Soldier Vote: Passage
January 21, 1944. On the floor today the Senate broke its usual pattern of meeting at 12 noon and met instead at 11 in order to get the tax bill finished. Even so it took them until 6:15 to do it and complete a process which Bob La Follette bluntly described as “laboring for months to bring forth a mouse.” It was, in many respects, a La Follette afternoon. The senior Senator from Wisconsin successfully killed three amendments that would have given various corporations the right to duck out from under tax liabilities. He did it virtually single-handed, and with very little opposition from George—a rather significant thing considering the fact that George called down the wrath of God on Harry Truman when he tried to get acceptance of an amendment providing for court review of government war-contract renegotiation decisions. George is a powerful man: most amendments he didn’t want were killed forthwith on his mere say-so. Apparently La Follette is one of the few men on the floor who can successfully overcome his influence. In the George-Truman set-to, Bennett Champ Clark jumped in and carried the ball against his colleague Truman with great gusto. It was quite a little Missouri family squabble, interspersed with the Biblical wrath of the Finance chairman himself, who combines a soft Georgia accent with a thunderous voice and an air of overpowering righteous indignation. The Administration beat him on the renegotiation issue, however, for he meekly offered a series of amendments that restored almost all the renegotiation features his committee amendments had previously taken out of the bill.
In the concluding 10 minutes of the session Lucas tried to get Barkley to promise that he would bring up the soldier-vote bill ahead of the subsidy measure on Monday, and Barkley sidestepped, refusing to give an answer. Later he told the press he was going to let the Senate decide it by resolution. Taft took exactly the same position that Overton did a couple of weeks ago and declared that the Senate had already acted and that it was “an extraordinary parliamentary procedure” to take time “from more pressing matters” for a bill “which has already been defeated once.”
January 23, 1944. An aging man spoke on a newsreel screen I saw today and called the nation to worship a “new Bill of Rights,” a “charter of economic freedom.” Later on it was announced that the Democratic National Committee has addressed him once more as the all-high, the indispensable. Theodore Francis Green wrote the final concluding paragraph of eulogy in his own hand, the stories ran, and the only problem rose over the choice of a running mate. Henry Wallace, sitting aloof and otherworldly in his rooms in the Senate Office Building, or presiding amiably and not too adeptly in the chair, is apparently on his way out. Rather pathetically, he is trying to fight the tide, although it will probably not do him much good.
January 24, 1944. Today was an interesting day in a number of ways, and perhaps the most interesting of all was the way in which Taft handled the soldier-vote issue. It was the most partisan exhibition I have seen so far in the Senate, and on an issue which is sheer dynamite. This did not deter the gentleman from Ohio one little bit.
He was at his most vigorous, jumping up and challenging the opposition right and left, heckling Barkley, shouting at Lucas, using every possible parliamentary procedure to keep the soldier-vote bill from coming to the floor. It was an amazing performance. He even went so far as to shout that “Knox and Stimson are running for a fourth term!” The first test of strength came on his motion to bring up Bankhead’s subsidy bill ahead of the Green-Lucas bill. The Republicans voted Yea right down the line; La Follette (the lone Progressive) left his seat on the minority side in some disgust after a vigorous “No!” and went to sit with the Democrats for the rest of the afternoon. Taft lost that one 33–38 and promptly notified Barkley he would move to bring the Bankhead bill up again at 2 pm, a threat subsequently abandoned. He immediately thereafter engaged Lucas in a long, violent, partisan debate that went clear back to Colonel Knox’s Bull Moose days at one point. His expression ranged from angry concert to open laughter and back again. It was a study in the Compleat Politician.
