NEWS OF THE WEEK
THE .United States will on Tuesday elect its seventy-seventh Congress, and one of the two candidates for its thirty-ninth Presidential term. That bare fact should bring relief to the whole democratic world, for whether the choice falls on Roose- velt or Willkie the Presidential contest will be over by Wednes- day, and action by the United States on some of the most vital issues that ever faced mankind will no longer be condi- tioned in any kind of way by anxiety about the effect this or that decision may have at the polls. In one sense the result of the election is bound to be favourable to this country, in that the White House will be tenanted in any event by a strongly pro- Ally President. The misfortune of a President of one political colour and a Congress of the other is possible, but on the whole unlikely. The odds, as the contest entered its last week, were slightly in favour of Mr. Roosevelt, but with Mr. Willkie said to be making ground. The appeal made for him by Mr. John L. Lewis, the head of the United Mine Workers, counts for something, but Mr. Lewis cannot speak for all his own people, much less for American Labour as a whole. Mr. Joseph Kennedy, home from London, backs the President. Doubtful as the issue looks at the moment, it seems probable that when he actually gets to the ballot-box the hesitant voter will decide that this is no time to put a dark horse in control. Recogni- tion of the inadvisability of swapping horses when crossing a stream took Lincoln to the White House for a second time ; it is likely to take Mr. Roosevelt there for a third time. In America and out of it the knowledge that that tried hand was still at the helm would create universal reassurance.
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