Evening star., 1944-10-18


silly idea for a party whose convic-
tion is that the popular trend is to-
ward it and not against.
Now. 1t develops that far from be-
ing light, the registration is unusu-
ally heavy; that in most of the i'm
portant electoral States the voters
have registered quite beyond expec-
tation and that the Republicans,
far from discouraging voters from
registering, have done everything
they knew how to get them on the
books. Certainly. they would have
been crazy not to.
At any rate the registration, par
ticularly in New York, has ended the
talk about apathy and light vote,
There isn't any apathy and the
vote easily may 60 above 50,000,000
This ought to please the fourth
termers, but they do not seem as
joyous about it as one might think.
Radical Press Alarmed.
Another thing about which alarm
was voiced on the Roosevelt side
concerned the vote of the men in
the armed forces. The radical press
in New York and the Hillman CIO-
PAC publicity agents screamed that
the Republican party had tried to
disfranchise the soldiers, practically
all of whom, it was claimed, would
vote for the Commander in Chief
If they could.
Particularly, 1t was charged that
Gov. Dewey had signed law under
which the soldiers of his State were
barred. A great hullabaloo was
raised and the facts were almost
completely obscured.
The basis for most of these
charges was the Republican opposi-
ton to the Roosevelt plan Of having
the whole business of the soldier
vote handled entirely by the Federal
Government. Under that plan the
States would have been showed aside
and the soldiers would have had
their vote limited to the candidates
for President and Vice President.
They would have been unable to vote
for State officers, which suited the
Administration, but no one else.
Anti-New Deal Democrats Joined
with the Republicans, and the ma
chinery for voting citizens in uni
form here and abroad was put in
the hands Of the States, where the
Constitution intended it to be.
Ever since the political and
Journalistic supporters of the Presi-
dent have been shouting that be-
cause of the vicious and sinister
Republicans "our fighting men" have
been deprived of their "inalienable
right of franchise" The noise on
this line has been incessant and
very loud. The Hillman Committee
and the Communists again have
been particularly violent and voci-
ferrous.
But now it develops that so far
from not being able to vote, the
men in uniform are already voting
In a proportion considerably larger
than the civilian stay-at-homes
have voted in the past. And es-
peclally in the State of New York.
where the loudest outcry was made,
the percentage is high.
Prove Charge Baseless.
Both these things-the increased
registration at home and the appli-
cation and ballots received by the
States from soldiers abroad-while
they prove the baselessness of
charges which the -termers
have been making, undoubtedly
have raised the spirits of the
Roosevelt managers, whose conf
dence had been somewhat diluted
by evidences of the shift Of the
Negro vote in several of the large
electoral States including New
York-and by the closeness of the
recent polls.
They have not, however, dis
couraged the Republicans. On the
contrary, the Dewey campaign
manager, Mr. Brownell (an astute
gentleman who deals in realities)
interprets the larger registration as
an indication of the continuation
OF a tide that has been running in
the Republican direction for four
years, and genuinely believes that
Mr.. Roosevelt will not get an over
whelming majority of the service
men.
incidentally, it is interesting to
note that Mr. Roosevelt's S name ap-
pears three times on the New York