stronger positions on progressive issues and foreign policy. Publisher Henry Luce decried both Roosevelt and Willkie for failing to be honest with the American people, "America will never be ready for any war until she makes her mind up there is going to be a war." (italics in original) Despite his pledge not to campaign, Roosevelt made inspection tours to military installations, well covered by the press. The president did not mention Willkie by name, seeking to avoid giving him publicity. According to Susan Dunn in her book in the 1940 campaign, this forced Willkie "to box against a phantom opponent and carry on a one-sided partisan debate ... Even in Willkie's speeches, Roosevelt occupied center stage". Willkie promised to keep New Deal social welfare programs intact, expand Social Security, and provide full employment, a job for everyone: "I pledge a new world". On September 12, Willkie began a whistle-stop tour by train, and between then and November 2, he reached 31 of the 48 states. He did not visit the Solid South, though he spoke in Texas, hoping to win it as Hoover had in 1928. Willkie filled the Los Angeles Coliseum with 70,000 middle-class supporters, but reporters saw few working-class people at his rallies, and he cancelled some appearances at auto plants in the Midwest. Other people in working-class areas booed the candidate, held up signs in support of Roosevelt, or pelted his motorcade with overripe fruit. Although Edith Willkie accompanied her husband on his tour (he had little time for contact with Van Doren), she disliked the media attention and did not give interviews, completing the campaign without ever giving a speech. On one occasion, she looked at her husband and stated, "Politics makes strange bedfellows". The Democrats knew of Willkie's affair with Van Doren, but the Republicans had letters from Henry A. Wallace, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, to his former guru, Russian mystic Nicholas Roerich, and neither issue became a factor in the campaign. With polls released on October 6 showing Roosevelt well ahead, Willkie began to sound an isolationist theme, accusing Roosevelt of being a warmonger. Many of Willkie's speeches to that point had been on domestic issues, but he had been advised by Martin, Hamilton, and other advisors that the war was the issue the voters really cared about. Willkie began to argue that Roosevelt would not keep the U.S. out of war,