Dwight Eisenhower's campaign was stepped up to a new level of intensity last week.
"We Must Have a Leadership . . ." On Boston Common he drew a crowd which police said was as large as those that turned out for Al Smith or F.D.R. Ike concentrated on the threat of "godless Communism," which "strikes at the jugular vein of freedom."
"If we are to win this deadly struggle with Communism, we must have a leadership that can unite us behind great objectives—a leadership morally and spiritually strong ..."
That night, back in Manhattan at the Herald Tribune Forum, Eisenhower returned to the Communist theme. In a crisp analysis of the recent Red Party congress in Moscow, Ike held that Russia was aiming especially at wrecking the free world.'s economy. "Annual handouts" to U.S. allies, he argued, are no long-range defense. He proposed a "new look" at the problem, in concert with U.S. allies and directed at "reviving free-world economies and trade as a whole . . ."
"Inflation, the Thief." Next day, after a breakfast (doughnuts & coffee) with a Negro group at Harlem's Theresa Hotel, the Republican candidate entrained for western Connecticut and Massachusetts, upstate New York and southern Michigan.
Ike said it over & over again, from Hartford to Pontiac: his campaign's "simple purpose is to provide—in lieu of shopworn, bad government—to provide good government and good leadership for America .. ." At Troy, N.Y. he dealt with one example of "bad government": "Inflation, the thief that robs you every day."
"The inflation we suffer is not an accident: it is a policy . . . The Administration's controls over prices are nothing but weak stopgaps. The really effective controls—those over money and credit—were ignored by the Administration . . ."
To back his argument, Ike quoted the Democrats' Senator Paul H. Douglas of Illinois, who has criticized the Administration's fiscal policy as "lax, confused and imprudent." The Fair Deal, charged Eisenhower, had bullied the Federal Reserve Board whenever the board tried to check the inflationary program.
At Buffalo, after noting that his audiences had included a group of housewives brandishing brooms, Ike pleaded especially for the women's vote to sweep away "bad government": "I know what can be done with a good broom in the hands of a morally indignant woman ..."
"No Demonic Destiny . . ." The big blow of the week, the opening of the campaign's last grand assault, was delivered from Detroit's Masonic Temple before a nationwide radio and TV audience. The subject: Korea, which Eisenhower and his aides believe to be the campaign's No. i issue and the U.S. people's No. i concern.
In a formidable documentation, taken from official records (see box), Eisenhower raked the Truman Administration for failing to avert the "tragedy" of the Korean war, despite Republican forewarnings.