Concerning the bill itself, Green and Lucas came close to talking it to death themselves during the course of a long, long afternoon in which everyone, after the opening fireworks, grew more and more bored. Chances it will pass are about 60–40 against right now, but it may pick up strength during the week. The logical Mr. Danaher, who is quite as fast on his feet and quite as partisan as the next man when he wants to be, shot Green pretty full of holes when he brought forth a War Department release of Nov. 24, crowing about the way in which under present law they had been able to distribute ballots to Louisiana’s soldiers in ample time for them to vote in the Jan. 18 primaries. Sometime between now and then the attitude of the department strangely changed. There is a lot of specious, suspicious stuff going on in the background of this bill, and although the Republicans and the Senate in general are going to receive endless criticism, they know what they are doing when they insist upon going over it with a fine-tooth comb. Too much is at stake on both sides for them to pass it through in two days, as Lucas maintained they could.
January 25, 1944. Nothing travels so fast over the Capitol grapevine as the news of death. When I stepped on the elevator to go up to the gallery this morning the elevator boy said, “You won’t be doing anything in the Senate today. Van Nuys is dead.” From then on until well into the morning each new arrival in the gallery announced, or had announced to him, the news of the kindly Indianan’s passing, picked up from the elevator, or the dining room, or the Capitol police, or the post office. In an institution composed in the main of elderly men, death is a topic of vital interest and moves invisible but all-dominating through the halls.
The Senate met at 12, devoted itself to eulogies for 23 minutes and recessed. Most of the members were on the floor, sobered and saddened by the event. Everyone liked Fred Van Nuys; he was a kindly, decent, friendly old man, and the Senate side sincerely regretted his passing.
His successor, undoubtedly a Democrat, will serve out his term until January and then will yield to the Republican who will undoubtedly be elected. Indiana has moved far back toward Republicanism from the day it first sent Van Nuys to the Hill. In that way only his death was perhaps a blessing, for it saved him from the defeat his determination to run again had virtually guaranteed him.
January 26, 1944. The President, following the smoothly developing campaign by which he is moving gradually and imperceptibly from his position vis-à-vis the civilian population to a point where he can emerge as the Soldier’s President, the protective Commander-in-Chief, took a hand in the soldier-vote fight today with a message to the Congress terming the Eastland-McClellan-McKellar bill a “fraud” on the soldiers and the people and urging the passage of the Green-Lucas substitute. More and more positively he is beginning to emphasize the soldiers’ viewpoint, the soldiers’ interest. All along the line this note is being sounded: Stimson and Patterson both expressed it in their testimony on the national service bill. The Presidential words which are so impotent when placed against the hard realism of Russia or the pragmatic politics of Britain still retain their old subtle strength at home, and by their use he is moving slowly but surely away from the civilians and toward the armed forces.
Following the reading of the message Taft at once arose and criticized it violently as an “insult.” The subsequent debate went along without gloves on. The Republican case became a little better defined today, and certain of the more obvious jokers in the Green-Lucas bill were brought out. Unfortunately the Republican strategy, in essence a filibuster, is the sort that alienates the average citizen. And they are already smeared beyond redemption by the propaganda that in some way the soldiers have been “robbed” of their vote. They can still vote. They could vote if Congress never passed any legislation at all, if they cared to. It is entirely true, as Taft said, that Stimson and Knox have deliberately abandoned a hands-off position they maintained six months ago and are now deliberately using every possible influence to uphold the Federal ballot over the state ballot. The inferences Taft draws from this may or may not be true, but the fact is there, beyond denying. They are deliberately obstructing every proposal but the Green-Lucas bill, which would seem to indicate, in an issue where so much is at stake—the Presidency itself, in an election both sides feel may be very close—some interest over and above and beyond the mere mechanics of getting the ballots overseas.
Bridges, who is adept at give and take, did a little slugging with Scott Lucas and Barkley, provoking the galleries to laughter when he asked Barkley if he hadn’t already been told who the Democratic nominee will be. “No, I have not been told!” Barkley shouted in an aggrieved tone that set everyone to laughing. Two minutes later he had crossed the aisle and was telling Bridges something that made them both laugh uproariously. In general the debate this afternoon was conducted on that plane—a lot of sound and fury, not meaning much or indicating any great personal animosity.
