The Big Barrage

The political guns, big & little, were now zeroed on the plain U.S. citizen, the man who "doesn't know" in the polls, or is "leaning." There he stood, without benefit of foxhole, raked in a withering crossfire that would last on into November, until the blessed peace of the polling booth descended on him.

Over no man's land circled the observers, calmly calculating how went the battle. Their guesses stood as betting odds, which generally stood about 3-to-1 on Franklin Roosevelt. Actually a citizen who wanted to bet on Dewey got 12-to-5 odds; a Roosevelt bettor-had to put up $14 to $5.

On the battlefield, both parties sent out patrols to bring the voter back. The landscape was filled with glittering people, celebrities eager to serve as volunteer stretcher-bearers.

Call the Celebrities. Hollywood fought glamor with glamor. The Hollywood-for-Dewey Committee had nice legs, a pretty wit and good lungs : Ginger Rogers, Hedda Hopper, Rosalind Russell, Cecil B. de Mille, Anne Baxter, Leo Carrillo and Adolphe Menjou. So did the Hollywood Committee of New Dealers: Rita Hayworth, Olivia de Havilland, Katharine Hepburn, Orson Welles, Harpo Marx, Lana Turner, Walter Huston, Fanny Brice.

Art, music and literature were strung over the battleground. Sculptor Jo Davidson, engineering a Term IV musical show in Madison Square Garden, had to choose from a wealth of volunteers: Lily Pons, Duke Ellington, Yehudi Menuhin, Marian Anderson. Dinah Shore, Grace Moore, Gene Krupa. Anti-New Deal writers Ru pert Hughes, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Kenneth Roberts, Louis Bromfield, Channing Pollock and Booth Tarkington plotted a Republican victory, and Dorothy Parker, in a big new pirate's hat, furiously attended Term IV luncheons.

Still frankly wrestling with himself, Ben Hecht declined to join a Dewey com mittee on the grounds that he was a "slightly confused follower of Mr. Roosevelt. My confusion arises out of wonder as to whether I admire Mr. Roosevelt or dislike his enemies."

Recruit All the Reds. At a mass meeting in Madison Square Garden, Earl Browder laid down the Communist line. Speaking from the same platform where, on Nov. 3, 1940, he denounced Franklin Roosevelt for trying to involve the U.S.

in an "imperialist war," he now said: "The election of Thomas E. Dewey would be an American invitation to Europe to plunge immediately or soon into the most devastating civil war." Other consequences Comrade Browder foresaw, if Dewey were elected: the Soviet would be warned that the U.S. was determined to stop cooperating with it as soon as possible ; no postwar world security organization would be possible ; John L. Lewis would seize control of the U.S. labor movement; the G.O.P. would start a "witch-hunt" through the U.S. for hidden Communists; a series of strike waves would ensue; and finally, "all hope of orderly and peaceful progress, national and international, will disappear."

Socialist Norman Thomas, announcing that this would be his final campaign, went on making by far the best denunciations of both the New Deal and the G.O.P. John Bricker and Harry Truman carried on their second-string campaigns, giving many local arrangements committees a chance to serve hot chicken patties.

Henry Wallace clumped ahead with his peculiar personal campaign, wherein he travels from town to town ringing citizens' doorbells, tells them "I'm Henry Wallace," and then sits down for a little parlor discussion. (This unheralded approach made some housewives nervous ; they never knew but what the next buzz on the doorbell might be the Vice President. What to serve him? Not Scotch, of course. Tomato juice?) In Manhattan's Harlem 4,000 Negroes attended a big political rally at which the VP had been advertised as the main speaker, only to find that his speech was to be played off a record. At a rally in Wall Street a lunch-hour crowd ignored the New Deal speakers (ex-OPAdministrator Leon Henderson, ex-Ambassador to Norway Mrs. J. Borden Harriman) to gape at a 1944 campaign hat designed by Sally Victor, the topical milliner. The hat, "The Commander in Chief," is a light blue beret with a red-white-&-blue cockade and ribbon, to sell for "about $9."

Cartoonists, to Arms! Some of the columnists who were embroiled deeply in the Term III campaign were oddly aloof. Walter Lippmann and Dorothy Thompson seemed preoccupied with the larger world. But Walter Winchell campaigned indefatigably, rallying cafe society to the Term IV cause with a rapid-fire retelling of anti-Dewey stories.

Newspaper cartoonists dipped their pens in what they hoped was acid. Manhattan's PM, of all the New Deal admirers, showed the greatest skill at caricaturing Tom Dewey; and the Chicago Tribune, day by day, pictured Franklin Roosevelt with an older, tireder, more quarrelsome face.

Some notables in both parties showed reluctance to campaign for their own sides. Wendell Willkie, still abed in a Manhattan hospital for a physical checkup, discussed for Collier's the "inadequate" Negro planks in both party platforms. Minnesota's G.O.P. Senator Joseph H. Ball reported his fear that Tom Dewey was not internationalist-minded enough. Said Senator Ball: "I would violate my own deepest conviction if I were at this time ... to campaign for Governor Dewey." And at a newsmen's luncheon in Manhattan, ex-Mayor Jimmy Walker cracked: "Like Farley, I'm still a Democrat--and just as still."

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