Soldier Vote: Home Stretch
February 28, 1944. Things began to shake themselves back down to normal today; the first real sign that all was once more calm along the Potomac came when John Rankin emerged from the soldier-vote conference to announce that the meeting is again “going over until tomorrow to give us time to study the proposition.” The stalwart symbol of Mississippi democracy, to whom Time has applied the adjective “poodle-haired,” is blowing cold again in the blow-hot, blow-cold marathon by which he is deliberately trying to drag the issue out until the public has lost all interest in it. The Federal war ballot will be done to death by boredom if Rankin has his way; it is already a dead issue in the public press. The Congressman has been able to stall too long. Instead of forcing him into a show-down, the Senate conferees and Worley and Herb Bonner of North Carolina from the House have let him get away with his dilatory tactics, agreeing to one postponement after another. Each time, just as he has us all convinced that this, at last, is it, Silent John changes his mind with a great show of deep constitutional conviction and we go over for another day or two while the country has a chance to yawn just a little wider over the soldier vote. The issue is dead: Rankin has killed it with delay. We know it, he knows it, and sooner or later one of these long-drawn-out days Theodore Francis Green and his Senate colleagues will realize it too. He perhaps deserves the calumny which has been heaped upon him by his more perceptive critics, but there is no denying that on the soldier-vote bill John Elliot Rankin led the Congress of the United States around by the nose.
February 29, 1944. Compromise emerged at last from the soldier-vote conference today, and all was sweet, singing harmony. The obvious mortification of Our John put the finishing touch to it, adding immeasurably to everyone’s delight and satisfaction.
The half a loaf the Senators finally accepted was offered by Bonner and Harold LeCompte of Iowa and to anyone who has stayed with them these past three weeks it was easy to see why they took it, even though it preserves the Federal ballot only in a thin and ghostly form. It is far more, perhaps, than they had any right to expect, particularly considering the House’s original attitude. The Senate is probably lucky to get this much.
The Federal ballot remains, but it goes only to men who have applied for a state ballot, and only to those in that category who have not by Oct. 1 received their state ballot. And in all cases, validation of the Federal ballot is vested in the governors—a stipulation that causes some skepticism but which Green says will be taken care of by public pressure. He is probably right.
Rankin, of course, emerged from the conference room with the statement that “the fight has just begun,” and promised to organize opposition to the conference report when it is presented to the House. He was the only man in the 10-man committee who voted against the compromise, and has apparently slipped badly. He still may be able to whip his cohorts into a frenzy on the floor, however, and when the bill gets over here the Eastland-McKellar crowd may filibuster. The soldier-vote bill isn’t entirely over the bumps by any means, but at least a major advance has been made.
In a lot of ways it has been fun to cover, and although Green’s little speech about “democracy in action” at the conclusion of the conferences was trite and obvious it was also true. Just a group of men sitting down around a table to battle out their differences, while the press hung around outside—the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, taking care of the Republic.
March 1, 1944. Once again the soldier-vote conference, just yesterday so amicably “concluded” with a “binding agreement,” almost blew up in our faces. That it did not is due simply to the fact that the Senate has once more receded from its position and given in to another House demand. When they voted yesterday, the House conferees said, they never dreamed that the Senate meant to extend the Federal war ballot to men within the country as well as men overseas. When they found it out this morning they were shocked, outraged and well-nigh horrified. The resultant explosion threatened to rock the Capitol for a few moments, but by dint of fast talking and one more surrender the Senators managed to hold the conference together. One more restriction was clamped on the Federal ballot, and the final work on the bill could once more proceed. Theodore Francis Green says now that the conferees hope to be finished altogether by tomorrow; the conference report is on the Senate calendar for Tuesday. Barring a fight there, it should go through without much more than perfunctory approval. The House may well be a different matter.
