A VERY CLOSE LANDSLIDE VOTE. The Senate voted yesterday by a wide margin, 58-to-31, to approve the first peacetime conscription in U.S. history. But the isolationists who bitterly fought the Burke-Wadsworth bill for the last three weeks almost won a half-victory, according to radio reports last night. A compromise bill postponing draft registration until January 1, to give volunteer enlistments a chance to fill Army manpower quotas, narrowly failed 43-to-41. President Roosevelt had denounced the compromise, saying it would delay progress toward rearmament by an entire year. If the House votes for the current plan, which it is expected to do in the next two weeks, the Army will draft 400,000 men this fall and 400,000 next spring for one year of training. Additional increments up to 1945 will give America an available force of 4,000,000 men, including the reserves who will have completed their year’s training. In the short term, the law would require 12,000,000 men between 21 and 30 years of age to register for the draft.
In addition to the amendment to postpone conscription, the isolationists tried a number of ploys in the last day of debate. According to John G. Norris in Wednesday’s Washington Post, Senator Taft of Ohio introduced a proposal limiting the regular Army to 500,000 men -- roughly the size of the Dutch armies fielded against the Nazis last spring -- and 1,000,000 volunteer reserves. Frank L. Klockhorn’s story in the New York Times tells of a substitute bill offered by Senator Walsh of Massachusetts which allowed registering men for a draft, but forbade any actual conscription unless Congress declared a state of war or the U.S. was in immediate danger of invasion -- a foolhardy notion in the age of modern war. Both amendments went down by two-to-one margins.
IS WENDELL WILLKIE A LIBERAL? When the Republican presidential nominee referred to himself in his acceptance speech as a "liberal Democrat" who found democracy in the Republican Party, Democrats scoffed that Mr. Willkie had cynically tagged himself with the "liberal" label for political advantage. Solicitor General Biddle thundered at a Democratic rally last week-end that although the Elwood speech was "largely devoted to saying that he, Willkie, is a liberal," Mr. Willkie should instead "frankly say he is a businessman who doesn’t like Government regulation and therefore hates the New Deal."
An editorial in this week’s New Republic takes a similar line, noting that Mr. Willkie’s foreign policy "differs from Mr. Roosevelt’s in very few important respects," and that "in the domestic field, Mr. Willkie sounds even more like a New Dealer than in foreign affairs." But somehow, behind the nominee’s endorsement of conscription, support for the Roosevelt-Wallace farm program, opposition to monopoly, and praise for collective bargaining, the New Republic professes to see "a business man’s philosophy" from a man who espouses "precisely the doctrines of Coolidge and Hoover." (Even more incoherently, the Democratic National Committee is quoted in Wednesday’s Chicago Tribune as accusing Willkie of being an "adroit lawyer" masquerading as a businessman.)
Go figure. The fact is that Mr. Willkie’s words this summer are consistent with his career. He doesn’t merely endorse bargaining with labor, he’s done so. As president of the Commonwealth and Southern utility holding company, he presided over operating subsidiaries who are two-thirds unionized. In an article from February’s Current History, written well before his candidacy for the Republican nomination, he is quoted as calling himself a "La Follette liberal" who was proud to "shock my Tory friends" by demanding Federal regulation of utilities. But his well-publicized multi-year fight with the T.V.A. also showed his desire to prevent the inefficiencies of public ownership from crippling the utility industry, a position he’s held steadily over the years. And he’s not as worried about labels as his detractors seem to be. "The greatest joy in life," he says, "is to keep one’s thoughts uncontrolled by formulas." And that seems to be driving New Dealers a little nuts.
WILLKIE’S REAL PROBLEM. New York Herald Tribune columnist Walter Lippman doesn’t believe that Mr. Willkie’s made much good use of the last two months -- in fact, he says the Willkie campaign’s time so far has been "worse than wasted." Mr. Lippman says the problem lies in the fact that Mr. Willkie "was nominated as the result of a popular rebellion against the Republican Party machine," and is still too much of an outsider to effectively discipline the pro-isolationist, rock-ribbed G.O.P. men at the top of his own campaign --
"There are no signs as yet that Mr. McNary, the leader of the Republicans in the Senate and also Mr. Willkie’s running mate, or that Mr. Martin, the leader of the Republicans in the House and also Mr. Willkie’s campaign manager, are prepared to carry out the pledges of Mr. Willkie’s acceptance speech. Both Mr. McNary and Mr. Martin have, as regards foreign policy and national defense, consistently opposed the spirit and the letter of the Elwood speech, and on the record votes they have aligned most of the Republican Party in the opposition. It is from this Republican opposition that a small minority of Democratic objectors derive their effectiveness in delaying and obstructing the measures which both Mr. Willkie and Mr. Roosevelt have asked for....There is as yet no indication that the Republican Party leaders in Congress have paid the slightest attention to Mr. Willkie’s views on any great issue. The Republicans who are supporting conscription and help to Britain were supporting these measures before Mr. Willkie was nominated; the rest, and they include the official Republican leaders in Congress, either remain in opposition or are passively, like Messrs. McNary and Martin, not giving their support....As long as Mr. Willkie is conducting a merely personal campaign, without loyal and wholehearted support from this party, he has no way of convincing the country that he can accomplish any of the things he says he means to do."
RUMANIA FIGHTING RUSSIA, HUNGARY. Just a few days after the abrupt crisis between Italy and Greece died down, there’s more trouble between Rumania and her not-so-friendly neighbors. The United Press reports Wednesday there are between seventy and 100 dead and many wounded in the wake of a week of skirmishing between Russian and Rumanian troops. Apparently the Soviets, not long after seizing Bessarabia and parts of northern Bukowina, are trespassing on what they previously agreed to be Rumanian soil on the country’s new northern border. Russian warplanes have crossed the border and shot down several Rumanian aircraft, the U.P. says. And in the midst of this, Rumanian officials claim there've been numerous incidents along the Hungarian-Rumanian border, as the two countries negotiate over Hungary’s own demands for a slice of Rumanian Transylvania.
The irony of all this is that all three countries involved in the Balkan cauldron are on friendly terms with Hitler. And the Germans have uncharacteristically demanded the powers peaceably settle their differences, backing the call by bolstering the Nazi armies in the East to almost 100 divisions, or 1,500,000 men. Barnet Nover points out in his Washington Post column on Wednesday that the final settlement of the Hungarian dispute won’t matter much if Germany wins the war, since Hungarians and Rumanians alike will be enslaved. But if the British prevail, then Rumania "will regain her freedom of action" and her borders will matter very much indeed. This is something the Rumanians doubtless are mindful of, and why they’re stalling about further territorial concessions. Mr. Nover says it all shows how precarious Hitler’s "past triumphs, military and diplomatic, may prove to be unless he can win over England. Without that victory, all others will be dust and ashes."
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