Time To Buckle Down

...Now that the bill has passed, the last pretenses of peaceful purpose are dying like leaves in a fall frost...

...Commenting on the new attitude in Washington, Krock wrote recently: "At the end of many months of official unrealism . . . the Administration is squarely" facing the prospect of war...

...AND THEN there's the pontifical Arthur Krock, chief of the Washington bureau of the all-out interventionist New York Times, which has found little to like about the President except his foreign policy during the past two years...

...The mere use of this weird argument against Judge Reis is evidence of the intellectual poverty of his opposition...

...While the Senate is in an inquiring mood, it might well approve Sen...

...Sen...

...Graft In Defense Orders AN INVESTIGATION of the national defense program, probably to be headed by Sen...

...We know they will be "needed...

...The inquiry should not only look into reports, of discrimination and favoritism in allotting defense work, and also make certain Uncle Sam gets a dollar's worth of defense for every dollar spent, but it might learn whether some firms have been given far more work than they can turn out in reasonable time...

...Harry S. Truman, Mississippi Democrat, has been unanimously voted by the Senate...

...Speaking at Los Angeles last week, Virgil Jordan, president of the National Industrial Conference Board, spoke with conviction when he predicted American intervention before the year is over...

...The United States is absolutely certain to be actively engaged in the war against Germany before this year is finished...

...This is a factual report of a definite new attitude in Washington which emerges'in any conversation with officials...

...Should Britain lose, he hoped the President would have "guts enough to seize the Azores, the Canary Islands, and see to it that there was no Congressional «debate on the matter...

...The President has said all our factories expanded by defense, and more, will be needed after the war...

...He made it plain that his "streamlined" government would be attained by the "sacrifice" of some of the attributes of democracy to which we have become accustomed...

...He requested the Senate investigation...

...In presenting his case to the Wisconsin electorate, Judge Reis can submit his record and rest...

...As a judge, his magnificent concept of the law as a living and dynamic instrument for public good rather than a tool for private obstruction has enabled him to cut through the hocus-pocus of legal red-tape so dear to the old common law lawyer who would get to the merits only as a last resort...

...William Allen White doubtless saw this new attitude coming when he resigned his chairmanship of the committee with the blunt observation that "in two of our chapters, New York and Washington, we have a bunch of war-mongers and under our organization we have no way to oust them, and I just can't remain at the head of an organization which is being used by those two chapters to ghost dance for war...

...Nothing could be more timely...

...German air-sea blockade plus Axis attacks from England to Singapore will jolt U. S. popular opinion...

...Truman recently charged favoritism had been shown in the placing of defense orders and that private individuals were making heavy profits by acting as unnecessary "middlemen'' between government departments purchasing land and individuals with land for sale...

...Maybe a Wagner study can show us just how we can get a guarantee those factories will be used...

...Burton K. Wheeler quoted from the 55th Psalm to describe those who sought to conceal the warlike purposes of the bill with> honied language of peace...

...Should Britain fail to defeat Hitler, he said, it would be necessary for the U. S. to set up a "streamlined" government of its own with a "secret sabotage and corruption" fund for use in Latin America...

...After all, you can't get a man drunk and then complain because he isn't sober...

...Administration spokesmen described the measure as a bill to wipe out some of the inequalities of the 1940 law, but it was such a complicated bit of legal mumbo-jumbo that few lawmakers understand what it did and how it did it...

...It is conceding, almost openly, that the United States cannot give to Great Britain the degree ' of assistance required to defeat the Axis and deny, as during the campaign, that war can be a consequence...

...An amazing development of the last few days is what might be described as passive acquiescence in United States entry into the war . . . Today the theme constantly sung is: 'We are already in the war.'" * * * 'T'HIS NEW official attitude has also become the theme song of the unofficial but close-to-the-throne Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies...

...New arms program, first lease-lend shipments, defense speed-up, economic warfare will make headlines...

...Frivolous Pleading THE TORY NEWSPAPER opponents of Judge Alvin C. Reis' candidacy for the Wisconsin Supreme Court are scratching desperately for any kind of ammunition that might be helpful on a mudslinging expedition...

...Typical of the "slim pick-in's" has been the recent criticism that he dared to challenge the late Walter Kohler's right to slush fund expenditures a decade ago...

...The Progressive is just as strongly opposed to the fascist tendencies of the NAM as are the more emotional publications, but it can't understand how normally intelligent editors can whip the populace into a frenzy week after week and not expect that hysteria to spill out into a somewhat different form of intolerance from the kind they preach...