The Federal war ballot that now remains is a shameful farce and a betrayal of the hopes of many soldiers. The Senate would have done better to stand by its guns or else disagree completely and rest its case on Public 712. One cannot help but feel that Rankin has done just about what he wanted to do. What the bill’s reception at the other end of the Avenue will be, no one can quite imagine. If it includes the Federal ballot at all, the President would be taking a terrific political risk in vetoing it; a bigger risk, perhaps, than he did with the tax bill. And yet it may well be that he cannot conscientiously approve it as the measure stands now. Unfortunately, however, such an event could only be interpreted most unfavorably by the Congress, still acutely conscious that it has beaten him once and not averse to a chance to do it again.
Oddly enough, by a coincidence not altogether fortunate for the Administration, the same issue of Executive versus Legislature is developing along parallel lines this week in both houses. In the Senate, the Agriculture Committee’s investigation of the Rural Electrification Administration has run headlong into the obstinacy of Jonathan Daniels, one of the President’s executive assistants, who has refused to testify, apparently under orders. At the same time in the House, the committee investigating the Federal Communications Commission has run into stormy weather, with Republican members charging the chairman and other Democratic members with whitewashing the agency and attempting to suppress the facts about the purchase of a New York radio station. The issue is the recurring one of whether or not the Congress has a right to demand the testimony it needs from employees of the Executive branch. The committee is preparing a brief against Daniels, and is seriously contemplating taking the case to the full Senate for decision. In both instances, important government witnesses have been specifically ordered by the President not to give information to the Congress, the order in the FCC case having been given some time ago, but the Daniels incident occurring since the tax fight. Apparently the President’s dander is up, a jolly and exciting situation for his partisans. Unfortunately the Congress is in no mood to take it sitting still either. The immovable object is evidently about to get involved with the irresistible force again.
Here again, the issue is basic; and here again, the Congress will win. So long as it holds the purse, it always has one last recourse: it can cut off the funds and in that manner cripple the office. If the present trend continues, and the President remains in office and his term runs beyond the conclusion of hostilities, it seems a reasonable prediction to say that when he finally leaves the White House the Presidency will have been reduced nearer impotency than it has been for many years. Should this mutual antagonism be unchanged, the moment the war ends the Congress will begin systematically stripping the Presidency of one power after another until only the irreducible minimum remains. [But to this possibly flamboyant foreboding, death gave, as it did to so many Roosevelt might-havebeens, the final answer of no answer at all.]
March 2, 1944. The soldier-vote conferees voted on the conference report today, and the final tally found Green and Carl Hatch opposed. Both gave us the impression when we went in to talk to them afterward that they were tired out and disgusted. Green said the bill had been “whittled down and whittled down and whittled down, day by day, until what remained wasn’t worthwhile.” Hatch, speaking in the quiet, reasonable, rather courtly tones that distinguish him in argument, said that he had thought the purpose of the measure was to extend the Federal war ballot to more soldiers. “Instead of extending, it curtails,” he said. “Its effect is not to simplify, but to complicate.” Accordingly he could not honestly accept it. Green felt the same way, and for the first time in the whole long battle gave the impression today that he felt his 76 years—a rare thing for a man who goes to the Senate gym regularly, takes a stiff workout, and, generally chipper, looks and acts to be about 60. It was also the first time that he neglected to tell us that he is “always optimistic.” Both he and Hatch seemed pretty thoroughly beaten down and worn out.
One more restriction was added prior to the final vote—state legislatures must now empower their governors specifically to accept the Federal war ballot. Of all the states, only California has already taken this step, which means that special sessions must be called for the purpose. Gene Worley, stretching his long and lanky form out in a tipped-back chair and employing his unhurried Texas voice at its most persuasive, could not agree with this interpretation: the new language—that the governors must certify the Federal war ballot to be “authorized by” their laws instead of “acceptable under” them—means only that if a governor wants to be absolutely sure he is complying with state law need he call a special session. Otherwise, Gene said, he can still certify on his own responsibility. Hatch and Green, while obviously liking the Congressman as everyone does, chose to take the opposite view. Worley was also tired and disgusted, but more disturbed than annoyed by the fact that the final vote had not been unanimous. Later he said there “still might be time” to work out something else before the conference report is finally issued on Monday. It seems a wan hope, even in this off-again, on-again marathon.
