UNHOLY ALLIANCE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 November 1940, Page 5

UNHOLY ALLIANCE

RADICALS AND EXTREME CONSERVATIVES ALLEGED BY ROOSEVELT. THREAT TO DEMOCRACY. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) NEW YORK, November 2. President Roosevelt alleged that radical and ultra-conser-vative groups had combined to form an unholy alliance seeking his defeat in the election on Tuesday and the setting up of a dictatorial form of government in the United States. He told a Democratic rally that this group had reached a secret understanding threatening the future, of’ democracy in the United Slates.

President Roosevelt, pointing out what collaborative understanding between Communism and Nazism had done to democracy abroad, said: “There is something very ominous in the combination which is being formed within the Republican Party between the extreme reactionary and the extreme radical elements in this country. There is no common ground on which they can be united unless it be their common will to power and their impatience with normal democratic processes.”

Summing up his objectives of freedom and opposition to vested interests which aimed at the revival of government by special privilege and imitation of foreign dictatorships, President Roosevelt concluded: “I am fighting for those great and good causes and for the defence of them against the power and might of those now challenging them, and 1 shall not stop fighting.” President Roosevelt denied a statement which he said had been made by a Republican official that the United States fleet was en route west of Hawaii and would be sent to Manila after the election.

The Secretary of State, Mr Cordell Hull, urged the re-election of President Roosevelt. “It would be a tragedy for the country if the election were to turn on spurious, counterfeit issues of foreign policy artifically created to mislead voters,” he said. Mr Hull strongly defended President Roosevelt’s foreign policy and branded as “utterly vicious” charges that the President was leading the country into war. He issued a warning that the aggressor nations were “desperately struggling to seize control of the oceans as an essential means of achieving and maintaining their conquest of other continents. Should they succeed, can anyone believe that they will be content to leave us and. nations of this hemisphere at peace—unless we become subservient to their will?” MR WILLKIE’S CONTENTIONS. The Republican candidate, Mr Wendell Willkie, said: “When a third- term candidate speaks about 26,000 planes for Britain, let us not fool the British people. We must arm Britain with planes and not disarm her with political speeches. It will take years to fill their orders as the result of Nev? Deal stagnation in aviation and industry.”