20 OCTOBER 1944, Page 1

Roosevelt or Dewey?

Less than three weeks remain before the American people will have to decide whether President Roosevelt or Governor Dewey is to be President of -the United States. With the candidates running close and the issue still completely in doubt, comparatively secondary factors may turn enough undecided votes to settle the result one way or the other. Though, in fact, the declaration of the New. York Times, Which supported Willkie in x940, that it supports Roosevelt this time is something more than a secondary factor. And at the same time comes news that Republicans in California who supported Willkie last time are forming a pro-Roosevelt com- mittee. As the New York Times pointed out last Monday, " the truth is that no domestic problem can be settled without reference to the state of peace and prosperity, or the state of insecurity and depression in which the rest of the world finds itself." The Times is constrained, therefore, to support the President on the strength of his war leader- ship, whereas Mr. Dewey, with his followers divided, has failed to put a clear-cut policy before the nation. If he were elected he would

find his "mandate obscure, his purposes questioned." With the war at its most critical stage, and beyond that a phase in which decisions affecting future world peace must be dominant, Mr. Roose- velt's claim to direct affairs will have a potency which it could not have in normal times. New York, we are often told, is not America, and the New York Times is not the American Press ; but its words may sway many hundred thousand votes.