Both Green and Hatch indicated strongly that they will oppose the conference report when it reaches the floor of the Senate. That can mean any one of several things. If the original majority that passed the Green-Lucas bill still holds together, the report may be beaten in the Senate. If it has fallen apart, the report may go through and go to the White House. The reception it will receive there is already the topic of much speculation in the Press Gallery. If the word “fraud” could be applied to the Eastland-Rankin bill, an honest and forthright declaration of states’ rights, certainly it could with far more justice be applied to this mongrel measure which holds out the promise of a Federal war ballot, only to snatch it back with a dozen restrictions.
Certain it is, however, that “fraud” is not the word with which to make a veto stick. The language had better be more moderate this time—or else. And or else with some justice, considering the endless patience and hard work that have gone into this thing.
Rankin still promises to fight the conference report in the House, although he voted for it in committee. He looked quite in his glory when he emerged from the conference room today waving his arm and crying “Eureka!”
Looked at from any angle, the possibilities on this ill-fated tangle are still infinite. As for the way everybody here feels about it now, Scott Lucas summed it up explicitly the other day when someone asked him. “Ah, the hell with it!” said the co-author of the Green-Lucas bill in frustrated disgust. The feeling is universal.
Frank Knox came up this morning to deliver one more eulogy over the dying body of the national service bill. A sincere man, pompous and a trifle bombastic but still basically sound, he impresses one as being quite capable, without much imagination or very much humor. Despite his effort, the patient is still not expected to live.
March 3, 1944. The leading Republicans are in Oregon today, where 17 of them went for the McNary funeral. The minority situation is once more in the state of flux dear to the hearts of newspapermen—the Senator’s death has thrown the leadership wide open again. Only two days before it occurred he had been re-elected leader, with White as acting leader, Vandenberg as conference chairman, Burton as conference secretary, and Wherry as minority whip. Wherry was the only one his selection seemed to really impress; other Republicans were not so cordial. Aiken for one is already complaining that he does not relish being bawled out for the way he votes. The Wherry approach is a trifle direct.
McNary’s passing has now upset all these plans. Taft, White and Vandenberg are the leading contenders for the leadership. Taft, so the story goes, would like to have it because “he is very much interested in a place on the ticket this year.” Vandenberg came out yesterday with the statement that White should retain it “as long as the present occupant remains in the White House,” a rather startling suggestion in view of the possibilities. Vandenberg himself is playing coy as usual. The minority conference will have to meet again in a few days to elect its officers all over again. White, as someone remarked wittily if unkindly, will probably get it “if the law of inertia applies”—unless he defers to Taft’s ambition.
Over in the House today, deliberately perverse as usual, Rankin came out with a ringing defense of the soldier-vote conference report. Simultaneously at the other end of the Avenue the President remarked at his press conference that the veto test of the bill would be whether or not it permits more men to vote than the present law. The words are an exact echo of Green’s, and this may well be the tip-off.
March 4, 1944. The Senate Agriculture subcommittee investigating REA decided today to recommend to the full committee that Jonathan Daniels be brought before the bar of the Senate to show cause why he should not be cited for contempt. Cotton Ed was in the chair as usual, perceiving at last a concrete means of forwarding his vendetta with the White House. The old man, with his slow, shuffling walk, his huge head with its heavy jowls, drooping mustache, tired old eyes and curly gray hair, faintly suggests, in some curious fashion, an appealing and willful little boy. There is something indefinably juvenile about his looks. Despite the allegations of his critics, it does not extend to his mentality. There is nothing childlike about a man who is one of the most amusing, and at the same time one of the grimmest, reactionaries on the Hill. Only a few days ago he sent a telegram of praise to the South Carolina legislature for its resolution condemning the “damned Northern agitators” who stir up the racial question. His endorsement of it was typical of a man who never misses a chance to say in his whispery, husky, petulant old voice that he has “one eternal platform—the Constitution, states’ rights, and white supremacy.” Thirty-five years in the Senate yesterday, and nothing has ever changed him.
