Give 'Em the Needle

Sporting a healthy tan acquired during his Western tour, Adlai Stevenson last week turned his attention to the East Coast.

At Bridgeport, Conn. Stevenson began a motor trip which took him through New Haven and the mill towns of the Naugatuck River Valley. Braving drizzly weather, the Democratic candidate made brief, open-air speeches in nearly every town through which he passed. Repeatedly he ridiculed Republican criticisms of his quip-studded speeches and hammered away at the Eisenhower-Taft alliance. He warned the staunch Democrats of industrial New Britain: "If the Republicans by some mischance are elected this fall, people calling the White House would have to ask which President is in today: the five-star general from Kansas or the six-star gentleman from Ohio." Later he suggested that if the Republicans won, "Ike would be in the White House, Taft in Blair House, and Dewey in the dog house."

"Hope & Promise." After a speech in Springfield, Mass., Stevenson appeared at Quantico, Va., where his eldest son, Adlai III, was about to receive his commission as a Marine second lieutenant. While young Adlai sat among the ranks of successful officer candidates, his father delivered one of the most moving speeches he has yet made. Said Adlai Senior to the young marines:

"You carry with you not alone the hope, the prayer and the love of the people who gave you birth. You carry the same hope, the same prayer and the same love of people around the world who do not know your names, but who do know you by your cause and your great tradition. We and our friends found the courage to resist [aggression in Korea] two years ago. It is to press that courage home, to affirm and to establish the faith that a peaceful world can in truth be built, that . . . you have been asked to serve your country with the hope and promise of your lives."

An Apple Picker. From Quantico the Stevenson motorcade moved on to Richmond, where Saturday afternoon crowds on Richmond's streets gave Stevenson only a lukewarm reception. That evening at Richmond's Mosque Auditorium, Virginia's political boss, Senator Harry Byrd, was conspicuously missing from the speaker's platform. Busy picking apples, Byrd's friends said. But the audience was pleased as Stevenson invoked the magic name of Robert E. Lee and praised the Confederacy's constitution.

The audience repeatedly interrupted Stevenson with applause. Nor did the crowd show hostility when he frankly told them that he would stand by the Democratic platform's civil-rights plank. Said Stevenson: "I should justly earn your contempt if I talked one way in the South and another way elsewhere."

As he headed toward New York and the A.F.L. convention (see below), Stevenson had not yet set the Eastern woods afire, but it was clear that crowds enjoyed his ribbing of the Republicans. In place of Harry Truman's "give 'em hell" approach, Adlai Stevenson was relying more & more on a "give 'em the needle" campaign.

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