January 27, 1944. The ugly personal bitterness which cropped up last month when Lucas attacked Moore clouded the debate today. Abe Murdock, trying to make a reasonable speech but unable to resist the temptation to become partisan, told the Senate that “the American people want Franklin Delano Roosevelt for a fourth term!” Scattered applause broke from the galleries and Carl Hatch in the chair demanded order. Rufus Holman rose to remark: “If the Commander-in-Chief would remove himself as a candidate, this bill would pass in a day.” This infuriated Hatch, who immediately turned the chair over to Hattie Caraway and came down on the floor to answer. Before he could do so Lucas had jumped up to make one of his characteristic personal attacks upon Holman, telling him his statements were “the most absurd, the most ridiculous, the most asinine I have heard since I have been in the Senate. Shame on you!” he concluded. Holman, undaunted, shouted that he wanted to be quoted correctly if he was going to be quoted at all, and repeated what he had to say. The galleries were inclined to be amused, but it was not amusing to the white-faced men on the Floor, and it was not amusing to anyone concerned with the importance of Senatorial unity on the ultimate issues of peace and war. To all who know the Senate day by day it was one more disturbing indication of the ugly fissures which divide it on this issue.
There was no aisle-crossing and joke-passing today after the colloquies. Most of the Senators concerned left the floor, and amicability was gone from the atmosphere for the rest of the day.
Ten Senators left for Indiana tonight for the Van Nuys funeral, and before they left Wherry got Barkley to promise that no amendments will be voted on until Monday. More delay, and in the meantime the House works feverishly to get its version of the Eastland soldier-vote bill passed. Justice does not rest on either side of the aisle in this debate, but like so many issues here, it is by no means so simple or so crystal-clear as outsiders assume.
January 28, 1944. The Army and Navy released the story of the aftermath of the Bataan surrender today, and overlooking the cruelly cynical fashion in which the news was withheld for three years until it could be made to coincide with a bond campaign, the Senate fell obediently into line. Speech after speech, from Barkley’s cry that he was “growing impatient for the day of retribution,” on through White’s demand that it be visited “not alone upon the Japanese army but upon the Japanese authorities and the Japanese people,” to Hill’s somber plea that the Allies “bomb and burn and gut with fire,” the statements followed the same familiar pattern.
McKellar has chosen this moment, with impeccable shrewdness, to bring up for the administration a $30,000,000 measure to provide funds for the importation of migratory labor. The present grant expires on Monday, and the soldier-vote begins again on Monday. No better time could possibly have been selected. The bill went through without opposition, and La Follette for one paid tacit tribute to McKellar’s political skill when he remarked regretfully that he would have liked to spend more time discussing certain provisions but knew it was out of the question now. Old Mack brought a lot of know-how out of the hills of Tennessee.
January 31, 1944. Dennis Chavez arose today to say the definitive word on the timing of the Bataan release. Everything the country feels about it he said, ably, bitterly, and with the righteous anger of a man whose state contributed its entire National Guard to the ill-fated campaign. “Inopportune and inhuman,” he called the timing of the release, and without saying so in quite so many words, he said it was done to sell bonds. The Senator of Mexican extraction who is always careful to use the words “so-called” before the words “Mexican people in my state,” doesn’t speak unless he has something to say, and when he speaks it is usually worth listening to. He has a way of going directly to the heart of a thing and stripping it down to essentials with the outwardly passionate yet at the same time curiously dispassionate candor of his race.
The silvery Gillette also spoke, criticizing the President’s soldier-vote message on the ground that it was an unwarranted and unconstitutional attempt to interfere with the legislative branch; a reasonable, rather apologetic, sensible and sound address from a man who has repeatedly announced his own retirement. There are some here the country could do without, but it will be rather too bad if he has to bid the Senate farewell. He’s a good public servant.
Vandenberg broke the ranks of the Republicans by coming out for the Federal ballot in a reasoned and cogent statement. Taft, Danaher and Ball have now put in extensive amendments, which should be good for at least another week’s debate. Meanwhile the House is expected to vote Wednesday on its version of the Eastland bill, so that the move to block the Green-Lucas bill may succeed after all.
