National Affairs: Adlai's Five Days

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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.