National Affairs: Debut in Duluth

In his first real campaign speech for the 1956 elections, Adlai Stevenson last week was crisp, caustic and effective. He had an ideal backdrop for his speech: Duluth, where Senator Hubert Humphrey's strongly pro-Stevenson Minnesotans cheered him to the echo. Some 900 Democrats slushed through the season's first snow to the National Guard Armory and cheerfully paid $10 a plate for roast beef and 50¢ for badges saying, "I'm still madly for Adlai." A jazz band played It's a Sin to Tell a Lie (also known as Be Sure It's True When You Say I Love You), and Hubert Humphrey himself introduced Candidate Stevenson as "the very man" for the Democratic Party and the nation. Next day, to top off the occasion, the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party met and unanimously adopted a resolution asking Stevenson to accept its endorsement for President and urging him to enter the state's presidential primary next spring.

Arriving late at the armory, after resting up in Duluth's Spalding Hotel from a 160-mile drive over slick, dangerous highways from Minneapolis, Adlai Stevenson looked weary—but his delivery of the speech was strong, and its contents were obviously intended to satisfy all demands of his critics that he conduct a fighting campaign.

"Now," said Stevenson, as he began his sharp attack on the Eisenhower Administration, "we have had three years of loud talk and little action, of broken promises, of slogans, surveys, meetings, and of complacency, of hanging onto yesterday. But we Democrats have a larger vision of our country and ourselves. And we're serving notice right now that there is going to be a change."

Around the Corner. Nowhere, Stevenson continued, is it "so important that we stop the politics of misleading talk as in the field of our foreign relations. We do not belittle the 'Geneva Spirit.' We thank God that no guns are firing today. We are grateful for even an uneasy peace and we are grateful to the Republican Administration for the constructive steps it has taken. We are proud too of the Democratic record for bipartisanship in foreign policy—and we are especially proud that we have resisted the provocation of these Republicans who have smeared that record with the charge of treason, and every lesser epithet as well.

"But we insist on putting a stop to the loose talk and erratic behavior that has marked the conduct of our foreign affairs these past three years and that has confused our purposes and frightened our friends if not our enemies. I mean creat ing or encouraging the illusion that all is well, or at least better, that miracles happened at Geneva last summer, that peace and security are around the corner like some other Republican blessings I can think of. Well, the fact is that our foreign affairs are not prospering any more than agriculture is prospering. The fact is that we should pray the more fervently for the success of the foreign ministers' conference in Geneva because our world situation has sadly deteriorated.''