The outcome of the Daniels case remains to be seen. There is a nice and delicate question involved: the confidential relationship between the President and his closest aides should be preserved, otherwise the independence of the Executive would be in as much jeopardy as the independence of the Legislature ever was. At the same time, the question does arise as to whether or not the Congress should have the power to compel testimony in order to prevent the Executive branch from corrupting its own agencies. The present mood of Congress, however, may obscure these finer considerations and tip the balance toward an active prosecution of every Executive assistant it can lay its hands on.
During the afternoon I went around and talked to a pretty fair cross-section of the Senate—a states’-rights Democrat, a liberal Republican, an all-out New Dealer, and a rock-ribbed Republican—on the soldier-vote conference report. With only one exception, and that very much qualified, they are against it. Apparently, to quote once more the words of Our John, “the fight has just begun.”
The states’-rights Democrat, one of the soundest and ablest men here despite a few blind spots peculiar to the South, had some interesting observations to make on the whole subject of the soldier vote, the election, and the President.
“I’ve never been able to quite get away from the feeling,” he said, “that the original soldier-vote bill as it was presented to us was pretty much of a phony. It looked entirely too much as though somebody was framing up a scheme to control the soldier vote by having them marched up en masse to the polls and put under pressure to vote for ‘the Commander-in-Chief.’ And don’t think that ‘Commander-in-Chief’ stuff won’t be played for all it’s worth here, either. The whole idea is going to be ‘indispensability.’ Why,——.” No man is indispensable.
“I can tell you one thing, though, and that is that no other man in the Democratic Party could ever hope to be a candidate. He’s seen to that all the way through. He’s cut down every possibility that’s come along. As soon as they begin to get prominent, he gets rid of them. He uses you and then he throws you away. Why, hell, I could no more be one of these ass-kissing New Dealers! He’ll be your friend as long as he can get what he wants out of you, and then it’s good-by. That’s not for me.
“I’m a Democrat, and I’ll always remain a Democrat, but I’m not a New Dealer. And I think that’s true of the majority of the Democratic Party.
“As for the Barkley affair, we may try to let that go, cover it up and forget about it as you might a family squabble, but do you think the Republicans will let us forget it, even if we want to? He’s worked himself into a position where he’s got to go on opposing Congress or back down and be discredited. How can he do anything else? He’s put himself right out on a limb. I have an idea he’ll veto this soldier-vote bill anyway, if it should be passed.
“I can tell you one thing, though—by God, it had better be a better-mannered veto than that last one, or he’ll hear about it.”
March 5, 1944. Jonathan Daniels has written Cotton Ed an eat-crow letter in which he takes it all back and promises to be a good boy. After consulting with the President, he says, he has come to the conclusion that nothing he might say on REA could endanger his relationship with the President. The letter is sensational and the timing has made it even more so. Not until the subcommittee had definitely decided to proceed with its contempt action, not until Daniels’—and the President’s—capitulation could be put in the most placating light, was the surrender forthcoming. Instead of placating, however, it has simply aroused contempt.
March 7, 1944. What is apparently the most final of all the “final” agreements on the soldier-vote bill was reached today. It even got to the point of deciding who would and who wouldn’t sign the conference report; and in fact Tom Connally, to whom Green turned over management of the bill, said he expected to bring it to the floor on Thursday. It will come heralded by omens of misfortune, with opposition guaranteed and a veto expected.
Green and Hatch on the final showdown refused to sign the report, and Green withdrew from all active connection with the bill, promising to fight it on the floor. Lucas has already started his campaign, both against the bill and for re-election. Once more, in today’s session, we were treated to the sound of his savage voice attacking his enemies. It was the same old speech he has made before, with the same dark predictions and the same appeals to the servicemen’s anger which, if they ever succeeded, would stir far more terrible consequences than Lucas ever dreams. Nonetheless, he bespeaks a very vocal and very bitter element in the Senate, and on the basis of his remarks today it is easy to see that his companions will demand their say in the matter too. We are in for more storms and tempests on the soldier vote.