Representative Fulbright of Arkansas announced today that he will run for the Senate against Hattie Caraway. Arkansas needs positive, forceful leadership in these days of crisis, he said, thereby hitting Hattie where it hurts the most. It may well be—in fact the press and the Hill in general are sure it will be—that the days of the quiet little grandmother with the bright red fingernails who wanders in, reads a newspaper or sits solemnly in the presiding chair, and then wanders out again, having won nothing, lost nothing, and done nothing, are numbered.
February 1, 1944. Barkley made the astonishing statement today that the War and Navy departments shouldn’t obey a law passed by Congress “because the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy didn’t tell them to.” No utterance I have heard so far on the Hill matches that one in sheer voluntary abject abdication of the authority of Congress.
It can be said for Alben, of course, that he only made the statement in the heat of debate, and in fact was virtually tricked into it by Brewster, but even so it exhibited a startling frame of mind. Brewster jumped on it at once and made the most of it. Barkley retreated after a moment, although without retracting what he had said. It was one of the more surprising highlights of an afternoon that furnished a lot of them.
On the whole it was a Republican day, with Brewster, Bridges, Curley Brooks of Illinois and Taft carrying the ball. Brewster made a good speech opposing the Green-Lucas bill and proved himself conclusively to be one of the fastest men on his feet in give-and-take debate when Green, Lucas and Barkley arose like some predatory trinity to go after him. The gentleman from Maine knocked them down, rhetorically, tied them securely, and tossed them out the window. Then, surveying the field with a smile which was more strained than he perhaps would have liked, he retired to rest on his laurels and let the others take over. Bridges made a reasonably good speech in connection with his amendment to have the names of the candidates printed on the Federal ballot. Brooks made an excellent speech—one of the very best I have heard so far. He has a light, earnest, reasonable voice which he uses with consummate skill and an actor’s instinct for change of pace. In one more Republican attempt to puncture the myths across the aisle, he pointed out that some 2,000,000 boys under age will not be given the vote at all, so that the noisy breast-beating about giving all the soldiers the right to vote is so much political poppycock. He also stressed, as did Revercomb the other day, that he spoke as a former enlisted man when he warned that any voting conducted in the field was not apt, perhaps, to be entirely open and above-board. The Taft and Brewster charges that the men will be “herded up to the polls and voted by order” are a trifle flamboyant, but the subtle pressures of the chain of command exist nonetheless. Brewster said he didn’t want a situation “in which regimental commanders will be put under pressure because only 10 per cent or 15 per cent of their troops voted.” And Brooks reminded his colleagues on the Military Affairs Committee that they “know what promotions mean, where they come from, and how much they are desired.” There may not be too much foundation in the charges that it will be done that way, but it certainly could be. It could be handled like war bonds or insurance: voluntarily—by request.
Midway in the afternoon the House overwhelmingly defeated a motion to require a roll-call vote on the Eastland soldier-vote substitute, and that was the tip-off that there are sufficient votes to pass it without a record tally over there. A decision is expected tomorrow, and after that anything can happen. The chances seem good that the Senate—or the Republicans and Southern Democrats in the Senate, rather—will recommit the Green-Lucas bill and the bitter debate will thereupon be over. It is a confused, a chaotic, and a rather tragic issue all the way around, and the only single certain thing about it—the thing which of course has made it tragic—is that the attitude of the Administration has been the farthest thing from objective, nonpartisan, statesmanly and fair.
February 2, 1944. There is a sentence which has engraved itself in the past 10 days upon the mind of everyone who has followed the soldier-vote debate. It is always delivered in the same earnest, ringing tone, with the same impassioned fervor and the same perfectly sincere emphasis. “Every man in this chamber wants the soldier to vote,” it runs. “You want it, I want it, we all want it.” If it has been said once since the debate began it has been said a thousand times, and each time it has been true.
Today in a brief burst of activity the Senate got the Overton amendments out of the way. In effect, they would have placed in the law one more guarantee—in addition to Section 14 of the bill, which as it now stands does everything the most reactionary could want—that the poll tax would be kept inviolate. One went down by voice vote and the other two on roll call; the vote was approximately 66–23.
