Adlai's Five Days

One day last week, Adlai Stevenson left Springfield by plane for a swing through the Midwest and South. Five days, 4,400 miles and 25 speeches later, he was back in Springfield. He had had a good week. The crowds he drew in the streets were still smaller than Ike's, but his major speeches packed auditoriums and were well received. He was in fine literary form, produced several new witticisms and an old limerick,* quoted Bernard Shaw, Artistotle Browning, and La Rochefoucauld. The political pattern of Stevenson's speeches was clear: he was mainly running against President Herbert Hoover and Robert Taft.

Depression. Almost all his major speeches included sketches of the horrors of the Great Depression. "Conservative, law-abiding farmers organized to march on towns and to loot the stores. Children left home to spare their parents another mouth to feed . . . Millions of American men & women waited in the breadlines ..." The carefree era "about which a fellow Princetonian of mine, F. Scott Fitzgerald, wrote some enduring prose," ended in disaster, for which the Republican government of the time had no cure except "wails and exhortation ... I can remember when shabby men and boys stood on the highways as far north as Jacksonville, thrusting cards into the few passing automobiles. They were bidding motorists to spend a night at one of your great Miami Beach hotels for a dollar--with breakfast thrown in." Stevenson's moral: the Republicans, if elected, would bring back those dreadful days. The Democrats, on the other hand, "will not let the farms and factories of America lie idle while men and women and children need food and clothing."

Taft. Stevenson attacked Eisenhower for being vague on issues (in one verbal caricature, he likened him to a fish who always "swims back under those lily pads entitled, 'I just want to do what is best for the American people.' "). But his main charge was that Eisenhower had surrendered to Taft, who "lost the nomination, but won the nominee." Said Stevenson: "When you gaze upon the five stars of Eisenhower, you must listen for the voice of Robert A. Taft." On most specific issues, e.g., labor, defense, foreign spending, foreign trade, Stevenson cited Taft's stand, said or implied that it was also Eisenhower's.

At Saginaw, Mich., he told his audience that the Republican Party is the party of the rich and privileged, advocating a "restricted heaven--a heaven for members only." He conceded that taxes "are high, uncomfortably, dangerously high," but blamed them on defense spending, and declared that the country was more prosperous than ever. At the same time he vigorously attacked Eisenhower's assertion that much of this prosperity rested on defense spending.

Communism. In Detroit's jampacked Masonic temple, Stevenson made a speech of major importance: in it, he gave his view of Communism in the U.S. The Communist threat in the U.S., suggested Stevenson, is largely the Republicans' fault; it first appeared in the Great Depression, "arising from poverty and despair, and following, as it happens, twelve years of Republican administration." Then, many Americans became discouraged with capitalism, and nearly a million, in 1932, voted "against the capitalist system."*It was at that time, said Stevenson in an interpolation to his prepared text, "that some persons like Alger Hiss and Elizabeth Bentley, witnessing the devastation of capitalism and the menacing rise of Hitler, became entangled in the Communist conspiracy."

After the New Deal came to power, continued Stevenson, the Depression was halted, and "Communism in the U.S. was turned back." Stevenson promised: "If I find in Washington any disloyal Government servant, I will throw him out ruthlessly." He also promised to "review" the present loyalty system to see if it can be strengthened. But he was satisfied that the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover was doing everything there was to be done about finding Communist agents. Joe McCarthy, said Stevenson, had not brought about the conviction of a single Communist agent. He added: "Catching real Communist agents, like killing poisonous snakes or tigers, is not a job for amateurs or children, especially noisy ones. It is a job for cautious, silent professionals who know their business . . ." Furthermore, said Stevenson, Communist agents get into any Government, and anti-Communism is no guarantee against them--they even got into the Nazi regime.

At the University of Wisconsin in Madison, he took a swipe at Joe McCarthy: "The free mind is no barking dog to be tethered on a ten-foot chain. It must be unrestricted . . . Some, perhaps, find it politically profitable to cultivate the vineyards of anxiety. I would warn them lest they reap the grapes of wrath." At Milwaukee, where Stevenson drew a crowd that was somewhat bigger than Eisenhower's crowd of the week before, Stevenson criticized Ike for his routine endorsement of Joe McCarthy and of Indiana's Senator William Jenner. Said Stevenson: "Disturbing things have taken place in our own land. The pillorying of the innocent has caused the wise to stammer and the timid to retreat."

