National Affairs: The Keynote

The old soldier, whose oratory on returning from the Far East had stirred the nation as it seldom is stirred by the spoken word, strode solemnly to the convention rostrum. The hushed hall waited, in mass expectancy, for another memorable address. Douglas MacArthur, General of the Army and one of the great orators of his day, did not disappoint his audience.

With a trumpet blast of rolling phrases, he sounded at once the call to a great political crusade: "A crusade to which all sound and patriotic Americans, irrespective of party, may well dedicate their hearts and minds and fullest effort. Only thus can our beloved country restore its spiritual and temporal strength and regain once again the universal respect."

New Leadership. The times, said Mac-Arthur, demand a new national leadership. His indictment of the Democratic Administration "for all of its tragic blunders" crackled and thundered. Resentment against the Administration, he said, has "poured from the hearts of the American people from North to South, East to West, with no distinction of race, creed, color or political affiliation. I know.

"From the four corners of the land, I have seen; I have heard ... a deep sense of fear that our leaders in their insatiate demand for ever more personal power might destroy the republic and erase from the earth those mighty principles of government which brought to this land a liberty, a dignity and a prosperity never before known . . ."

With classic cadences MacArthur held up, point by point, the Democratic "failures." The people, he said, "view with dismay":

¶ "The once proud and mighty victor. . . in a fight for national survival [deprived] in Korea of the power and the means and the will to achieve victory—our country's traditional military goal . . ."

¶ "The alarming change in the balance of world power, arising from the tragic decisions taken by willful or guileless men representing us at Teheran, Yalta, Potsdam and elsewhere . . . Soviet ascendancy as a world power and our own relative decline . . ."

¶ "Tolerance of corruption or worse in the . . . public service."

¶ "The rising burden of our fiscal commitments, the deprivation of the opportunity to accumulate resources for future security . . . the oppressive burden of the tax levy . . ."

Old Virtues. MacArthur quoted from George Washington's Farewell Address to drive home the basic need for religion and morality in the nation's life. Then he went on: "Public policy no longer is geared to the simple determination of that which is right and that which is wrong . . . The party of Jefferson and Jackson . . . that party of noble heritage has become captive to the schemers and planners who have infiltrated its ranks of leadership to set the national course unerringly toward the socialistic regimentation of a totalitarian state . . ."