Immediately thereafter the pace slowed down, and the eagerness with which the Senators had gathered for the opening of the session—Gillette, Shipstead, Bridges, Alexander Wiley of Wisconsin, Aiken and Elmer Thomas of Oklahoma put on a real sprint for the elevators in order to reach the floor in time to “stand up and be counted,” as Aiken drily remarked, echoing the President’s message—soon dissipated in a welter of endless talk. Danaher had the floor longer than anyone else today, with an amendment that would give the Federal ballot to soldiers overseas whose states had not taken action to give them the state ballot by June 1. Joe Ball, who nominated Harold Stassen for President last night in a radio talk, got up to remark angrily that “the Senate is being held up against the ax of time” on both the soldier-vote and the subsidy issue. Later Guffey took it upon himself to condemn Hugh Butler and The Reader’s Digest for Butler’s article on aid to Latin America, and later still Wherry put on an exhibition of uncontrolled partisanship—so uncontrolled, in fact, that he ignored the Chair and poured out a torrent of exclamatory talk at the top of his lungs. Noble Nebraska, Noble Hugh Butler and the Horrible Administration seemed to form the main burden of his remarks. He was completely sincere about it—so much so that he just had to talk himself out and unwind in his own way; nobody could shut him up until he was exhausted. Bob Reynolds followed immediately afterwards and was equally violent, although perhaps not quite so sincere. “The American people will be so sick and tired of international interventionists after this war,” he shouted angrily, “that they will turn so quickly and so soon to nationalism that America will not recognize itself.”
I talked to Happy Chandler today and found him to be an overwhelmingly friendly, impulsive soul. He says what he thinks with an excitable good humor, and from time to time takes a few nasty sideswipes at the British, all in a spirit of innocent, boyish fun.
Five Republicans and some 11 Democrats have drawn up a new soldier-vote compromise which will be put in tomorrow. There has been a terrific amount of industrious politicking today. I was down on the floor for a while, interviewing Chandler in the old President’s Room where the Chief Executive used to come to sign bills on the last day of a session, and the number of Senators who hurried in and out and went into hasty conferences with each other was impressive. Taft carries a printed roll call with him on such occasions and goes around buttonholing and checking names with scientific ardor, leaving behind a wake of interested Republicans and compliant Democrats. Meanwhile debate drones on in the chamber while the real work gets done outside.
February 3, 1944. Taft remarked angrily today that “groups of people sent down here by the C.I.O. Political Action Committee have been hanging on my arm all day long telling me they want the soldiers to vote.” And Joe Ball added that they had been after him too, with the statement that “unless the Green-Lucas bill is passed the soldiers will be denied the right to vote.” “Have you read the Green-Lucas bill?” Joe asked them. Of course they hadn’t.
Just for the record, the Green-Lucas bill:
1. Gives the states exclusive control of validation of ballots, which means that poll-tax states will throw out the ballots of soldiers who have not paid the poll tax, and other states which have other provisions will judge their soldier ballots in the same fashion.
2. Provides for only four offices on the so-called “uniform Federal ballot,” President, Vice President, Senator and Congressman.
3. Does not provide for the names of candidates to be printed on the ballot, but simply says “write in your choice, or the party”—an obvious invitation for the soldier, either willfully or through ignorance, either to write in a straight party label all the way down the line or write in the names of candidates who aren’t even running, the latter resulting only in invalidation.
4. Deliberately attempts to make the Federal ballot dominant by giving it priority over all other mail and specifically over state absentee ballots.
5. Deliberately attempts to make the Presidential office dominant over the Congressional by refusing to name the candidates, urging use of the party label, and thereby encouraging the tendency to make the choice for lower offices dependent upon the choice for President.
In effect, these provisions:
1. Make it virtually certain that thousands of ballots will be thrown out by the states if they do as the Green-Lucas bill wants them to do and rely exclusively upon the Federal ballot without revising their own statutes.
2. Remove the soldier vote entirely from local state elections.
3. Make it virtually certain that the choice of President will dominate the choices for all other offices on the short Federal ballot.
