Slugging Toe to Toe

In Minneapolis last week, Tom Dewey scrapped the farm speech he had gone there to make -- scrapped it in order to tear apart Franklin Roosevelt's picture of the terrible foreign policy that the U.S. could expect if the Republicans won the election. What kind of peace, Dewey demanded, could the U.S. look forward to if the man in the White House was one who continually quarreled with Congress? Said Dewey:

Who Can Make Peace? "The proposal to go into the World Court was defeated in 1935, when Mr. Roosevelt was on the very crest of his leadership, with three-quarters of the U.S. Senate Democratic.

"And even with the help of nine Republicans he still couldn't muster a two-thirds vote. Since then he has warred with Congress at every turn.

"Those who would attempt to ride roughshod over the Congress and to dictate the course it should follow before it has even been acquainted with the facts are trifling with the hope of the world.

". . . If this stubborn course is pursued, it can only result once again, as in 1919, in a disastrous conflict between the President and the Congress. To that I will never be a party.

"From the beginning of this campaign I have insisted that organization for world peace can and must be a bipartisan effort. I shall continue to insist on that approach.

"The avoidance of future wars is too important to be in the sole custody of any one man, of any one group, or of any one party."

Who Is for World Order? "I have emphasized, as my opponent has not, that, and I am quoting, 'We must make certain that our participation in the world organization is not subjected to reservations that would nullify the power of that organization to maintain peace and to halt future aggressions.'

"That means, of course, that it must not be subject to a reservation that would require our representative to return to Congress for authority every time he had to make a decision. Obviously Congress, and only Congress, has the Constitutional power to determine what quota of force it will make available and what discretion it will give our representative to use that force."

Who's an Isolationist? "My opponent says that the heavy hand of isolationism governed our country in the 1920s. Does he mean to apply that term to the three great Republican Secretaries of State: Charles Evans Hughes, Frank B. Kellogg and Henry L. Stimson, his own present Secretary of War? If so, I am afraid he has a very convenient memory.

"Mr. Roosevelt now speaks fondly of the League of Nations. But it was he who in 1933 said this of the League, and I quote his words: 'We are not members and we do not contemplate membership.'

"In 1935 an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress adopted the fruitless Neutrality Act and the President signed it.

"It was in 1933 that we really had our last chance to bring order out of the chaos of international money exchange and trade. The London Economic Conference had been labored over for months by Republican Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson. . . . Mr. Roosevelt deliberately scuttled that conference. That was the most completely isolationist action ever taken by an American President in our 150 years of history."

Who Was for Preparedness? "Year after year, our chiefs of staff reported on the utterly impoverished and pitifully small manpower of our Army. Year after year, the Budget Bureau, which is under the personal direction of the President, cut down the amounts requested. It was right in the fall of 1939, after the second World War had actually begun, that Mr. Roosevelt's Budget Bureau cut out $550,000,000 of amounts certified by the Army for critical and essential items.

"It was in January 1940 that Mr. Roosevelt told the Congress that $1,800,000,000 for national defense was in his judgment and I quote him, 'a sufficient amount for the coming year.'

"It was in that month that I publicly called for a two-ocean navy. . .

"Then, with France about to fall, he publicly announced on June 4, 1940 that he saw no reason for Congress to stay in session. It was an election year--so in that hour of national peril he said that a continued session of Congress would serve no useful end except, sarcastically, the laudable purpose of making speeches.

"It was that Congress which then passed the National Selective Service Act, sponsored by a Republican Congressman and an anti-New Deal Democrat. It was that Congress which stayed after it had been told to go home, and ran the appropriations and authorizations for national defense up to $12,000,000,000, and it was that Congress that authorized our two-ocean Navy.

". . . My opponent did remember the Washington Arms Conference [1921-22] . . . but he forgot that he was supposed to be telling the whole story. He complained that we 'scuttled' part of the strength of our Navy. But that's not what he said at the time. Then, in a magazine article, Mr. Roosevelt asked America to trust Japan and complained, and I now quote his words, 'of the delay in the scrapping of U.S. ships as provided for and pledged in accordance with the treaty,' close quote.

"How election times do change men's memories!"

Who Had Foresight? "It was in the first two administrations of the New Deal that this country sent 10,000,000 tons of scrap iron and steel to Japan, unchecked by my opponent until Oct. 16, 1940. The weight of that scrap iron alone was ten times the tonnage of the whole Japanese Navy.

"Mr. Roosevelt said last Saturday night that we could have 'compromised' with Japan, and I quote, 'by selling out the heart's blood of the Chinese people.' Well, let's see what we did.

"In addition to scrap iron, he permitted the shipment to Japan of as much as three million barrels a month of oil, the heart's blood of war, for use against America. That oil continued to flow until July of 1941, four months before Pearl Harbor.

"Let those who claim to have exercised great foresight remember these lessons in history."

Who Gets What? At Dewey's next stop, Chicago, his entry was triumphal: so enthusiastic were the crowds that even anti-Dewey reporters were impressed. (The Chicago Tribune estimated the street crowds at 500,000; Mayor Kelly's police called it 120,000.)

That night Candidate Dewey addressed the U.S. and a pack-jammed Chicago Stadium audience on "Honesty in Government." He took his text from Thomas Jefferson: "The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest." As a subtext he took the lead sentence of a P.A.C. pamphlet advocating Term IV: "politics is the science of how who gets what, when and why." Dewey's speech was a straightaway attack on the veracity of Franklin Roosevelt. He recalled the WPA vote scandals, the attempt to pack the Supreme Court.

He reminded his audience of Franklin Roosevelt's series of promises not to run for another term, and said: "Is it any wonder that when the White House speaks, the first question the people ask is not whether the news is good or bad, but is it true?"

He closed by describing the "One Thousand Club, a so-called White House idea." The members, according to a letter from National Democratic Campaign Headquarters, in Arkansas, "would be undoubtedly granted special privileges and prestige," and would be called in from time to time to "assist in the formulation of national policies." The price: a contribution of $1,000.

"There," said Tom Dewey, "in crude, unblushing words, is the ultimate expression of New Deal politics by the theory of 'who gets what, when and why?' "

Who's a Campaigner? All this was tough, hard, political infighting. In previous campaigns Franklin Roosevelt had never had an opponent who had known so well how to fight back. Herbert Hoover, flustered, had made lonesome speeches about the preservation of liberty; Alf Landon had swung wildly in all directions; Wendell Willkie, no politician, had gone on crusading for his ideals. Ex-District Attorney Tom Dewey, who had observed their mistakes, had another advantage--he had four more years of the New Deal record to throw at his opponent. In the last fortnight of the campaign he was fighting a cool, confident, hard fight, slugging it out toe to toe with the Champ. His fight-loving audiences plainly relished it whenever Dewey repeated: "Well, he asked for it--and here it is!"

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