Fair Deal. At Kansas City, Stevenson paid glowing tribute to "your blue-ribbon winner . . . from Independence," Harry Truman, and his "heroic" decisions in the cold war. At St. Louis he made a major speech on economics. He recalled the men who criticized the Louisiana Purchase and compared them to "some men of today who know the price of everything and the value of nothing."

China. Moving on to Oklahoma City, where the New York Yankees' pitcher, Allie Reynolds, welcomed him, Stevenson, who has been too busy for baseball, bloopered: "I wish I could hit like you." In his speech before a crowd of 75,000 at the state capitol, he briefly defended the Administration's record on China: echoing the State Department's 1949 White Paper on the subject, he presented the familiar argument that China's Nationalist regime could have been saved from the Communists only by sending U.S. soldiers to China.*

Foreign Trade. In New Orleans, where he was greeted by a torchlight parade organized by the Seafarers International Union (A.F.L.), Stevenson presented his hosts a verbal bouquet ("You have made an admirable civilization. It is a jambalaya containing all that makes for the body's pleasure, the mind's delight, the spirit's repose"), then discussed foreign trade, essential to New Orleans' busy port. Said Stevenson: "The "suicidal foreign-trade fanaticism" of the Republicans, who were responsible for the Hawley-Smoot tariff (1930), would kill off foreign trade, would --by not buying from Japan and Germany --drive these countries into Communist arms. He also graphically described post-Civil War conditions in Louisiana, including malaria, pellagra, and child labor. He got a rousing cheer when he finished his speech with a tribute to the vigor of French civilization--delivered .in excellent French.

Social Security. At Miami, speaking against a background of waving palm trees, Stevenson conceded that "there are honest criticisms to be made after 20 years of Democratic administration," but in Miami and Tampa, he listed the aid the New Deal had given Florida, e.g., assistance to the Jackson Memorial hospital, reclamation of swamplands, development of frozen citrus concentrates. He promised expanded social security, and cited Alfred Landon's 1936 campaign speeches as evidence that the Republicans are against it. He also promised to see what he could do about "a longer, healthier life for our older citizens," quoting Browning to make his point ("Grow old along with me/The best is yet to be . . .").

Civil Rights. At Nashville, Tenn., where he was welcomed by Senator Estes Kefauver, Stevenson tackled the delicate subject of civil rights. "On the question of minority rights," he said, "a great many of you probably disagree with me," but he added that the difference between Northern and Southern Democrats on the subject of Negroes is only "a disagreement over method . . ."

After a two-day rest in Springfield, Stevenson this week went out on Eisenhower's trail through Wyoming, Utah and Texas. Stevenson aides have decided that the Democratic candidate is up against the "Eisenhower father symbol," i.e., a lot of people see Ike as a strong character, who will shoulder the country's worries. Stevenson's job, his staff thinks, is to try to "destroy the symbol."

*The one about the young lady from Niger who rode on the back of a tiger. The young lady, he intimated, was Ike, and the tiger Bob Taft. *The Socialist Party vote reached its alltime high, 901,873, in 1912. It was 897,704 in 1920. In 1932 it was 884,781. In the same year, the Communist vote was 102,991. Thereafter, large numbers of former Socialist voters were absorbed in the Democratic Party and later in New York's Liberal and Labor Parties. In 1948 the Socialist Party polled 139,009 votes, and the Communist-controlled Progressive Party polled 1,156,103. *In no campaign speech has Stevenson outlined his program for future dealings with Communist China. In a Sept. 8 press conference, he was asked whether the U.S. should recognize the Red Chinese government if the Korean war should be settled. He said that "there would be very great opposition to that recognition," but added: "I point out to you that once we had resolved our difficulties with our enemies in this and previous wars, notably in the case of Italy, we recognized them rapidly " Asked if Red China should get China's permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council, he said he did not think "the time will ever come when any country will shoot its way into the U.N." On the other hand, "that the seat should remain vacant and not occupied by a government no longer in existence would be un likely." On the basis of these answers, Steven son's most enthusiastic press supporter, the New York Post, reported that in spite of Stevenson's "guarded language," his words contained "strong intimations of the position he would favor." The Post said that Stevenson's words "added up, in effect, to agreement with the course of action recommended by Walter Lippmann and several other foreign-policy experts.'' This course was described by the Post: "In exchange for Chinese withdrawal from Korea and other concessions, this country would agree to dump Chiang as the legally recognized government of China. After an interval, Red China would be given diplomatic recognition and allowed to join the U.N."

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