CAMPAIGN: Change of Pace

Some 50 guests, including Fala,* crowded into the little red-carpeted, basement Oval Room where Franklin Roosevelt has made many a radio fireside chat during the past eleven years. At 10 p.m. the announcers made their introductions, and nodded at Candidate Roosevelt. The President, apparently chipper despite his continuing head cold, then began his second political speech of the 1944 campaign.

He voiced a statesmanlike hope that all Americans, “regardless of party,” would register and vote this year. Franklin Roosevelt was speaking over two major networks to all Americans, but especially to some 125,000 local gatherings of Democratic precinct workers. To them the Candidate was stressing a basic Term IV tenet: the larger the vote, the more likely a New Deal victory.

Mr. Roosevelt lightly passed over the sore old Democratic subject of poll taxes, with a brief mention that the polls should be open to all citizens—”without tax or artificial restriction.” And, for the second time in a fortnight, he accused GOPsters of trying to make it hard for U.S. servicemen to vote: “There are politicians and others who quite openly worked to restrict the use of the ballot in this election, hoping selfishly for a small vote.”

Abandoning politics briefly, Mr. Roosevelt reported on the progress of the war. The battles are not yet won; the Germans and Japs are still fighting fanatically.

Then, figuratively, he took off his Commander in Chief hat and put on the old campaign hat he really loves. Tom Dewey had charged that the Administration planned to keep the boys in uniform because the New Deal is “afraid of the peace.” By now, said Candidate Roosevelt, the Murray-George bill, the statements by OWM Boss Jimmy Byrnes and the War Department should have proved the falseness of this charge. “It seems a pity that reckless words, based on unauthoritative sources, should be used to mislead and weaken morale. . . .”

Immigrants All. Never mentioning Candidate Dewey, the President lashed out at the anti-Sidney Hillman campaign, in a frank bid for the foreign-born vote: “Labor baiters and bigots and some politicians use the term ‘Communism’ loosely and apply it to every progressive social measure and to the views of every foreign-born citizen with whom they disagree. They forget that we in the U.S. are all descended from immigrants. . . .”

Just as an example, said Mr. Roosevelt, one intemperate red-baiting speech, accusing the New Deal of plotting with Communists, had been happily seized on by 13 Republican Congressmen. “They evidently thought highly of this document, for they had more than 3,000,000 copies printed free* by the Government Printing Office . . . and sent through the mails at the taxpayers’ expense.”

Finally Candidate Roosevelt came to a main piece of business in his speech—an attempt to give a brisk brushoff to Earl Browder and his enthusiastic Communist support for Term IV, without alienating any needed votes: “I have never sought and I do not welcome the support of any person or group committed to Communism, or Fascism, or any other foreign ideology which would undermine the American system of government. . . .”

October Jitters? Term IVsters who had hopefully expected another speech crackling with infectious vim, like the one which rocked the A.F. of L. Teamsters dinner twelve nights earlier, were badly disappointed. Perhaps the considerable reaction against White House high jinks from the supposedly serious-minded Commander in Chief had caused a shift in strategy. The no-nonsense tone of the speech gave credence to the rumors that some White House advisers are now suffering from their quadrennial case of October jitters. Whatever the reason, Candidate Roosevelt, not at his fun-loving best, was campaigning in earnest.

* For other news of Fala, see EDUCATION.

* Candidate Roosevelt erred. Next day, the White House issued a correction: “This was an inadvertence. . . . The actual paper and printing were paid for by someone, but the mailing , . . was free.”