumstances, extraordinary powers must be granted to the elected Executive. . . .

"However, there are certain considerations that ought to be taken into account.

"Congress must not be harried into passage of this bill. . . . The bill should be subjected to thorough debate and such amendments should be made as Congress, representing the people, may deem necessary to retain in its own hands the fundamental power to declare war.

"In a democracy every grant of extraordinary power should contain a clause automatically giving that power back to the people. . . .

"It is hoped the discussion of this bill does not take the form of opposition to granting power to this Administration just because it is this Administration. We could all wish that this Administration loved power less and that it more readily relinquished it when the purpose for which it was granted had ceased to exist. I think I can say without boast that no man in this country has done more to stress the record of this Administration in this regard or to paint the dangers of it. I was, moreover, perfectly serious in my charge that the re-election of this Administration would jeopardize the continuation of the democratic process in the United States. And I believe many of its acts since reelection sustain my position.

"Yet the people chose this Administration and we must abide by that choice. We must not fall into the fallacy of depriving it of powers necessary to defend us in order to preserve the mere forms of democratic procedure. We must give it the power to act in this emergency while at the same time assuring ourselves by competent amendments of a reversion of that power to us after the emergency is over."

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