ON WAR PATH

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 238, 8 October 1941, Page 4

ON WAR PATH

WILLKIE CRUSADE

ALL ISOLATIONISTS

READY TO SMASH PARTY

(By JAY G. HAYDEN)

NEW YORK, Sept. 3

Wendell L. Willkie has set out either to rid the Republican party of "isolationism" or to smash that party once and for all.

Specifically Willkie is assuring his visitors that an opposition candidate, carrying the banner of aid to the bitter end for Britain and other embattled democracies and pledged even more to continuing the United States as an active collaborator in world affairs when this war is over, will be entered against every Congressman with an isolationist voting record.

The proscribed list, Willkie has said, certainly will include all of the 202 members of the House—l 33 Republicans, 65 Democrats and four Progressives—who came within one vote of defeating the Army Service Extension Bill.

As to just how this electoral crusade is to be carried out Willkie is reticent but he leaves the impression that conferences looking to its organisation on a nationwide basis already are under way.

The prospectus thus presented is remarkable because Willkie is defying virtually the whole titular leadership of his party. The Republican national chairman, Representative Joseph W. Martin, jun., voted against the Service Extension Bill. So in the Senate did Charles L. McNary, Willkie's 1940 Vice-Presidential running mate, and Senators Taft and Vanderberg, who contested with him for the Presidential homination. Former Governor Alf M. Landon, Herbert Hoover, Thomas E. Dewey and Bruce Barton, of New York, and Governor Dwight Green, of Illinois, are others in the Republican Presidential flight classed as non-inter-ventionists if not isolationists. Where Does Dewey Stand? From Willkie's native State of Indiana, both Senators Van Nuys, Democrat, and Willis, Republican, and 11 out of 12 Representatives— eight Republicans and three Democrats—voted against the Service Extension Bill. Among those Hoosierantis was Representative Charles A. Halleck, who placed Willkie in nomination at Philadelphia.

Messrs. Willkie and Dewey, whose offices are only a few blocks apart in Downtown, New York, are especially apt to come in conflict in the 1942 campaign. Dewey almost certainly will try again for the New York Governorship, for which he was defeated by a scant 65,000 vote margin by Herbert H. Lehman in 1938. Since then Dewey has evolved into the nearest thing to a Republican State boss New York has known since the days of William Barnes and Tom Piatt. The organisation is completely in his hands and even the Willkieites concede that he can have the gubernatorial nomination if he wants it.

But the Willkieites say nomination is one thing and election distinctly another. The test, they declare, will be Dewey's stand on international issues. If he declares four square for whatever American intervention

may be required to accomplish the defeat of Hitler and for something approximating the reciprocal trade programme advocated by Secretary of State Cordell Hull, he can count on Willkie's support. If on the other hand he takes the isolationist slant, or even slightly equivocates, the intimation js that Willkie will not support him.

Dewey's international attitudes, as so far expressed, are mixed. He has declared against Hitler and for aid to Britain, but when the Lease-or-Lend Bill originally was proposed Dewey criticised it as an unwarranted delegation of power to present Roosevelt. In the course of nis bid for Presidential nomination last year he flatly opposed the Hull most-favoured-nation tariff trades as inimical to the farmers and other American interests. On the whole Dewey's stand accords much more closely with that of the Republican majority in Congress than with Mr. Willkie's.

Confusing Issues / Dewey never declared himself on the service extension issue. On this New York Republican members of the House divided nine for and ten against the bill. New York Democratic representatives divided almost as closely. Twelve of them voted for and ten against the bill. The latter line-up suggests that the Democrats in New York, no less than the Republicans, may have difficulty in getting together on the international issues.

The Democrats met the first Dewey challenge by inducing Governor Lehman to sidetrack his longstanding desire to go to the United States Senate and accept nomination for a fourth gubernatorial term. Even so, Dewey was barely defeated. His chance now seems to depend on the degree to which the democrats and their restless ally, the American Labour party, can maintain a united front.

Democratic harmony is not going to be easy. There is, for example, James A. Farley, who would like to try for the Governorship. The American Labour group is dead against Farley. Governor Lehman would like to pass the job on to his present lieutenant-governor, Charles Poletti. The majority wing of the American Labourites likes Poletti, but it is said the Democratic wheelhorses never would accept him. Senator James M. Mead probably would come nearest to holding the conflicting anti-Republican groups together, but Mead is considered a weak campaigner and there is doubt as to how well he could stand the gaff in a race with the gifted Mr. Dewey.

It is not at all improbable that an attempt will be made to induce Governor Lehman to accept nomination for a fifth term. Lehman, say his friends, once appeared anxious to quit public life, but lately this attitude has changed. With no Senatorship available, unless Senator Robert F. Wagner's present illness should cause him to resign, the guess of informed observers is that it will not be very difficult to dragoon Lehman into another gubernatorial race—and this particularly if 1942 finds Willkie and Dewey dividing the Republican front.—Auckland Star and N.A.N.A.