4. Make it virtually certain that the few state absentee ballots which the soldiers apply for will in all probability never reach them.
5. Make it virtually certain that a specific hour will be set for voting, that the men will be marched up to the polls—not because of any sinister design on the part of commanding officers, but simply because marching men in a body is the simplest way to handle them to get a specific job done—and that thousands who would never have voted at all will vote under orders, and consequently will either throw their ballots away by frivolously writing in the first thing that pops into their heads or will simply endorse with blind partisanship whichever party happens to appeal to them most at the moment.
All these things the opponents of the Green-Lucas bill are afraid of. Take them in conjunction with the Administration’s grim insistence upon the bill as it now stands, plus the deliberate obstructionism of the Army and Navy, plus the propaganda with which the Administration and its partisans have been flooding the press in the past two weeks, and an excellent case can be made out for the policy of going slowly and with extreme care in the passage of a soldier-vote bill. The proponents of the Green-Lucas bill had hold of a good thing and they almost got away with it. Whatever else the Republicans have done, they at least have managed to block that.
Apparently the Administration is beginning to concede as much, because today, for the first time, Lucas accepted an amendment that makes some change in the essential structure of the bill. Danaher’s proposal to restrict the Federal ballot to men overseas and to men in the country whose states have not given them the absentee ballot by August 1 passed 72–19. Taft immediately put in his substitute whose basic provision is that ballots will be sent only to those soldiers who apply for them. Barkley agreed to make it the first order of business tomorrow. It is impossible to predict on the basis of today’s vote whether or not it will carry, because the motives of most of those who upheld what Green referred to jocosely as “the Connecticut Compromise” were not entirely clear. The whole tempo of the debate is beginning to speed up, at any rate, and that’s something.
February 4, 1944. Lodge has resigned to return to the Army, for reasons which were candidly assessed on the Hill. No criticism was voiced of an action which many others would have been glad to take if they could.
Somehow, however, there was something more than a little noteworthy about the way it was done. Apparently the decision was reached without prior consultation with anyone, save possibly his colleague Dave Walsh. The old man made some reference to Lodge’s indecision and doubt when he bade him a formal farewell from the floor. Secondly, the resignation was not submitted to Governor Saltonstall but was sent to Clark of Idaho as acting president pro tempore of the Senate. Thirdly, the Senator himself did not appear all day, nor was he available in his office; the resignation came in the form of a letter which was submitted to the Clerk and read by him a few minutes after the session began. In some subtle fashion the whole business seemed to suggest a rather unhappy, lonely, suspicious young man, not very content in his own mind and not very much at ease with his colleagues, finally forced to a decision after months of worry and not wanting to stay around and accept congratulations he was not sure he would receive. Henry Cabot Lodge is a brilliant, sardonic, reserved man, and it is probable that he can only be understood if one takes into account the self-conscious knowledge that people expect him to act superior—which tends to make him do so by way of self-defense—plus the shadow under which he feels himself to walk because of his grandfather’s reputation. The influence of the legend of the first Lodge upon the career of the second will someday, perhaps, make an interesting psychological study. It may explain much in the life of a man who feels that, whatever else he must do, he must vindicate his grandfather. As Vandenberg remarked today, Lodge will probably come back to Washington. In this resignation, presented bluntly and unheralded to the Senate of the United States, there may possibly be discernible the future pattern of a man who, whatever heights he may rise to and whatever power he may achieve, will always walk alone, uneasy and essentially unbefriended.
The soldier-vote debate moved into its final stages today, with a number of very close votes. Taft’s amendment was defeated 45–42, much to his chagrin. He had been quite certain it would pass, but some of his promised votes didn’t pan out. Green himself even bowed to the inevitable and offered an amendment that would specifically ban any officer or non-com from suggesting in any manner whatsoever that a man vote for a specific candidate, or that he even vote at all. When Ed Johnson, whose separate amendments this one incorporated, asked Green if the War Department approved those safeguards, Green said that he would “not go so far as to say it approved, but I can say it did not disapprove.” Which again casts doubt upon the integrity of the department in this matter. The amendment carried on a voice vote.
