The United States gets its ballots today. Its citizens will choose one-third of their Senate and their entire House of Representatives. They will also elect numerous officials in each separate state, men with whom, by and large, only residents of the state involved can be familiar.

It is impossible to sift the thousands of candidates for state offices with the purpose of pointing out those who should be elected and those who should be defeated. It would be equally impossible to discuss the candidates for Congress in every district in the nation if local issues alone were involved in each one's election or defeat. But this is not the case.

These congressional candidates are members of political parties, usually either the Democratic or the Republican. While many may be campaigning almost entirely on questions of interest only to their districts, these matters do count little in the long run. When those elected take their places in the Senate and in the House next January, they will be seated as Democrats or as Republicans. When the policies of the country are voted upon, the men elected today will vote mostly as Democrats or as Republicans. For the next few years these men will be running the nation, and it is as candidates for these posts--of Republican congressman or of Democratic congressman--that the campaigners should be considered today.

When the 82nd Congress convenes it will have on its hands many of the problems that its predecessors had. It must pass upon our foreign policy; it must consider legislation affecting civil liberties; it must vote on price and wage controls, on laws relating to Labor. In each case, the House and Senate will generally split along party lines, with the Democrats following President Truman's lead, and the Republicans backing their own policy makers.

In foreign relations the Democrats have put through and continued to push programs like the Marshall plan and Point Four. They have advocated continued economic assistance to free nations. They have supported the United Nations, and been willing to back words with arms. While the Republicans theoretically went along in the period of "bi-partisanship," they have tried time and again to solvate** administration policies, as when they attempted to cut drastically our aid to Europe. Now that the period of cooperation between Republicans and Democrats has passed, the G.O.P. may be expected to attack the administration even more strongly on our foreign policy.

It was a Republican Congress that passed the Taft-Hartley Act and cut taxes in a time of high spending. The Republicans have opposed Truman's health plan, and other parts of the Fair Deal. That party evidently does not intend to change its stand on these questions. Nor does it intend to back down on its program of attacking anyone whom party members may consider "leftist." It will keep on trying to pass legislation like McCarran Bill.

On this measure, it is true, many Democrats followed Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Scott Lueas of Illinois. That vote, however, was taken just before an election and just after the entrance of the United States into the Korean war. It was a time of hysteria, a time when few men dared risk their political careers. The President asked for a better law; his veto message was a calm explanation of what was actually needed. During this next Congress, when there are no elections iminent, Democrats will probably follow his request on such legislation. But the Republicans surely will not.

Those who fear the results of McCarthy-like attacks, those who worry about such hysterical legislation as the McCarran bill have little choice, then, at this election. Those who dislike laws unfavorable to Labor, those who want a civil rights program can hardly choose freely today.

In some cases, of course, there would appear to be more involved than this party against party issue. It is relatively easy for the honest voter to make his choice when he can pick Lehman over Hanley. It is harder when he must choose between Taft and Ferguson. Yet, in the last analysis, it is party votes which count in Washington, after the speeches are over and done with.

This nation will be far safer in the next two years if the Democratic party continues to control both houses of Congress.