ELECTION CONTEST MOMENTUM

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLII, Issue 20532, 25 September 1936, Page 9

ELECTION CONTEST MOMENTUM

BIG BATTLE OF WORDS CAMPAIGN STYLES CONTRASTED ALFRED LANDON ESCHEWS ORATORY United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright (Received September 24, 8.15 p.m.) NEW YORK, September 23. The presidential contest has assumed its full momentum. Governor Alfred Landon, who is proving himself only an indifferent speaker, has eschewed all oratory, whereas Mr Roosevelt’s addresses are crowded with classical and literary allusions. What Mr Landon has advocated may be summarised as the return of the Liberal simple and nondictatorial Government, while Mr Roosevelt insisted that men of great wealth and power must awaken to the full conscioupsness of their duty to the poor and disinherited. The campaign has not been without oddities. The amusing and illuminating efforts of Mr W. M. Hearst to drag the Communist issue into the contest by his persistent allegations that Mr Rcosevelt’s advisers are of Bolshevik sympathy, and the President himself is a real, if unofficial candidate of the Comintern, stirred up more tempest than it intrinsically merits since the Communist vote in the United States in 1932. toe height of the depression, was less than l-10th per cent, of the electorate, and it is now estimated that Mr Bowder, the Communist candidate for the Presidency probably received only l-25th per cent of the vote. The New Deal itself continues u> lead a Jekyl and Hyde existence. President Roosevelt a few days ago, announced that he would advocate crop insurance, as an anti-drought measure in next Congress. Governor Landon immediately issued a statement, giving excerpts from the speech he was going to deliver next day, advcoating a similar measure. The Republicans made a great ado about W.P.A. workers being employed in building the so-called Roosevelt monuments, namely large roadside hoardings, reading “Vote Roosevelt.” The Democrats immediately retaliated by so timing the divulgence of the Nye Munitions Report, showing that a large American munitions firm helped to rearm Germany, that it coincided with another divulgence that the head of the same firm was a large contributor to the Republican funds in the Maine campaign last week.