The debate today was very much under the shadow of the House action last night, in which the Rankin states’-rights soldier-vote bill was passed overwhelmingly at 10:55 pm Overton finally moved that the Senate take up the House bill, and on a vote of 42–42 the motion failed and the Green-Lucas bill remained the order of business. What will happen after the Senate passes it—if it does—remains to be seen. Today was a dramatic day, and for once the galleries got their money’s worth, as roll-call vote after roll-call vote showed how close the division is on this embittered issue.
February 5, 1944. The Senate had hoped to complete work on the bill today, but Barkley fooled it by suddenly moving adjournment on the first quorum call of the day, some 20 minutes after the session began. Forty-four Senators had answered to their names and others were still arriving. To the Majority Leader’s practiced eye, however, it became apparent that the antis far outnumbered the pros and consequently fast work was indicated if the Green-Lucas bill was to be saved at all. Accordingly he jumped up and on the pretext of no-quorum moved recess until Monday. It being Saturday and enthusiasm for a session not too high on either side, nobody tried to make an issue of it and the whole business went over. It was a close call for the Administration.
February 6, 1944. The War Department announced today with that bland innocence which seems to indicate a hope that everybody will keep right on talking and not notice, that it has begun making information available to the troops for the April primaries in Illinois, Nebraska and Pennsylvania and the general election in Louisiana. In line with Public Law 712 and the 1942 voting statute, post-card applications for absentee voters’ ballots are being distributed to the men and they are being given every assistance if they wish to exercise their franchise. Even the men overseas are being encouraged, although the department does say reasonably that in some theaters the men should take the time element into account. They are not being discouraged if they wish to apply, however, and everything is being done to help them.
And then the department and the Administration, through Green and Lucas, try to tell the Senate that it is impossible for the soldiers to vote under the present law, and impossible for the Army to get state ballots to them—and in the face of all the facts it expects the Senate to believe it. Today, as in the November release on the Louisiana primaries, the true situation emerges. The Green-Lucas bill will not profit from this sudden, contradictory, and quite embarrassing candor.
February 7, 1944. Again the day was lively, with a series of votes that finally indicated a definite trend after days of jockeying. Overton again made his motion to take up the House bill and was beaten on it 44–42. An hour and a half later he made it again, and as one Green-Lucas man after another switched over, a happy smile of triumph spread across his round and amiable face. The vote was 50–38 in his favor when the final tally was concluded, and the Green-Lucas bill was laid aside for the time being. Barkley tried to get blanket rejection of the House amendments to the original Senate (Eastland-McKellar-McClellan) bill, but McKellar rose at his desk beside him and, fiddling with his watch chain and his Phi Beta Kappa key, proceeded to call down the wrath of God on his head. Barkley bowed to the inevitable and agreed to take them up one by one. The first two were accepted by voice vote. On the third amendment Barkley proposed concurrence with an amendment—the amendment being the Green-Lucas bill. Taft immediately jumped up to propose an amendment to Barkley’s amendment—the amendment being his own original amendment defeated Friday. Things were then in an uproar as the Senate spent almost an hour trying to get the parliamentary situation clear in everybody’s mind.
“Mr. President!” one Senator after another would say. “Parliamentary inquiry!” “The Senator will state it,” Pepper, who had the chair, would say automatically. The query would be stated, and after some hurried whispered consultations with the official parliamentarian at his elbow, Pepper would give the ruling. This went on for some time as the Senate went into every possible question of precedence of motions, the situation if Barkley’s amendment should pass, the situation if the House amendments should be agreed to, the situation that would occur if a motion should be made to lay Barkley’s amendment on the table and take it up tomorrow (the Green-Lucas bill would again be the order of business, and McClellan, who had the idea, withdrew the motion hastily), and the situation which would eventuate in any case when the matter went to conference. Finally McClellan asked unanimous consent to carry Barkley’s amendment over until tomorrow as pending business—which did away with the possibility of its being displaced by the Green-Lucas bill—it was agreed to without objection, and the soldier-vote debate ground to a halt for another day. The House then reported back both the tax bill and McKellar’s bill to import foreign labor, both went through on unanimous voice vote, and the Senate adjourned. Parliamentary law is a tricky and fascinating business in the hands of men who know every angle of it and use it to the utmost as a political weapon, and today was an interesting and entertaining example of it.
