HENRY WALLACE TELLS HOW TO PICK VICE PRESIDENTS

Ex-Vice President HENRY A. WALLACE in This Week:

With several notable exceptions both parties have played politics with the office of vice president. This has chronically resulted in two serious faults: 1) the nomination of a vice president who was a nonentity; 2) the nomination of a vice president who believed in quite different principles from the man with whom he was running. Consider a few examples: Garner was put on the Democratic ticket with Roosevelt in 1932 as a result of a deal. He fought many of the Roosevelt policies in the Senate and if he had become President he would have destroyed a large segment of the New Deal legislation.

Vice President Dawes fought Coolidge on the matter of farm legislation. Dawes was a sop which the Republican Convention of 1924 threw to appease the farmers who, in 1924, were suffering much as they are today.

Teddy Roosevelt, when he was picked in 1900, did not stand for the cautious McKinley policies. Neither Mark Hanna nor McKinley wanted Roosevelt, but Senator Platt, the boss of New York State, said, "He will do less damage there than any other spot we could put him."

On the other side of the picture we must admit that Thomas R. Marshall and Wilson pulled together as harmoniously as Eisenhower and Nixon today. So true was Marshall to Wilson, that when Wilson was disabled he refused to take on any of the responsibilities of the presidency which he might constitutionally have assumed. To a similar but not quite the same degree Nixon kept himself in the background while Eisenhower was disabled.

Both parties owe it to the United States to name vice presidential candidates who stand for the same policies as the presidential candidates. In these days of grave national responsibility and danger, any party which names a President who stands for one policy and a vice president who stands for another should be decisively rebuked at the polls.

When Chairman Paul Butler says the Democratic party "need make no apologies for a method of selection which produced the nomination of Harry S. Truman" [in 1944, when Wallace was dropped], he is talking like a narrow-minded politician. Roosevelt had far, far less part in picking Truman than did Hannegan and Flynn, two professional politicians working closely with Edwin W. Pauley, an oil man, over a period of several months.

Week after week, while I was out of the country, they hammered at a weakened Roosevelt, who finally gave in most reluctantly. The Gallup poll published on July 18, 1944 indicated that among the rank-and-file I had 65 percent of the vote and Truman only 2 percent. I would have been named in 1944 if Hannegan and Flynn had kept their hands off the delegates.

Looking back now, I am glad that I did what I did and that I did not succeed to the Presidency in 1945. It took 10 or 15 years before the Democratic and Republican parties adopted the program I stood for in the early '40s--a program that was based on peace and the welfare of the world and which was criticized as "milk for Hottentots," "TVA's on the Danube," and "Globaloney."

There is no evidence for Republican Chairman Leonard Hall's statement that Roosevelt admitted in 1944 that he had made a "colossal mistake" in naming me in 1940. I agree with Hall that vice presidential candidates should not be picked in the Hannegan-Pauley way. Surely today no Republicans who dislike Nixon will organize a conspiracy like that of Flynn, Hannegan and Pauley in 1944.

VICE PRESIDENT NIXON TELLS WHERE HE STANDS

Vice President RICHARD M. NIXON, in THIS Is NIXON, by James Keogh, associate editor of TIME, published this week (Putnam; $2.75).

I learned that it's hard to find any field where it's all black or white and that men aren't "bad"--just sometimes wrong. And even if in your opinion they're wrong, you still have to acknowledge many indefinables and legitimate differences of opinion. People say you shouldn't compromise on matters of principle. But by "principle" they usually mean what they believe in. I found that compromise is often what is right.

Concentration of power is dangerous even when it is necessary. Power corrupts even the strongest of men. We must examine with a fresh eye every function of the Federal Government. The question must arise time and again--is this power necessary? Could the state handle it better? Should it be left to private groups? Only when problems are truly national should the Federal Government intervene.

As we consider the function of education, we must always have before us the most important principle of all--education to be great, must be free. This means studying and discussing ideas we don't like as well as those we do. It has been unfortunate that at a time when we properly are denying Communist Party members the right to teach in our schools, we have a tendency to go to the other extreme of denying to our students the opportunity of learning about Communism. The distinction is a very simple but vitally important one. Teaching students to be Communists is one thing. Teaching students about Communism is another. We must never forget that the best answer to a false idea is the truth.

I have found, and I believe that most of those who are members of Congressional committees will agree, that where fair procedures are followed the investigations are most effective. It is essential to be extremely careful in this field, where a man's reputation can be destroyed by accusations of Communist affiliation, to distinguish between an individual who is a voluntary participant in the Communist conspiracy and one who innocently may have had contact with it. It is altogether possible that a completely loyal American might have joined a well-concealed Communist front or even two. When he joins a considerable number indiscriminately a grave question as to his judgment arises.

Let us always remember that we in America live under a form of government which recognizes that all men are born free and equal. We must be vigilant against the doctrines of the Bilbos and the Talmadges and the Gerald L. K. Smiths, who are just as dangerous to the preservation of the American way of life on the one hand as are the Communists on the other. Every time there is an instance of discrimination in the United States, it gives the Communists a weapon which they can use against us. This is a problem that cannot be solved by law alone. It is a problem which must be met primarily through co-operative effort by men of good will.

What counts in the final analysis of government isn't the theory, but what counts is the effect of a legislative program, what it does to people, is it good for them, is it bad for them. No Administration will win an election in the United States or will deserve to win unless its program benefits sixty million people who work for a living.

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