Dewey at Mackinac

On cool, rocky Mackinac (pronounced Mackinaw) Island, overlooking the strait where Lake Huron joins Lake Michigan, 43 members of the Republican Post-War Advisory Council met this week to chart their course through trickier waters. Their problem : what statement of foreign policy will best suit and serve the people of the Republic and therefore the Party? Whatever should come out of the meeting, it was clear from the start that G.O.P.

leaders, as individuals if not en masse, are willing to go much further, than anyone would have guessed a few years ago. Best evidence: the dramatic entrance of New York’s Governor Thomas E. Dewey, who exploded a preconvention bombshell designed to challenge both Democrats and his own colleagues.

Governor Dewey carefully timed his arrival for the day after most other delegates had settled down. Coming across the straight, after a visit with his mother at Owosso, Mich., he hopped off the boat, was whisked away in a four-seated carriage. Soon he was holding a press conference for the 100 newsmen lounging in big wicker chairs at G.O.P. headquarters in the elegant, white-colonnaded Grand Hotel (“longest porch in the world”).

Straight Talk. News had been scarce. Reporters began lackadaisically. Soon they were scribbling notes at top speed. Said Governor Dewey, pulling no punches:

“We have had a de facto military alliance with Great Britain practically ever since the War of 1812. In the two principal cases since, when war was made on Britain, we went to her defense….The American people never before had such a shock as the one they had when they realized that Germany might capture the British fleet. You in this room remember as well as I do how everyone was chilled.”

Did he then favor a postwar alliance with Great Britian? “I should think that would be very likely and would be in our interest.”

Would he include China and Russia? “It would be hoped that in the working out of the peace Russia and China might be included.

Was he not afraid of comprimising U.S. sovereignty? No, said Governor Dewey; making treaties or entering a group of nations determined on international action would not impair America’s sovereignty. Such acts were merely the way nations had to live together.

Feasible v. Popular. Newsmen, out of old antipathies from the days when yount Tom Dewey was known as “The Boy Scout,” asked needling questions, kept getting keen, straightforward answers. At the end of his press conference, Tom Dewey had won most of them over, 100%. As at the Columbus Governors’ Conference (Time, July 5), Dewey had stolen the show.

Governor Dewey’s statement upset many and old-line GOPolitician. (Said Ohio’s Senator Robert A. Taft: “That was a fool thing to do.”) Leaders close to National Chairman Harrison E. Spangler went ahead with preconference plans to draft a policy which would offend no one. Some observers prophesied that this draft would be the only politically feasible result of Mackinac. But those wise in the ways of politcal campaigns guessed that Dewey was flying the popular beam.