Report of the County Chairman Read Free Page A

poisoning; her family was swept into one of the worst wartime concentration camps; all their property was confiscated without remuneration; and the burden of holding the family together fell upon my wife. That she survived this series of disasters without impairment of her natural optimism was due to the solid education Japanese parents give their children and to the fact that Antioch College, in southern Ohio, was brave enough to award her a scholarship while she was still in her concentration camp. The college also found her a good job, and she has always felt “that one Antioch in a country offsets four patriotic societies in Southern California.” It was inevitable, I suppose, that she camethrough these experiences without rancor and with a great love for a nation which might make mistakes, but which was generous enough to correct them. It was also inevitable that she would be for Adlai Stevenson.
    So as we drove homeward she pressured me. “Who else do the Democrats have that you could possibly vote for in the primaries?” she demanded. “You’ve lived overseas. You’ve seen what America really needs. A President with courage to do the right thing. Somebody with brains. Somebody the other nations can respect. A man with determination in the field of social legislation. There’s only one man you could possibly support.”
    Across the country my wife bombarded me with reasons why Adlai Stevenson had to be our next President and why I would be ashamed of myself if I supported anyone else. She made a persuasive case for her candidate and convinced me that she was going to further his candidacy with all her energy, which is phenomenal. By the time I reached Pennsylvania, after refreshing my powerful memories of Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, each of which held recollections of happy hours spent there during the last forty years, I was not, perhaps, completely convinced that I was going to come out for Stevenson, but I at least had more than a dozen good reasons to fortify me if I did so decide. The most persuasive argument my wife had used was this: “The people of this country sense that enormous decisions are going to be made in the 1960’s. And they know that more than half those decisions will involve foreign relations. They want somebody with brains. Instinctively they know thePresident ought to be Stevenson. And without General Eisenhower to run against him, Stevenson will win.”
    “If you had to give me just one reason why I should support Adlai, what would it be?” I asked.
    “Because the people sense that he’s big enough to do the job.”
    “Do you think he can get elected?” I pressed.
    “This time, yes,” she insisted.
    When we reached home I spent the better part of one November week locked up in the small room where I usually did my serious work. My dictionaries were in place; my typewriter stood on its stand; and certain objects which have a warm good-luck quality about them stared down at me from their appointed homes. But I did not pitch in to my writing. Instead I sat back and gazed out the window at the lovely Pennsylvania forest which stood stark in the autumn winds. And as I sat there I reviewed the political condition of my nation.
    “The fundamental thing,” I reasoned, “is that we have got to have a wholly new administration. It mustn’t be saddled with old policies and old policy-makers. Therefore it’s got to be Democratic. This country really needs a Democratic administration.”
    I thought that it had to be Democratic for these reasons. First, our country had indeed grown somewhat fat and flabby, not as seriously as our enemies abroad preached, but just enough to give me pause. Second, “It does seem evident to me that we’ve been standing still insofar as our internal affairs are concerned. Education, new dams, new factories, our general spirit of adventure … in nearly everything but roads we need enormous new energy.” As a former teacher of economics I