Roosevelt wins third term

NEW YORK, Nov. 6, 1940 (UP) -- President Roosevelt's third term victory over Wendell L. Willkie was building up today toward another electoral college landslide.

The New Deal is in for another four years at the White House and at least another two more on Capitol Hill, but Willkie appears to have piled up the largest vote ever cast for a losing candidate.

Those results of the 1940 election were indicated hour by hour last night. In more complete returns today the President's re-election became a mathematical certainty; at 9:40 at least 266 electoral votes had given him safe pluralities.

Mr. Willkie capitulated at 10:30 a.m. and sent the following congratulatory telegram to the President:

"Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States,

"Hyde Park, New York.

"Congratulations on your re-election as President of the United States. I know that we are both gratified that so many American citizens participated in the election. I wish you all personal health and happiness. Cordially,

"Wendell. L. Willkie,

"New York, N.Y.

"November 6, 1940."

Then in a speech to the nation, Willkie thanked his workers and called for all to "continue to work for the unity of our people."

In a late tabulation Willkie had won or led in nine states: Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Nebraska, South Dakota, Vermont and Wisconsin, with a total electoral vote of 71.

Roosevelt had won or led in all the rest, with a total electoral vote of 460.

The New Deal had broken through Republican defenses in New England and in the great industrial states of the middle east. The solid south held solid and the far west went to Roosevelt although Oregon was fighting ground. The middle west proved a Willkie stronghold.

The President told his Hyde Park, N.Y. neighbors that they would find him "the same Franklin Roosevelt that you have known for a great many years."

Shut out of the White House, it appears also that the G.O.P. again lost the House of Representatives. On the basis of incomplete returns the House seems to have remained Democratic with substantial and perhaps increased majorities. There never was a chance that the G.O.P. could contain control of the Senate in yesterday's election.

Republicans may have gained some gubernatorial posts. But the unmistakable trend to the Republican party shown in the 1936 general elections was reversed.

The latest popular vote:

Roosevelt, 21,022,022

Willkie, 17,591,792

The 20 states which assured Mr. Roosevelt's third term, with more to come, were Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

Although leading in nine states, Willkie was sure of but two, Maine and Vermont, with eight electoral votes. They are the two Alf M. Landon carried four years ago.

Indications were that Republicans would pick up one governorship, net. Democratic gubernatorial candidates won Republican posts in Connecticut and Rhode Island and were leading in Michigan and Idaho. Republicans won a Democratic governorship in Delaware and were leading in Illinois, Montana and Nebraska.

Senate shifts were indicated in Nebraska, Ohio and Indiana, where Republicans lead for Democratic seats and in Delaware where a Republican seat evidently was transferred to a Democrat.

There was rejoicing in Great Britain where the election was headlined above the war. British editors assumed the victory of their "old and trusted friend." Japan was intensely interested. A Foreign Office spokesman said he hoped United States' Far Eastern policies now would be reconsidered.

Italians were pessimistic, fearing Mr. Roosevelt quickly would "whip up war fever" in the United States.

Western Hemisphere neighbors seemed pleased.

Germany said the election showed United States interest in intervention, but that it was entirely a domestic affair within the nation.

There were pleas for national unity today, for consideration by the victors for the losers. And William Allen White, the Kansas editor, proposed a community bonfire in which to burn all the insignia of political dispute and bitterness, the campaign literature of both sides and the campaign buttons.

In Chicago, Frank Knox, secretary of the Navy, asserted that it "now becomes the duty of every good American to foster and promote a national unity.

It has been the undisguised hope of Berlin, Rome and Tokyo," he said, "that the election would leave us disastrously divided. We must prove that a vain hope.

"The doubts and the hesitations which the campaign produced are now behind us. The bitterness which it engendered must be forgotten. We must, for our national safety, become one people devotedly pursuing a single purpose under our constitutionally selected one leader-the president."

Edward J. Flynn, Democratic National Committee chairman, said that "with the election there passes whatever bitterness there has been in this campaign." He asserted that those who supported Willkie would join President Roosevelt in his efforts to keep "our nation out of war and carry on the program of economic progress that has brought us so far on the road to recovery."

James A. Farley, former Democratic National Committee chairman, also made a radio plea for unity.

"Now, perhaps as never before in its history, the United States has need for national unity," Farley said. "The excitement of the campaign must not blind our eyes to the dangers of the perilous world in which we live. We must go forward without delay or interruption along the path which we have been following in the nation since the ugly form of 'total war' engulfed the nations of Europe and the Orient."

Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins declared that "during such a time as the present there should be no accent on class or group structures such as capital and labor, but rather on solid democratic unity of the nation."

Differences and divisions must now be forgotten, Gov. Herbert H. Lehman of New York said.

"We must devote ourselves," he said, "to working for the good of the country and democracy."

Leading supporters of both major political parties meet in New York's Carnegie Hall tonight in an "America united rally."

Among the speakers will be Landon and Attorney General Robert H. Jackson.