So ends the conference after 14 meetings covering a period of 25 days. The bill as it stands now is very much restricted. Even so, if the states will cooperate (“90 per cent of the responsibility for the success of this law lies on the states,” Gene Worley told us) the soldiers will be able to vote. For men overseas it will be some help, for men within the country it does not compare with Public Law 712. All in all, although Hatch frankly and honestly declared that it is “entirely impossible to judge whether more soldiers would vote under Public 712 than under the conference report,” it seems probable that in the last analysis Public 712 is the broader and more effective law.
March 8, 1944. Ferguson and Brewster made quite a spectacle for the press in the Truman Committee hearing on defective Liberty Ships this morning. Joe Curran of the Maritime Union testified, looking tough but amiable, and on the whole did a pretty good job of it, too. What he said made sense and he said it in a reasonable manner. However, he did make some reference—the stock reference, which some people who belong to a certain school of political thought (32nd degree Democrats, you might call them) are prone to make—about “some newspapers using this hearing for their own political ends.” Ferguson and Brewster jumped him for that; he kept his temper but Truman got mad, a lot of hot words were exchanged and a statement that otherwise might have sunk into the silent depths of a committee record, there to gather dust and molder, was lifted into the class of news and spread across the country. Truman twice tried to shut his irrepressible colleagues up, each time growing angrier. Ferguson returned to the subject with the dogged persistence for which he is noted, and Brewster, his voice rising and a hot flush covering his face and forehead, became more and more personal. It was this more than anything else that seemed to annoy Truman. The chairman is a fine fellow, presiding like some trim, efficient, keen-minded businessman, which is just what he looks like, with his neat appearance, heavy-lensed glasses, and quick, good-humored smile. There are a number of times, in fact, sentimental though it may seem, when it is quite easy to find oneself thanking whatever powers there be that the country has Harry Truman in the Senate. He is an excellent man, a fine Senator and sound American. The debt the public owes to him is great indeed.
And Boss Pendergast put him in. Politics is funny business: or may be one should say politics is people, and people is funny business.
Later in the day I went around and talked to a few Senators on the soldier-vote bill. It is impossible to predict at the moment what reception it will receive when it comes to the floor. Taft said he would probably vote for it. States that have already had special sessions and have not validated the Federal ballot won’t meet again, he predicted. “They just won’t get the Federal war ballot. Anyway, they don’t want it.” This he said with the calm of a man entirely sure of his course. It is one of the things you have to hand Bob Taft. He never pulls his punches and he lets the chips fall where they may.
Jonathan Daniels came back to the REA hearing. “Are you the same Jonathan Daniels who appeared here on February 28?” the committee counsel asked him. “Approximately,” Daniels replied with a grin. Today the committee decided to drop the contempt proceedings and forget the whole thing. The issue was there, basic enough, but everybody thought better of it and backed away before any damage was done.
March 9, 1944. Tom Connally filed the soldier-vote conference report today and immediately got into a three-way argument with his fellow conferees Hatch and Austin. Ultimately it was agreed to postpone formal consideration until Monday. Lucas then delivered a 16-page speech attacking the Republicans, the conference report, “a Congressman from Mississippi who is still fighting the Civil War,” and all who dare to criticize “the great man in the White House.” He concluded by taking what is apparently to become the official line, that S. 1285, the conference report, is worse than Public Law 712, and accordingly 1285 should be killed and Public 712 be retained. The veto message, if any, will in all probability follow the same thesis.
