For 40 days Wendell Willkie had gone up & down the U. S., challenging his opponent to come out and fight. But Franklin Roosevelt said he was too busy. For lack of a real, live adversary, Candidate Willkie perforce tilted at windmill issues. Last week in Philadelphia the President finally dropped the pretense that he had no time for politics, made his first admittedly political speech of the campaign. He wanted, said he. to answer falsifications with facts. So twelve days before Election Day, the battle was joined. Each of the contestants pretended not to know the other fellow's name: one was "the third-term candidate"; the other was "Republican leaders." But, such traditional little coquetries aside, the fight was really on; punches were given & taken, toe to toe.
Cracks & Back Cracks. The President spoke first. His opponent followed with a point-by-point rebuttal. Naturally this gave Challenger Willkie the apparent advantage, but it was only the first round.
Roosevelt: ". . . Certain techniques of propaganda, created and developed in dictator countries, have been imported into this campaign. It is the ... technique of repeating . . . falsehoods, with the idea that by constant repetition . . . and with no contradiction, the misstatements will finally come to be believed. ... I make the charge now that these falsifications are being spread for the purpose of filling the minds and hearts of the American people with fear.
"The tears, the crocodile tears, tears for the laboring man and laboring woman, now being shed in this campaign come from those same Republican leaders who had their chance to prove their love for labor in 1932 — and missed it."
Willkie: "There is no issue between the third-term candidate and myself about 1932. I voted for and supported him in 1932. I believed in the Democratic platform of 1932."
Roosevelt: ". . . It is [a falsification] for any . . . candidate to state . . . that the President of the United States telephoned to Mussolini and Hitler to sell Czecho-Slovakia down the river. ... I know we know that [the statement was] . . . false."
Willkie : "As a matter of fact the third-term candidate didn't telephone Hitler —he telegraphed him."
Roosevelt: ". . . American business . . . is way up above the level of 1932 and on a much sounder footing than it was even in the '20s. . . . Our national income has nearly doubled since 1932. . . ."
Willkie: "A fair comparison would be to compare the record of the seven New Deal years with the seven years that preceded the New Deal. . . . [Then] we find that the national income under the Administration of the third-term candidate is down 11%; that industrial production is down 5%; construction contracts down 50% ; farm income, including Government payments, down 20%; industrial wages and salaries down 21%. . . ."
Roosevelt: ". . . We are determined during the next four years ... to make work for every young man and woman in America. ..."