"We Are Bankrupt"

Part of Tom Dewey's campaign strategy will be a sustained attack on the Administration. He began the attack this week at a point where the Administration is particularly vulnerable--its policy in Asia. Speaking in his most vehement public prosecutor style at a Columbia University Law School dinner, he charged the Administration with failure in China, where "Communist world conquest is furthest advanced." Said Dewey:

"The cold war, which has become a warm war in Europe, is a very hot and successful war in China.

"The free world is now in the desperate position of a man who has gangrene in both legs--in Western Europe and in Asia. As a doctor, our Government is telling the world we have a very good cure for gangrene but we will apply it to one leg only while the gangrene in the other leg destroys the patient. . . .

"I was dismayed to discover that in the emergency program presented to the Congress by the President last Monday, there was not even a mention of China. This is utterly incomprehensible. . . . We have a Government which has no discernible Chinese policy whatsoever. We are bankrupt so far as Chinese policy is concerned.

"In excuse for our failure, it has been said that there is corruption within the Chinese government. . . . This is the same Chinese government, headed by the same individual, which we have supported against Japanese aggression since the invasion of Manchuria 16 years ago. ... It is the same government with which we fought shoulder to shoulder for five years.

"The tragic result of our Government's ineptitude and lack of policy in Asia has been to allow the Soviets and their allies to make rapid progress in liquidating their problems there and completing their expansion in the Orient so as to be free to turn all their effort to the subjugation of Europe. . . .

"I know very well that there is no simple solution to this problem. But I can neither understand nor excuse a Government which is too timid or befuddled to attempt a solution. . . . Even 75 to 100 million dollars in the present bill before the Congress for emergency aid to China would change the entire situation psychologically.

"We need an honest about-face which will produce immediate administrative action to restore the honor of the American Republic."

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