March 10, 1944. I went to my first White House press conference this morning and came away with rather mixed reactions. The physical routine of it was already familiar from the accounts of innumerable sources. Once my name had been checked off the list and I had passed through the northwest gate and entered the Presidential offices on the west side of the White House, it was more a matter of confirming things I had read about than of absorbing new impressions. There was the big front waiting room, just as described, with the red leather chairs and sofas along the walls and the huge oaken table in the center, piled high with hats and overcoats. There were the White House police, wearing uniforms, and the Secret Service men, not wearing uniforms. There were the correspondents drifting in by ones and twos, and a gradually mounting hum of talk and laughter as everyone stood around waiting. The whole atmosphere was one of controlled informality, with a slight but inescapable excitement in the air, increasing as 10:30 came and went and the President still delayed calling us in. Promptly at 11 the buzzer sounded three times and the regular White House correspondents streamed down the hall toward the executive office. After they had gone in the visitors were allowed to follow. As the last man came through the door into the oval room one of the policemen called out, “All in!” and the President began to speak. We were there perhaps 10 minutes.
I came away with two dominant impressions. The first was a curious sense of physical smallness, hard to understand in view of so many references to the man’s size. Nonetheless, the impression remained, and even at the end, when the crowd began to thin out and I could get a better look at him, it still struck me forcibly. Perhaps it was because he was sitting low in his chair. Whatever it was, it made him seem relatively small with a rather small head and not a very great width to his shoulders. I had been prepared for someone of far more imposing proportions than this. It is the thing which struck me most forcibly.
The second impression was more subtle, something in his manner, in his tone, in the way in which he answered questions. “Subdued” is the word for Franklin Roosevelt at this particular juncture; whether subdued because of his enormous responsibility, or because of political opposition, or because of age or of ill health, I have no way of knowing. But subdued he is, even though the standard gestures—the quick laugh, the upflung head, the open smile, even the intent, mouth-opened lack of expression when he is listening—are all there, just as they have been in a million newsreels and photographs. Underneath one detects a certain lifelessness, a certain preoccupation, a tired impatience, not lessened by an obvious mistrust of the press.
The press, in fact, came in for several thrusts during the course of the conversation. The Italian Navy was brought up, and the press was straightened out on that. He had said a third of it “or the equivalent” would be given the Russians. “Only, some people didn’t use the key words”—this with a quick, unamused smile and a glance along the line of faces. He was asked if, in his opinion, the bombing of Berlin was preliminary to an invasion. “One of those iffy questions,” he remarked, and added that, after all, why should he have an opinion. “Don’t they always make up their own opinions?” “Who is they?” someone asked, for he has a habit of making elliptical remarks whose intent is not always immediately clear. “Why, the press,” he told us with an edge in his voice. “They always make up their own opinions, don’t they?” Dutifully we laughed.
The conversation slipped on and off the record for a moment or two. He told us a story by a member of the Swedish legation in Berlin whom he talked to recently; off the record. He commented that the bombing of Berlin, and whether or not there was anything left of Berlin, was something he didn’t know much about, something which was worked out by the joint British and American staffs; on the record. He told us that Lewis Douglas was resigning from the Board of Economic Welfare; on the record. Because of his health; off the record. Sinus trouble, due to Washington weather—“and you all know my opinion of Washington weather,” off the record. We laughed again. We shared the opinion.
A little silence fell; he examined something on his bric-a-brac-cluttered desk. Someone said, “Thank you, Mr. President.” We all murmured it. He smiled, grinned, laughed; leaned back in his chair, one hand on the arm; seemed relieved. We left.
March 11, 1944. From all the soundings taken so far on the soldier-vote, the formal debate which will begin on Monday looks like a free-for-all. Everyone you talk to has a little different shading of opinion. The basic argument of the strict constitutionalists versus the liberal interpreters remains unchanged.
Harold Burton, small, trim, intelligent and capable, seemed more amused than anything else when I asked him about his candidacy for the Republican nomination. So far it seems to exist mainly in Pearson’s column; Drew has been running him furiously for the past two weeks. He didn’t seem to be panting much this morning. He just emphasized that both he and Taft are pledged to Governor Bricker, and that he has no plans beyond that. “Who do you think will get it?” I asked. He laughed and reminded me that he could only stand on his official statement—“I am pledged to John W. Bricker.” However, he added, Dewey seems the best bet now, with Willkie trailing badly. “He seems to have real opposition,” he said thoughtfully, “not just people neutral, but people actively working against him. That’s different.”
