Address at the Eastern Parkway Arena in Brooklyn, New York

It is always a pleasure for me to come to Brooklyn. My visit to Brooklyn in 1948 was one of the high spots of my campaign and I shall never forget it.

I never come to Brooklyn without thinking of a great American--who used to wind up his State campaigns here--Governor Alfred E. Smith.

I never come to New York without thinking of the men who have come up in the humanitarian tradition of Al Smith in this State, and the good they have done for the country. I think of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

I think of my old colleague in the United States Senate, Bob Wagner.

And I think of your great Governor and great Senator, Herbert Lehman.

This year the Democrats of New York have selected one of your own distinguished and experienced leaders here in Brooklyn to join Herbert Lehman in the Senate. This Democratic county ought to roll up the biggest majority in history this year for John Cashmore and the whole ticket.

You know, many of the principles of the New Deal and the fair Deal were first put into effect right here in New York during the twenties. Even when the reactionaries were in full control of the Government in Washington, New York State was a working laboratory for the advancement of those principles. It provided a bright example in the Nation for the benefit of progressive, liberal, humane Democratic government.

Many of the battles that later were fought and won on a national scale were first fought and won here in New York. Those were the battles for the people against the power trust, the battles against the sweatshop working conditions, the battles against child labor and for workmen's compensation.

Those battles were won by keeping the power of government out of the hands of the special interests which controlled--and still control--the Republican Party.

This is a fight that never ends. The same selfish and reactionary forces are trying again this year to get control of the National Government. If they do, they'll start to tear down the great things we have done for the people over the last 20 years--just as they started to do in the 80th Congress.

The way to prevent that--the way to go forward for the good of the people--is to elect Adlai Stevenson President and give him a real Democratic Congress.

We will have a real Democratic Congress if the rest of the country elects the same kind of Congressmen that you people here in Brooklyn have representing you now. It's an all-star team: Mannie Celler, Abe Multer, John Rooney, Gene Keogh, Louis Heller, Edna Kelly, Donald O'Toole, and James Murphy.

Now I sincerely hope that you will reelect them all--and I know you will.

They are the kind of people Adlai Stevenson needs to help him.

Governor Stevenson, I am confident, will become one of our great American Presidents. He will go to the White House from a background of experience in government very much like franklin Roosevelt's.

As a highly successful Governor of one of our largest States, he has displayed the same deep understanding of the needs of the ordinary people that franklin Roosevelt did.

In Governor Stevenson and John Sparkman, our party offers the country new, fresh leadership, based on sound and lasting principles.

I don't have to tell you that the Republican Party, on the other hand, offers the country very little.

That party is being run by the very same people who for a whole generation have been against everything the New Deal and the fair Deal have done for the people of this country.

They have been against fair rules for collective bargaining, and in their platform this year they reaffirmed their support of the Taft-Hartley law. They have been against fair prices for farmers, and just this year the majority of the Republicans in the House voted against continuing price supports at their present levels. They have been against social security and just this year the Republican Congressmen voted 2 to 1 against a bill to increase old-age insurance benefits. They have been against rent control, and just this year they voted to kill it. They have been against price control, and just this year the Republican Congressmen voted to take off all price supports.

The votes of the Republicans in Congress show how they've been against these things for 20 years, and they haven't changed a bit.

Obviously, an organization with these policies is doomed to be a minority party forever, in the United States of the 20th century, unless it can win by deceit--or by fooling the people.

And this year, those who control the Republican destinies are trying harder than ever to deceive the people, in their effort to win a national victory. And that is what I want to talk to you about.

Let me say at the outset, I have the deepest sympathy for those who desire a rebirth of the Republican Party. It would be good for the country. It would be good for the Democratic Party to have some real competition in working for the welfare of the average citizen.

A lot of people hoped for such a rebirth this year. They didn't get it. Instead, all they got was a new paint job.

The first thing the Republicans did this year was to pull one of the oldest tricks in the political book. That is to take a successful general--a man whose whole career stands for nonpartisan patriotism--and put him up as a candidate to hide their own bad partisan record.

In every case in our history, where this was done, the general turned out to be a figurehead--and usually a pitiful figurehead--for the interests using his name and reputation.
Now what has happened in this case?

Has this General come forward with a single, new constructive program? Has his leadership done a single thing to change the policies of the Republican Party? Take civil rights for example.

