Man Wanted

The wooing of Wendell Willkie went on. Last week President Roosevelt admitted that he had communicated with Willkie, a fact which convicted him of tarradiddling* the week before. (The first letter had been written July 13.)

Willkie's attitude was virtually the same as it was to Tom Dewey's overtures: he would not let himself be used by either candidate until his mind was made up on their foreign-policy intentions. He made a careful distinction between Candidate Roosevelt and President Roosevelt: "I would much prefer that... no conference occur until after the election. But if the President of the United States wishes to see me sooner, I shall of course comply." With equal impartiality, Willkie had been willing to talk "bipartisan" foreign policy with Tom Dewey's friend, John Foster Dulles, but not yet with Candidate Dewey (TIME, Aug. 28).

What will Willkie do? His foreign policy, which he has outlined to 25 G.O.P. leaders in recent weeks, goes much farther than that of either Tom Dewey or Franklin Roosevelt in submitting U.S. sovereignty to the control of an international peace institution. And last week he urged that the President be allowed to call out troops without the prior consent of Congress. so that any military decision by a world society will be prompt and effective.

Of his campaign plans, Wendell Willkie said nothing. His friends know that he still opposes Franklin Roosevelt's foreign policy; they remember that he had called the State Department's defense of its pre-Pearl Harbor policies "a White Paper of a black record." Thus Willkie's choice would apparently be to declare for Dewey, or to sit this election out.

* Webster's New International Dictionary: "tarradiddle--to tell, or impose on by telling, tarra-diddles."

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