Guy Gillette announced yesterday, in response to a petition signed by 24,000 Iowans (and a personal request from the White House, whose occupant tried to purge him in 1938 but now is worried about Iowa) that he has abandoned his plans to retire and will run again. He faces a very stiff fight, and the hopes of the Press Gallery go with him. “He’s a good Senator,” people say, and the way they say it, not with any exaggerated emphasis but just with firm conviction, is significant enough of the kind of good Senator he is.
Today John Overton announced that he will retire next January when his second term ends. Grateful Louisianans, however, may persuade him to change his mind too. The Huey Long machine, to which he has a habit of making curious, sentimental references in statements that mean nothing to the general reader but doubtless have a deep significance in the haunted bayous of the Pelican State, is probably still strong enough to send him back if he wants to come. One of the Senate’s hardest-working members, with a round face and drooping eyes and a bland expression that says nothing and lots of it, he has a certain satiric humor that furnishes a good many laughs. They wanted to amend the Food and Drug Act the other day to call skim milk “dry milk solids.” Very well, said Overton, let’s be consistent: let’s call spinach “health and strength greens,” and let’s call castor oil “the elixir of life and the nectar of the gods.” He introduced two amendments to that effect, they went to the Government Printing Office at some expense to the taxpayer, reappeared formally in printed form, and were solemnly (more or less) considered by the Senate. The vote was something like 77–1, but at least it was a good try. Things like that, plus his very real industry, have kept Overton from being quite the typical figure he might otherwise be.
March 12, 1944. Elbert Thomas and Warren Austin, earnest and idealistic both, have launched a drive which The New Yorker or some other satiric journal ought to note in Peace-Through-Glowing-Phrases Division. They will find “the lowest common denominator” for peace, the Senators say: they will compile the winged words of Henry Wallace, the statements of Wendell Willkie and Franklin Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover, and they will issue words of policy and principle. Out of all this, presumably, the just and lasting peace will finally emerge.
Someday (and someday far too late) someone is going to start out by enunciating some good sound wonderful principles, and then right after he has done so, he is going to say: now let’s get down to cases. Let’s see how this applies to Poland, and the Balkans, and Spain, and De Gaulle and Badoglio, and China, and India, and Yugoslavia, and Russia, and the rest. On the day that unlikely, mythical Somebody says that, we are going to begin to get somewhere with the peace. And not until.
In a way it is idle even to imagine that day, however, for already we have been left behind by our allies. The time has passed for generalizations while we still generalize. The time has come to be specific, and we refuse with all the vigor at our command to be specific. Meanwhile Britain and Russia have already become specific. We still talk on, in a vacuum and to ourselves. They go briskly ahead with their plans for Tomorrow. When it dawns we shall be sadly surprised, and when we are sadly surprised we shall be bitter, and we shall blame them. We shall not do so justly, however. They looked to us and we looked away, muttering the while a few more pious platitudes.
March 13, 1944. Something known as the soldier vote was formally brought up in the Senate today. Somewhere we had all heard about it before.
Tom Connally opened the third debate on the issue with a short statement defending the conference report. More soldiers would vote under it than under Public Law 712, he said. It was the best possible compromise. If it should be rejected, in his opinion no satisfactory measure could be passed by the Congress. Gene Worley came in and sat beside Green, and presently Bonner followed, and shortly thereafter John E. Rankin. Much of the discussion was taken up with members of the conference committee explaining to each other what they had or hadn’t done. Warren Austin made the longest speech of the afternoon, upholding the report. Green and Hatch denounced it. It was a long, windy day, in which not even one of our most rabid New Dealers could contribute much enlightenment, even though he tried very hard.