Here is an issue on which new leadership might try to bring the Republican Party back to its great--but almost forgotten--tradition of freedom and human rights. But nothing like that has happened. The Republican candidate has just uttered crafty equivocations designed to win the votes-and the contributions--of the Dixiecrat millionaires. He is still opposed to using the powers of the federal Government for an effective fair employment practices law.

Take the issue of refugees and displaced persons--the great question of whether we shall amend our immigration and naturalization laws in such a way as to aid and strengthen the brave peoples of Europe, and build up our own country.
Of course, the Republican platform is silent on this issue, but we are entitled to ask: What has the Republican candidate done about it?

At this 11th hour, he has come out for rewriting the McCarran Act, in words very similar to my veto message of that unfair and un-American law. I am glad he has done so, because I welcome support of every American in the fight to get that law changed. Do you suppose that he would have taken this stand--do you suppose his advisers would even have told him about this issue--if I had not begun the fight, and if I had not carried that fight to the people? How do you think we managed to get this belated "me too" out of the Republican candidate?

Now I am being criticized for what I have said about the General on this issue, and as usual my words are being distorted in the press. I have not sought to reflect on the General's military accomplishments in the great fight against the forces of Hitler in Germany. What I have said, and what I shall continue to say, is that the General, as a political candidate, cannot have this issue both ways.

He cannot go down to West Virginia or to Indiana or to Wisconsin, and put his arm around men like Revercomb and Jenner and McCarthy, and endorse them for reelection--and to ask the people to send them to Washington to help him in his "great crusade"--and then come back here to New York, and expect the people to believe that he is going to do away with the kind of injustice that is represented by that terrible McCarran law.

The apologists for the General say that he has to endorse such people in order to help the unity of the Republican Party. That, my friends, is the only kind of unity it does help. It certainly doesn't help national unity. It certainly doesn't help our unity as a great people of many origins, living up to the principles of our Constitution, and believing in the equality of man.

Indeed, as you look at this campaign, you see the Republican candidate, in his efforts to get votes and unify his party, saying the same things as those who have long been trying to pull our country apart.

For example, the Republican candidate is saying the same things about economic conditions in this country that the Communists are saying. He is asserting that our economic gains are not real--that they are due to war or to the threat of war.

This charge is utterly untrue, of course. In fact, it is the reverse of the truth. If it were not for the necessity of devoting a large part of our production to defense purposes, we could produce more civilian goods and raise our standard of living even higher than it is now.

The Republican candidate knows this-or he should know it, if he doesn't. But he is making his charges to spread fear of the future and distrust of the Government. And it is for exactly these same reasons that the Communists in this country and in Moscow are making the same charges.

Another reckless thing the Republican candidate is doing that will tear our country apart is spreading false and slanderous charges that the Democratic Party is soft on communism. In the face of the record we have made fighting against communism at home and abroad, these charges are fantastic. But because he thinks it is a way to get votes he is smearing his Government, and its civilian leaders, for the whole period of his own career under them.

These wild political charges about communism are no help to our strength and unity--or to our efforts to defeat communism. They divide us, setting American against American. You all know that that is true. There are even some Republicans who know it. Two years ago, seven Republican Senators joined in a statement declaring that this technique--if unchecked-and I quote: "will surely end what we have come to cherish as the American way of life."

If there is any doubt that this smear technique is a dangerous and destructive way to get votes, it can be dispelled if we know what the Communists think of it. They do not fear it. They are in favor of it. Listen to the words of a man who spent 9 years in the Communist Party as a volunteer counterspy for the FBI. His name is Herbert Philbrick, and he said--and I am going to quote him:

"According to leaders of the Communist Party, McCarthy has helped them a great deal. The kind of attacks he has made do three things that his comrades like: They add greatly to the confusion, putting up a smoke screen for the party and making it more difficult than ever for people to discern just who is a Communist and who is not; they make the party appear a lot stronger than it is; and they do considerable damage to some of the 'stupid liberals' whom the party hates."

There you have it. McCarthyism does not hurt the Communists--it helps them. Its purpose, like theirs, is to divide and confuse the Nation. But it is one of the weapons that the Republican Party, under its new leadership, is using in its drive for votes in November.

Now there is another field in which the Republican candidate has adopted tactics that divide and injure the Nation. That, my friends, is our struggle for peace in Korea. As I explained in Lawrence, Massachusetts, yesterday, the Republican candidate is leading people to think that he can pull all our troops out of Korea.

