“I AM FOR BEER.”

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 601, 3 November 1932, Page 1

“I AM FOR BEER.”

Presidency Campaign Hinges on Liquor Issue. MR ROOSEVELT'S SLOGAN. CHICAGO, October 2S. Australians and New Zealanders j might yearn to know what is the outstanding issue in the United States Presidential election. They would read it in the banner-line across the top of i the front page of this morning’s Chi- ! cago “ Tribune ”, in letters five inches high. It is in five words: “I am for beer—Roosevelt Tariffs have had their innings. Depressions have been worked to death. To-day, the campaign has gone right back to where Mr Al. Smith started it, and the one question now is: “ Are we going to have beer or not? ” So certain are we that we are going to have our beer that the breweries are being “ rebrewriated ” and refurnished with appropriate brewing furniture. Democratic spell-binders are presenting to the thirsty electorate figures that show that the Government’s income from beer in the first year will be 790,000,000 dollars (at par £158,000,000), or practically enough to wipe out the deficit with which the Government is faced.

When so much attention is being paid to liquor, it is not surprising that the quality of the campaign speeches is not particularly high. The “ Four Horsemen

Mr Franklin Roosevelt, himself, in his tour of the southern States this week, is inclined to pay more attention to less liquid questions. The “ Four Horsemen ” of decadent Republicanism he named as Destruction, Delay, Deceit and Despair. He hangs them all round President Hoover’s neck, and accuses the President of being the high priest of pure and unadulterated pessimism. Mr Roosevelt made great fun of the Republican platform statement about liquor, saying that it was intended to look wet to the wets, and dry to the dries, but had ended by being dry to the wets and wet to the dries. During last week, however, Mr Hoover has surprised the country with the increasing power of his public addresses. He has quit being the reserved and dignified Chief Executive, and has become a fighting candidate for office. He is still as plodding a speaker as ever made a dull speech more dull, but. just the same, he has made a great impression, especially with his Detroit speech, where he went after Mr Roosevelt without mercy. Hoover in Pursuit.

Putting what he said in a nutshell, it was that his actual in-hand plan of rehabilitation should be contrasted with Mr Roosevelt’s indefinite promise of something new in reconstructive effort; that his known stand in opposition to the war veterans’ bonus and for Governmental economy should be compared with Mr Roosevelt’s equivocal position on the bonus and his fantastic plan for national economy, and that the Democratic pledges against extravagance should be considered in relation to the facts of the extraordinarily costly Democratic legislation in the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives. The big question is, of course, whether Mr Hoover has begun soon enough to catch up to his breezy, smiling, adroit and attractive adversary. Newspapermen who have travelled with both candidates, and who have made their own political tours of observation, almost as a unit say that Mr Roosevelt is too far ahead. They assert, without qualifying their statement, that Mr Hoover cannot catch him.