It provided a mild diversion from the more serious business of the chamber, from a man who has a flagrant reputation on the Hill. He gains a certain wry patronage from some of the President’s more violent journalistic partisans, but it has none of the admiration in it which the sincerity of Pepper, for instance, brings him. The automatic devotion of this particular Senator to the White House, in fact, is such as to give rise to the stock story about him in the Press Gallery. In that hall of legend the tale runs that the Senator, when beset by the demands of insistent nature, gets on the telephone and the following conversation ensues: “Hello?” “Hello, Boss. This is Butch.” “What, Butch? Again?” “Yes, Boss.” “Well”—after a thoughtful pause—“O.K., Butch.” “O.K., Boss.”
Certainly that is how he votes—by a sort of inevitable, inexorable, legislative peristalsis.
Pat McCarran announced today that the Judiciary Committee has tabled “indefinitely” Gillette’s amendment to permit ratification of treaties by a majority vote of both houses. This is no time to amend the Constitution, Pat says.
March 14, 1944. The vote was 47 to 31 today when the conference report passed the Senate, three hours after the start of the second day of the third debate. The final minutes of discussion were taken up to good effect by Barkley, making his first speech since the resignation. He was against the report and he said frankly why, in an able and sincere address.
John Rankin came on the floor during his speech, looking self-satisfied and smug. Once Barkley praised the hard work of the Senate conferees—“I know they labored under very difficult circumstances”—and Rankin looked up at the Press Gallery, laughed openly and pointed to himself. Again Barkley referred to the fact that conferees from the upper house “were up against a stone wall”—and again Rankin grinned openly at us and pointed to himself.
So ends the soldier-vote fight in the Senate. The House gets the conference report tomorrow and is expected to vote overwhelming approval after a perfunctory debate. It then goes to the President, who will be on the spot. By rights he ought to veto it, but he may not have the guts.
March 15, 1944. There is life in the old dog at the other end of the Avenue yet. Two hours after the House voted 273–111 today in favor of the conference report, he dispatched a bland telegram to the 48 governors. Tell me, he asked gently, tell me: will your state laws permit you to validate the Federal war ballot? And if they do not, will you call a special session of your legislature to amend them?
It was a clever move, and it puts a number of ambitious gentlemen squarely on the spot. Warren is in the clear in California, where the legislature has specifically provided that it will accept the Federal ballot, but all the rest (and that includes Tom Dewey and John Bricker) are going to have to do some fast talking—or doubletalking, as one reporter put it. It is a moot point at the moment whether doubletalking, however, will be enough. It looks very much as though the decision has been put squarely in their laps. Of all the President’s political stratagems on the issue, this is the master stroke. Nothing could be more clever.
The responsibility for the bill now rests upon the governors. If they dare to say they will not amend their laws, the veto will be theirs, not the President’s. If they say they will amend their laws, then they have given their formal promise before the nation and they will not be able to duck it. If a veto should be forthcoming, Congress could not override, for that would be a repudiation of the governors rather than the President. Mr. Roosevelt has tied his opponents’ coattails together. They couldn’t get away from one another if they tried.
Despite the hearts and flowers some sections of the press have tried to read into the relations between the Capitol and the White House since the Barkley affair, this is the act of a man still fighting bitterly against opponents for whom he has apparently only the most vindictive dislike. As such, while the first reaction is one of startled admiration for his supreme shrewdness, the second is far more sober.
The first real day of spring came to Washington today, and with it the soft haze so characteristic of the city’s good weather. Through it, as a colleague and I rode downtown in the Pennsylvania Avenue car, we could look back and see the Capitol seeming to float above the town as if suspended in the still, warm air. My companion, not normally sentimental, looked at it for a long time. Then he said soberly, “You know, that’s the most beautiful sight in the world.” Contemplating the magnificent building, so strong, so powerful, so sure, I was moved to agree. It is a drab heart indeed that is not touched at least a little by the sight, for then, if no other time, is one inspired to feel that whatever the shortcomings of the men on the Hill, and whatever the shortcomings of the men downtown, the nation that has such a symbol and such a challenge and such a hope cannot ever really lose.