NO ROOM AT THE INN

Four years ago today the American people went to the polls faced with a clear-cut choice between reaction and progress. Overwhelmingly they chose the New Deal brand of economic democracy. Today there is no such sharp distinction. On the basis of their past records and future promise, Wendell Willkie and Franklin D. Roosevelt offer a confusing and unsatisfactory choice.

Willkie "came up the hard way" as a clever public relations expert who did his best to wreck the T.V.A. while posing as a "true liberal"; now he offers himself to the nation on a platter of self-contradicting statements and promises. Roosevelt is a brilliant politician, who was pushed by circumstances into the role of a courageous fighter for the underprivileged; who for two years has stalled and backtracked; and who today despite his glib assurances that all is well in the nation, must know that nine million men cannot find jobs because the jobs are not there.

In the campaign there have been no real issues at stake. The war is virtually ruled out, and the third-term issue has little meaning except for those who already are against Roosevelt on other grounds. The only dispute---and it is vague and for the most part unstated--is the old issue of "free private enterprise" versus "government regulation." Here F.D.R. has the right end of the stick--in theory. For the New Deal has at least been bold in combatting the paralysis of a faltering economy, while Willkie relies on a mystical formula of faith, confidence, and unity to cure unemployment.

There is a war going on, one in which we are desperately concerned. Yet except for haggling about defense efficiency, and some name-calling, the war has not figured significantly in the campaign. Both candidates are pledged not to lead America into a foreign war. But nothing they say will crush out the deep seated feeling in the hearts of millions of Americans that these pledges are little more than words, that Roosevelt as President will lead us all the way down the bloody road, that Willkie as President, whatever his intentions, would 'likewise be unable to withstand the pressure for intervention.

And so the curtain falls today on the greatest show on earth, which this year has featured only shadow-boxing and windy dialogue. Frustrated progressives have two courses open to them: to cut loose and form a third party, or to try to capture one of the two major parties. They succeeded in doing the latter in 1936, but in the last two years the roles of master and servant have been reversed. Labor and liberals have entered into a Babylonian captivity from which they must escape; not up the blind alley to which John L. Lewis has pointed, but along a bolder course.

The need now is for a new third party. Not one which relies on the vacuum-like-lucidity of the Socialists or the dogmatic sectarianism of the Communists, but one solidly rooted in ward and county and labor union. If democracy is to survive here, we cannot continue to hold Tweedledum-Tweedledee elections. At least an independent labor party built around the progressive unions will force one of the major parties toward the left. At least it will bring a renewal of the advance toward what the pre-war Max Lerner called a "democratic collectivism," an advance which has down so tragically in the past two years, and which is turning into an ignominous retreat under the pressure of "national defense."