After the session when we went down on the floor to talk to Barkley, he opened up new vistas of conjecture by describing all the things the House could do to the bill when it gets back to it. The least is amend it some more and the most is kill it altogether. He said it has been a long time since a parliamentary tangle as complex as this developed between the two houses. He left us laughing with a good story and we went off the floor convinced all over again that he is a prince of a fellow. He has no trouble implanting this impression in the minds of newspapermen as they come to know him, because he is a prince of a fellow.
February 8, 1944. Shortly after 3 o’clock this afternoon the Senate completed the soldier-vote bill and all concerned were much relieved. In a series of votes the trend away from the Administration apparent in the vote on taking up the House amendments yesterday was reversed and sufficient strength was found to carry the day. Taft used every possible parliamentary maneuver. An amendment by Ferguson was accepted first, and then Taft’s amendment was proposed; Ferguson objected, and Taft promptly moved to modify his amendment to include the language of Ferguson’s amendment. Pepper, again in the chair, ruled that Taft had already proposed his amendment and modification could not be made. The amendment was accordingly defeated 41–45—the same four-vote margin which has turned up in all the close contests on this bill. A Barkley amendment was accepted, placing the language of the Green-Lucas bill in the body of the House bill. The remaining House amendments were considered, some being accepted and some being rejected deliberately to throw them into conference. On the last House amendment, which covered two sections of the original Senate bill, Taft asked innocently for a division of the amendment; Pepper granted it. The first section was accepted. The Clerk began to read the second section and Taft immediately jumped up to propose his entire amendment all over again as an amendment to the second section. More wrangling ensued, Lucas delivered himself of another masterful piece of flag-waving, eagle-screaming denunciation; the chamber waited in bored silence. Finally Brewster arose. “It seems to me, Mr. President,” he said acidly, “that the question is not whether the soldiers will vote but whether the Senate will vote. Does the Senator want the Senate to vote?” “Of course I do,” Lucas cried. “Of course I do. That’s all I want.” “You’ve been trying for three weeks and haven’t convinced us of that yet,” Brewster told him drily and sat down; a true observation, for Lucas strangely enough has done almost more to delay his own bill than anybody else. “Vote! Vote!” came from what the Congressional Record refers to as SEVERAL SENATORS. Once again the roll call came on the Taft amendment, now in its third trial before the Senate. Once again the same 45–41 vote knocked it down. Ferguson, Vandenberg, Wiley, Burton and Aiken consistently backed the Administration throughout; in those five Republicans Taft could number the men who beat his amendment. The House amendments were then considered, disposed of, and the Senate again took up, for the record, the Green-Lucas bill as perfected. On a vote of 48–37 it was passed and sent to the House. The parliamentary situation now stands:
The House bill has returned to the House with a Senate amendment inserting the language of the Green-Lucas bill. The House can now either accept it, reject it, or ask for a conference. In the meantime, the Green-Lucas bill in its original form has also gone to the House, where it will be referred to the Privileges and Elections Committee, which can either report it out or let it die in committee. Rankin and Martin over in the House have promised death to the House bill as amended with the Green-Lucas language, and the chances are good that if the Green-Lucas bill itself ever reaches the floor it will also be killed. The most the Administration can hope for now is a conference on the House bill.
So ends the great soldier-vote fight—at least, so ends, temporarily, the great soldier-vote fight. Underlying all the heat and the propaganda is one basic fact. Had the Administration been willing to accept amendments to the Green-Lucas bill at the very first it could have got substantially what it wanted, slashed debate to a week or less, provided a workable measure by which soldiers could vote, and done a generally creditable job. But somebody wanted to do it differently.