Iowa Hybrid

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If that happens, where will Wallace be? He could openly and honestly withdraw his candidacy, as predicted by the New York Times's Arthur Krock. But he has not been a man distinguished for moral courage. In 1934, when his Agriculture Department was purged of a group of leftists, he made a brief protest and then sat silently by. Some of the victims were his close associates.When he made charges unsubstantiated by fact against the atomic-energy policy of Bernard Baruch, he first promised Baruch a retraction, then vanished ignominiously. In crises he is apt to be simply in absentia. If his hodgepodge party breaks up he may stay with it officially but spiritually go elsewhere.

But today, when Wallace denounces every criticism as Red-baiting, the Wallace movement is a twofold tragedy. It is the tragedy of Henry Wallace, a weak leader driven by ambition, bitterness and self-delusion into a misconception of the promised land. It is also the tragedy of the sincere people whom he is leading into a wilderness.

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