La Follette Speaks

Since Pearl Harbor, Wisconsin's keen, bouncy Senator Robert Marion La Follette Jr., a prewar isolationist, has maintained an almost-unbroken silence on foreign affairs. Last week, at the convention of his own Progressive Party, he spoke. War has not changed Bob La Follette very much. Said he:

"Progressives are realists. They know that the United States cannot buy the friendship of other nations. . . . Progressives will not cooperate in any efforts to force the United States to buy an international pig in a beautiful poke. . . ." Then the Progressive Party framed its foreign-policy plank: "Our greatest contribution to world peace will be determined by what America does for Americans."

Significance: in Wisconsin, whose defeat of Wendell Willkie was hopefully interpreted by some internationalists as no setback for internationalism, shrewd Bob La Follette still chooses to rest his party's election-year chances on a strongly nationalist foreign policy.

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