Senate Race

New York's Senatorial election, the only one this fall, is attracting attention in all parts of the country. John Foster Dulles and Herbert H. Lehman are engaged in an important test of Administration domestic policy as well as a battle of well-known personalities.

Dulles' supporters have stressed his experience in foreign affairs as United Nations delegate and a man who can "talk back to Stalin." They see him keeping Republican senators in line behind the bipartisan foreign policy.

Unfortunately for Dulles, it is not so much in the field of foreign policy that the Senate needs liberalizing influence. Whereas no important foreign policy measures collapsed in the upper house last session, the Administration's progressive domestic policy got surprisingly little support.

It is here that Lehman has the advantage. While Dulles has been attacking government spending, "statism," and his opponent's "communist" support, Lehman has gone along with President Truman's domestic policy all the way. The ex-governor and former director of UNRRA has defended the principles of the much-maligned "welfare state," and favors repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act, extension of social security, and federal aid to education.

Weighing a "liberalized" G.O.P. foreign policy against a resuscitation of the President's Fair Deal, the latter seems the more pressing need. For New York next month, Lehman seems the more desirable choice.