"We Will Wage Peace"

As his train rolled through the rich Pacific Northwest, Tom Dewey was obviously gaining in confidence, and apparently he was translating that confidence into a new maturity. He seemed less like a candidate bidding for votes and more like a statesman speaking not only for his party but for his country.

The new note was sounded most clearly in his elaboration of his foreign policy. In Portland and at Seattle, he had warned foreign aggressors abroad not to mistake a domestic political campaign for the symptoms of disunity. 'At Great Falls, Mont., he said: "The totalitarian states must not misunderstand what is happening here . . . When we change our national Administration next January, as I firmly believe we will, it will be for the purpose of strengthening our country, cementing our national unity, and waging the peace with greater skill and effectiveness . . . And let no dictator or trigger-happy militarist anywhere make any mistake about that."

The next night, standing on the great tiered rostrum of the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, he delivered the most thoughtful and most specific speech of his campaign. Its basic outline had been checked by telephone with Senator Arthur Vandenberg. It had been corrected and updated after last-minute teletype reports from John Foster Dulles in Paris. The result was a detailed reassurance that U.S. foreign policy has become a national, and not a party issue.

"What Lies Ahead?" From the moment he began, Tom Dewey made it clear that the Republican Party had rid itself for keeps of the old taint of isolationism. He spoke on the tenth anniversary of the signing of the Munich Pact and he was explicit in his resolve that Munich must never come again: "We cannot buy peace with appeasement. That course has always led throughout history and always will lead to greater and greater demands on the part of the aggressor. In the end it can lead only to slavery or to war."

He avoided the temptation to criticize the Democratic Administration by hindsight. With rare restraint, he made no attempt to fix the blame for past mistakes. "Those things are done," said Dewey. "The question is what lies ahead?"

The answer plainly depended on U.S. relations with Russia. Said Dewey: "The best way for us to get along with the Soviet leaders is to deal with them as strong equals and, by doing so, to restore their respect for us. We shall deal with the Soviet as with all other nations in a spirit of friendship and patience and fairness, but we should make it perfectly plain that now or hereafter we do not intend to be bullied or bluffed . . .

"The goal of American foreign policy is to establish in the world a just and a lasting peace . . . Our foreign policy in this troubled world can no longer be a passive, a dead--a negative thing. It must be a live and a vital thing. We will wage peace, we will wage peace with all the vigor, and the imagination and the skill and energy with which we waged war."

What waging that peace meant, Dewey defined in specific terms:

"Unstinting support to the United Nations."

"Friendship and help to freedom-loving people everywhere."

"The great adventure of the European Recovery Program ... as a means for pushing, and if I may say so, prodding and encouraging the nations of Western Europe toward the goal of European union."

"A demilitarized Ruhr . . . under international control."

"An end to the tragic neglect of our ancient friend and ally, China."

"Air, land and sea forces that are capable of protecting us in this new atomic age."

"Close and cordial cooperation with our neighbors of the American continent."

With Great Pleasure. This was an explicit reaffirmation of the present bipartisan foreign policy, adding China and the internationalization of the Ruhr. What

Tom Dewey also added was reassurance that a new team would tackle the job with new vigor, with new boundless confidence that the U.S. future had scarcely been tapped.

For that future, he promised a program not unlike Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. It included more irrigation and flood control projects, expanded rural electrification and soil conservation, protection and development of forests, oil reserves, mineral resources. To build the West's power supply he promised new river projects on the Columbia and Missouri. To keep it all humming, he promised to appoint, "with great pleasure," a Secretary of the Interior from the West.

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