Pitched High

This week, Tom Dewey took to the road in his 15-car "Victory Special." His confidence bordered on cockiness as he began a 13-state swing through the West. He was unruffled by the Truman barbs, undisturbed by the size of the Truman crowds.

He arrived in Des Moines to be met by a gratifying crowd and a band playing A Do, Do, Dewey Day, written to a Nebraska University tune. That afternoon it rained. The Dewey address, scheduled to be made at the Drake University Stadium (capacity 30,000), had to be moved inside the Drake Field House (capacity 9,500). He spoke to an overflow audience.

He made it clear that if any back-fence scrapping were in order, it would be left to lower-level hatchetmen.

"The specific proposals I will make," he said, "will not set faction against faction, group against group. They will aim to join us together in a more perfect union." Ticking off the nation's ills--high prices, housing, racial discrimination--Dewey echoed Warren's sweet reasonableness and added a sly twist of his own. "Some of these unhappy conditions are the result of circumstances beyond the control of any government. Any fair-minded person would agree that others are merely the result of the Administration's lack of judgment, or of faith in our people. Only part are deliberately caused for political purposes."

Except for a promise to his farm audience that support prices would be maintained, Dewey attempted no detailed outline of his program, shrewdly contented himself with general pledges which friends wanted to hear and enemies would find difficult to attack. He promised a foreign policy "made effective by men & women who really understand the nature of the threat to peace and who have the vigor, the knowledge, and the experience required to wage peace successfully." He promised an administration "made up of men & women whose love of their country comes ahead of every other consideration." Cried Dewey: "I pledge to you that on next Jan. 20 there will begin in Washington the biggest unraveling, unsnarling, untangling operation in our nation's history."

He added an earnest warning. "I have no trick answers and no easy solutions," he declared. "I will not offer one solution to one group and another solution to another group. The American people have a right to expect honest answers and I propose to give them."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.