Polls Apart

The New York Daily News sent post cards to 10% of the State's 6,960,117 registered voters, asking: "Shall the United States enter the war to help Britain defeat Hitler?" Of the 696,011 voters, last week 174,309 (25%) had responded--51,507, Yes; 122,802, No. Score: Go in, 29.5%; Stay out, 70.5%. Publisher Joseph Medill Patterson editorialized: "If, contrary to his 1940 campaign pledges, the President leads or pushes us into this war any time soon, he will be taking an unwilling people into a hated war." The newspaper anticlimactically observed: "In such event, the President must risk the verdict of history."

Publisher Patterson knew that he too was risking the verdict of history. The multimillionaire publisher of the biggest U.S. proletarian newspaper had asked a loaded question, had drawn a loaded answer. There is a difference between wanting to go to war and being willing to go to war--no sensible citizen in any country wants to go to war at any time--which the question dodged. There is a further difference between being willing to go to war "to help Britain" and to save the U.S. from grave danger. Careless questions certainly could not probe the present complex U.S. state of mind.

In the News poll the most striking fact was that almost 30% of the answerers were willing to go to war now. Dr. George Gallup's scientifically conducted Institute of Public Opinion, in a special New York State survey (monthly-for-23-months), could find only 21% who wanted to go to war, 8.5% less than Publisher Patterson's poll. Obvious conclusion: instead of chortling at the lack of war fever, Publisher Patterson should be brooding over its high reading on his own thermometer.

In Illinois, Colonel Patterson's cousin, multimillionaire Isolationist Colonel Robert Rutherford McCormick, simultaneously conducted a poll in his Chicago Tribune on the same question. Of 257,484 post cards mailed to every tenth voter, 77,229 (30%) answered: Yes (for war), 14,176, or 18.36%; No (against war), 62,394, or 80.79%. These figures checked almost exactly with Dr. Gallup's month-by-month poll of Illinois sentiment. Obvious conclusion: Colonel McCormick would have saved thousands of dollars by reading Dr. Gallup's polls, which regularly appear in the rival Chicago Daily News.

Four other polls made news:

> In Montana the Great Falls News asked voters: "If Senator [Burton K.] Wheeler were a candidate for re-election today, would you vote for him or against him? Did you vote for Wheeler for Senator last November?" Result, projected from early returns: Isolationist Leader Wheeler would be defeated by from 100,000 to 150,000 votes (last autumn he won by 112,812).

> In Virginia the Richmond Times-Dispatch began a poll on the question: "Shall the United States enter a shooting war against Germany now?" Early returns: Yes (for war) 450 or 45%; No (against war), 550 or 55%.

> This week Dr. Gallup polled Who's Who in America, asked the U.S.'s most prominent and successful citizens how they felt about the war today. Go in, said 45%; stay out, 55%. The selected few were twice as warlike as the general public.

> At the direction of University of Chicago President Robert Maynard Hutchins, the America First Committee employed the Samuel E. Gill Co. of New York City to get answers to six questions devised by isolationists. Basic question: "Do you believe that the United States should enter the war as an active belligerent at this time?" Yes, 19.1%, No, 74.7%, undecided, 6.2%. Even the addition of numerous threatening "ifs" failed to bring the pro-war group to 50%: If England is being defeated (34.4%), if U.S. ships are attacked and sunk (45.5%). But if the U.S. were invaded, 93.6% would fight.

From these and other answers Isolationist Hutchins concluded: the U.S. should lead the way toward mediating between Germany and Britain in the war. But to his question: "Do you believe that the United States should offer to mediate between England and Germany?" only 27.4% had answered "Yes." Conning all these pros & cons, owl-wise old (66) Columnist Mark Sullivan wrote: "The spirit of the American people, as expressed in polls, seems to be something like this: 'Do you favor entering the war?' A loud, ringing 'no.' 'Do you favor taking steps which would take us into the war?' A loud, ringing 'yes.' . . . The answer is, polls are an undependable guide. . . .

"There is a serious lesson this generation of Americans is obliged to learn. It is that government of a whole nation by the people speaking directly--that is, town-meeting government on a nationwide scale --was never meant to be the American form of government and never can be good government. What the American government was designed to be is representative government--government by representatives elected by the people. . . . The opportunity and obligation of the people is to elect able representatives. . . .

"About these polls there is one cheering development. It is the increasing number of pollees who answer 'I don't know.' . . . Confession of ignorance is a private virtue and a public service."

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