THE PRESIDENCY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24430, 16 October 1940, Page 8

THE PRESIDENCY

CAMPAIGN IN AMERICA HEARS! TURNS ON MR WILLKIE MR ROOSEVELT GAINS LABOUR SUPPORT The Republican candidate for President. of the United States, Mr Wendell Willkie, has so alienated old-line Republicans with his refusal to campaign on strict party lines that even the newspaper magnate Mr William Randolph Hearst, arch foe of President Roosevelt and the New Deal, has suddenly turned on him and is attacking him bitterly through the columns of his string of powerful daily papers. This sudden and unexpected attack from this quarter (writes Lon Jones, an American journalist) was a bombshell to the Republicans and threatens to split wide their ranks almost on the eve of the election, Democrats are rubbing their hands with glee and see this Hearst outburst as a straw in the wind, pointing more than ever to a landslide victory for

President rfoosevelt. Hearst. who, at the age of 76. is writing an unsigned daily column for his papers, accuses Mr' Willkie of following the same political trail blazed by Mr Roosevelt. Conscription and Destroyers “Every time Mr Willkie speaks he says something—but it is generally something which Mr Roosevelt has said before, and said better,” Hearst writes. He attacked Mr Willkie for agreeing with the President on the Conscription Bill and for approving, in spirit at least, of Mr Roosevelt’ asfstnr of Mr Roosevelt's transfer of over-age destroyers to Great Britain for naval and air bases in the Atlantic. “If,” says Mr Hearst. significantly, “he (Willkie) is going to follow Mi Roosevelt he is going to wind up in war just as surelv as Mr Roosevelt will—or has.”

Mr Hearst believes, in spite of the President’s statements to the contrary, that Mr Roosevelt is leading the nation into war and will take the United States into the conflict on the side of Great Britain just as soon as it is politically expedient. Mr Hearst’s opinions cannot be dismissed lightly. He has had his finger on the pulse of United States politics and foreign affairs for half a century, and his correspondents in Washington are among the best informed in the nation and keep him advised of every move and whisper. Unless Mr Hearst believed that America’s participation in this war in the near future was a foregone conclusion, I doubt very much if he would make this the almost daily subject of his column.

Together with other isolationists and anti-New Dealers, Mr Hearst had hoped that Mr Willkie would take issue with the President cn every move he made in the old-fashioned way of fighting a campaign. They had hoped above all things ■ that Mr. Willkie would be an isolationist and would make that the major issue of the campaign. They had hoped for a “No war at any price ” catch-cry, one that might have appealed to millions of unpledged voters But Mr Willkie, although he made a verv definite statement some weeks back “to the effect that if he were elected he would never lead this nation into war. evidently does not want to run his campaign that way and ob» viously will not be stampeded into promising something he may not be able to fulfil if he is elected.

Party Differences Discarded

Mr Hearst is blaming Mr Willkie’s advisers for his attitude on important national questions, but the truth of the matter is that Mr Willkie refuses to be guided by the old men of the party and is literally waging a oneman campaign, much to the disgust of Mr Hearst and the other old guard anti-Rooseveltians.

No one can deny the courage of Mr Willkie. He has- thrown aside party differences when it has come to a matter of United States welfare and refused to take issue with the President over such important things as the Conscription Bill and the destroyer trade. He endorsed the Conscription Bill, although he did call it by a sweeter name. Selective Service and he approved of the transfer of the destroyers, objecting only to the President's secrecy in making the deal. His party followers and backers urged him to fight the President on both issues and make them a major item of his campaign, but Mr Willkie said that to do such a thing at this time when the nation was working frantically to arm itself against possible attacks by dictator nations, would have seriously hampered preparedness and caused a terrific turmoil. The only political capital he is trying to make out of both things is that if he is elected he will get things done much quicker, because he says he has big business behind him.

Mr Willkie's altitude on these important matters has his party worried and a note of defeatism already has crept into the Republican campaign. Mr Roosevelt's Campaign In the meantime, Mr Roosevelt opened his campaign by addressing the International Teamsters’ Congress at Washington and at once swung the labour vote behind him by promising to give labour the same fair deal he had given it in the last eight years The President hardly touched on the international situation in this opening speech of his campaign Towards the end he promised that he would not send an army overseas to fight unless the United States were attacked. He did not promise however, that he would not send more aid to Britain, and he did not explain that he did not have the power to send an army overseas or even declare war. So that statement can be dismissed as unimportant. So many Americans have the idea that the President can declare war, but only Congress has that power. In the last war. Congress declared war over President’s Wilson’s objections.