"AMERICA HAS NO LIMIT"

Governor Thomas E. Dewey's plain-spoken acceptance speech, an extraordinarily clear and promising beginning to a U.S. political campaign and, notable for its tone of sensible restraint, gave the first indication of what kind of campaign he might be expected to make:

'I come to this great task a free man. I have made no pledges, promises or commitments, expressed or implied, to any man or woman. I shall make none, except to the people.

"These pledges I do make:

"To men and women of the Republican Party everywhere I pledge my utmost efforts.

"To Americans of every party I pledge that on Jan. 20 next year our Government will again have a Cabinet of the ablest men and women . . . experienced in the task to be done and young enough to do it. This election will bring an end to one-man government in America.

"To every member of the Axis Powers let us send this message from this Convention: By this political campaign, which you are unable to understand, our will to victory will be strengthened.

"The military conduct of the war is outside this campaign. . . . General Marshall and Admiral King are doing a superb job. Thank God for both of them. Let me make it crystal clear that a change of Administration next January cannot and will not involve any change in the military conduct of the war.

"All that the present Administration tells us is that in its young days it did some good things. That we freely grant. But now it has grown old in office. It has become tired and quarrelsome.

"When we have won the war we shall still have to win the peace. We are agreed, all of us, that America will participate with other sovereign nations in a cooperative effort to prevent future wars. Let us face up boldly to the magnitude of that task. ... It cannot be the work of any one man or of a little group of rulers. . . . The structure of peace must be the work of many men . . . the ablest men and women America can produce.

"I am not one of those who despair of achieving that end. . . . For years we have had men in Washington who were notoriously weak in certain branches of arithmetic--but who specialized in division. They have played up minor differences of opinion until the people of other countries might have thought that America was cleft in two.

"But all the while there was a large, growing area of agreement. . . . The Republican Party can take pride in helping to define it and broaden it. There are only a few, a very few, who really believe that America should try to remain aloof from the world. There are only a relatively few who believe it would be practical for America or her Allies to renounce all sovereignty and join a superstate.

"I certainly would not deny those two extremes the right to their opinions; but I stand firmly with the overwhelming majority of my fellow citizens in that great wide area of agreement.

"No organization for peace will last if it is slipped through by stealth or trickery or the momentary hypnotism of high-sounding phrases. . . . This is no task to be entrusted to stubborn men, grown old and tired and quarrelsome in office. We learned that in 1919.

"It would be a tragedy after this war if Americans returned from our armed forces and failed to find the freedom and opportunity for which they fought. . . . Never again must free Americans face the specter of long-continued, mass unemployment. We Republicans are agreed that full employment shall be a first objective of national policy.

"What hope does the present National Administration offer here? In 1940, the year before this country entered the war, there were still ten million unemployed. After seven years of unequaled power and unparalleled spending, the New Deal had failed utterly to solve that problem. It was left to be solved by war. Do we have to have a war to get jobs?

"What are we now offered? Only the dreary prospect of a continued war economy after the war. . . .

"For 150 years America was the hope of the world. . . . Here men believed passionately in freedom. Because we were what we were, good will flowed toward us from all corners of the earth... . .

"It is the New Deal that tells us that America has lost its capacity to grow. We shall never build a better world by listening to those counsels of defeat. Is America old and wornout, as the New Dealers tell us? Look to the beaches of Normandy for the answer. Look to the reaches of the wide Pacific. ... I say to you: our country is just fighting its way through to new horizons. The future of America has no limit."

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