...QMALL WONDER, then, in view of this official, ^ semi-official, and unofficial acceptance of the inevitable and in fact imminence of war that Sen...

...There was Jesse Jones' "slip of the tongue"—or was it a trial balloon...

...Seven senators, to be appointed by the Vice-President, will make the inquiry...

...The Last Column TN HIS memorable address against the Lease-Lend Bill, a fragment of which appears on Page' Two of this issue of The Progressive, Sen...

...And finally it was the very shrewd and very realistic ' John Thomas Taylor, top lobbyist for the American Legion, who pronounced a longer range judgment on the ultimate outcome of our present course when he told the Iowa legislature: "The war will last at least 10 years and we will have millions of men in it before it is over...

...Wheeler: "The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war ivas in his heart...

...Wagner's proposal for a study of methods by which we can cushion our economy against a collapse after the present armament boom...

...Clifton Utley, director of the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations...

...You can't defend the country with some plane manufacturer's big backlog of unfilled orders...

...In the midst of all the frenzied preoccupation with foreign affairs several weeks ago, Congress, almost unnoticed, passed and the President signed a bill to grant -corporations $100,000,000 a year in tax relief...

...In Denver, on Feb...

...M...

...In his most recent blast, Clark M. Eichelberger, the committee's national director, echoed the new line when he said: "The saving of Britain is so important that if active belligerency is necessary, then I would favor it...

...Quoted Sen...

...He recommended a "brutal and efficient imperialism" south of the Rio Grande...

...Publications like the Nation and the New Republic, which have exhausted all the ugly language in the unabridged dictionary to bedevil and impugn the motives of those who resist the interventionist foreign policy, are now wringing their hands in horror because the National Association of Manufacturers is doing a bit of its own witch-hunting in the Nazi booTF-burning tradition...

...There was Harold Ickes demanding daylight saving time for the District of Columbia with the statement that he was more than ever in favor of it "now that we are at war...

...That's one issue on which 98 per cent of the people could unite in 24 hours...

...Reaping The Whirlwind HAVING SOWN the wind of hysteria with their intolerant diatribes for war, eastern liberals are reaping the whirlwind in the form of a Tory attack on textbooks which dare to hint that the United States has been somewhat less than a land of milk and honey for all...

...One of the most important of all is the formulation of an excess profits tax program which means something and which will make good President Roosevelt's solemn pledge to prevent the harvesting of a new crop of war millionaires "this time...

...Wheeler drew no fire from the Administration when he quoted from the 55th Psalm: "The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart...

...Roosevelt once scourged phrases like 'nearly in war.' Now says they mean nothing . . . Coming events will raise the fever...

...Time To Buckle Down NOW THAT the Roosevelt Administration has won a decisive victory in the historic struggle over H. R. 1776, the nation expects Congress to buckle down to some of the more crucial domestic problems which have been gathering dust these many weeks...

...Utley's Faith In Democracy (From Uncensored) A LEADING SPOKESMAN for the (Ex-White) Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies is Mr...

...I do not know whether we will declare war, but the army, navy, and air eorps will be seeing actual warfare in foreign countries...

...Labor, the well-informed publication of the powerful Railroad Brotherhoods,*placed its finger on the crux of the problem when it said that "if the President of the United States affords the right kind of leadership, no power on earth can prevent the enactment of legislation shackling the profiteer...

...The tax bill passed by the 1940 Congress leaks like a sieve and fails miserably to stand up as an excess profits tax measure, as Administration experts have themselves admitted...

...If the opposition can't do any better than it has up to now, it's likely to get tossed out of court for frivolous pleading...

...The brilliant record of Judge Reis as soldier, lawmaker, administrator, counsel, and judge is unassailable, as his foes know full well...

...1, Mr...

...As a matter of fact, so cocky did the Administration become over the outcome of the Senate struggle that for the fortnight or more preceding final passage the word went out that war is by no means remote...

...Summarizing these and other off-stage whispers, the Wall Street Journal, which never has been tainted with isolationism and which loves the President now as much as it hated him during the period of domestic reform, reported: "Public is being prepared mentally for war—as a last resort...

...Utley made a speech for the Committee which did little credit to his faith in democracy...

...Krock said in only somewhat milder language what has been reported by Thomas Stokes, one of the ablest and most respected Washington correspondents, when he wrote: "A war psychosis grips Washington...

...The Editor Reserves...

...A thorough-going liberal in approach, he has brought a keen understanding and refreshing vigor to the public offices he has filled with so much distinction...