Now, the General is a professional soldier. I have arranged for him to receive, during this campaign, top secret reports on the fighting in Korea. He knows what the situation is there. He knows that if we pulled out of Korea it would mean a complete victory for the Communists, and would wreck our whole defense against Communist aggression in the far East.

Yet he has been going around this country implying that he has some easy patented solution. This is simply playing a cheap and cruel hoax on the mothers and wives of our men in Korea, and I have called him on it--I hope he stops it. Because it's not only a shameless cruelty for our women, and an injury to our morale, but it's also just what the Communists want.

Now, I made General Eisenhower Chief of Staff of the United States Army. I appointed him commander of NATO in Europe of our allies who are getting themselves strong enough to resist communism. He has been on my military advisers staff ever since I have been President of the United States, and if he knows any sure, quick way to wind up the Korean situation, he should have told me and not used it for a political purpose. It would be much, much easier, if he knows a quick way to end this situation, than to save it he is using it for political purposes, to get himself into office so he can stop it. He can't do it, and it's simply a political trick.

The Communists have been saying all along that we ought to get out of Korea and stay out of Korea. They have been doing everything possible to get the people of this country to think that Korea is a useless sacrifice. Their purpose is to get us out of the fight so they can take over Korea. And they have certainly been greatly helped by what the Republican candidate has been saying. around the country in recent days.

Now, when I think of all these things, I challenge any Republican, or any Republican newspaper (and that includes most of them) to stand up and say that the Republican Party and the Republican candidate have waged a high-level campaign--or even ever intended to wage a high-level campaign. They haven't done it. Theirs is one of the lowest, gutter campaigns that I have ever seen. And if there had been an ordinary politician at the head of it, instead of a general of the Army, the Republicans would never have dared to put it on.

Now, I have pointed out that this gutter campaign follows the line of the Communists in several respects. This is not because the Republican Party and the Republican candidate believe in communism, or that they are sympathetic with it. It is quite the opposite. It is because the propaganda of the extreme reactionaries, and of the lunatic fringe on the right--the lunatic fringe that the candidate wants to keep in his unified Republican Party--includes the same elements of disruption and distrust as the propaganda of the Communists. Now, if the Republicans stoop to this kind of propaganda, we have a right to call it what it really is.

Communism and the lunatic fringe of extreme reaction tell the people the same lies-because they have the same aim--to weaken and confuse and divide the people as a means of achieving power.

In the sad and tortured history of our times, we have seen many bitter examples of this political technique. Dictatorships have risen to power in foreign lands on the basis of it. At the bottom of these movements are the appeals to prejudice and panic. At the top is the figure of a leader, usually in uniform or with a military background. All the followers are required to have a deep personal faith in the leader, to believe that he will do miracles, if he comes to power. He answers no questions--he is above questioning. He will change everything that is wrong, but it is blasphemous to ask him how he is going to do it.

Now, I don't for a moment suggest that the Republican candidate wants to be a dictator--or that the Republican Party is planning to set up a dictatorship. But the public relations experts and the advertising agencies who are masterminding the Republican campaign have introduced these foreign techniques to sell their political product. And what I am saying is, that these foreign techniques have no place in American political life.

We do not want a man on horseback. When a man gets into politics, he has to get off his high horse. With us, a candidate is supposed to take a stand on the issues, and tell us where he stands. Anybody is entitled to question his views.

Our political life is colorful and exciting-and nobody knows that better than I do-but it is based on reason and debate and considered judgment. And we want to keep it that way.

So don't be pressured--don't be fooled-don't be divided by fear or panic. The people run this country. And the people can trust one another as they always have.

Think over the issues. Pray over your decision. Decide on the basis of reason and judgment. I hope you will vote Democratic-and I believe you will, because the Democratic Party stands on what it has done--and is honest with the people about the issues before us. The Democratic Party has always been the party of the people. The Democratic Party has always had a heart. The Republican Party has been for the special interests, and not for the people. The Republican Party has a calculating machine for a heart. I want you to think these things over. Think them carefully, now. Vote in your own interests.

If you think them carefully, and think of your own interests, and think of the welfare of this great Nation of ours--the greatest Republic in the history of the world--and think of the welfare of the free world as a whole, you can't do anything else but vote the Democratic ticket. And if you do that, Adlai Stevenson will be the President of the United States for the next 4 years.