The Bidding Begins

> The largest number of votes ever cast in a U.S. Presidential election was 49,815,000 (in 1940).

> Only once (1936) has a President received over 6,000,000 more votes than his opponents.

> By next year's Presidential election, the U.S. will have an estimated 9,000,000 men & women of voting age in uniform.

Many a U.S. politico mulled over these facts this week. For the first time in history, soldiers & sailors will find it easy, under a law passed by Congress in 1942, to vote in next year's Presidential election. For the first time in history, the Army & Navy form a potent voting force--18% of 1940's vote, enough ballots to have decided all but one of the past Presidential elections.

If enough men & women in uniform cast ballots, they could swing 1944-3 election. No one expects the U.S. Army & Navy, composed of Smiths and Smythes, to vote as a unit. But, conceivably, the candidate with the greatest appeal to soldiers & sailors will be the next President.

Fireside in Sicily. This week's flurry of excitement over the soldier vote came after Franklin Roosevelt stole a march on all other 1944 candidates. For the first time since February, Franklin Roosevelt sat before a battery of microphones, carrying his message all over the world, to deliver a report to his constituents from Florida to Washington and from Alaska to New Delhi.

As a fireside chat, his speech was not likely to be long remembered. He cited well-known facts on the progress of the war, repeated the United Nations demand for Italy's unconditional surrender, touched briefly on the home front. (Sections on inflation, food and manpower were cut out and saved for another forthcoming address.)

But for nearly five of his 30 minutes, Franklin Roosevelt talked on a subject which no U.S. politico can henceforth forget. He laid down an official Administration program to take care of returning soldiers at the end of the war, thus warming the firesides in Sicily and chilling the hearts of Republicans. The bidding had begun.

Fire over Spongier. In Congress, members of both parties have been readying bills to ease demobilization. But Franklin Roosevelt, firing a shot heard round the world by short wave, now stood out as the No. 1 champion of largess to World War II's veterans.

Republicans, shot while napping, clutched hands to pain-stricken breasts. Cried New Hampshire's Senator Styles Bridges: "[The President] dangled before the eyes of the soldiers a gift of their own tax money. . . ." Cried Pennsylvania's Congressman J. William Ditter: "[The President's speech] degenerated into the official opening of the fourth term campaign. . . ."

Chairman Harrison Spangler of the G.O.P. National Committee, brooding over the 2,000,000 soldiers abroad who hear more about the President than about his Republican opponents, demanded that the War and Navy Departments publish the Bridges-Ditter comments in Army newspapers and ship bulletins. Said he:

"Every American is determined to take care of these returning heroes. It will be the nation that does it and not a personal beneficence of the President. . . ."

Long Years Ahead. Franklin Roosevelt, who twice vetoed bonus bills for World War I's veterans, had touched off the new generation's bonus fight. Where the fight will end, whether in sensible humanitarianism or in unabashed Treasury raids, only the will of the soldiers and the consciences of politicians can say.

The President had also brought home forcibly, to a nation which had neglected the political implications of its Army, the new facts of American political life. The Grand Army of the Republic, with only about 400,000 members at peak, influenced every major election for 20 years. The American Legion, with 1,000,000 members, is still a potent force in molding U.S. life.

The new veterans' organization may well make its predecessors look like precinct machines. For better or worse, the veterans of World War II will be voting citizens for decades to come.

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