National Reports

...Although Harris has been out of office for some years now, he remains a major figure...

...The state's leaders in this new advocacy of American withdrawal from world affairs are U.S...

...A straw in the wind is the attitude taken by Roy V. Harris, ex-Speaker of the Georgia House...

...Reading Roy Harris, one would think that the Eisenhower Administration is dominated by Americans for Democratic Action...

...So powerful has the isolationist trend become that a few responsible voices in Georgia have attempted to call a halt...

...His theme is "take care of our own first—and give foreigners what's left over.'' The Georgia Congressional delegation is divided to some extent, although none of its members has been conspicuous as a defender of foreign economic assistance...

...in another, he repudiated Senator Russell's amendment to the Middle East resolution in carefully unspecific and inoffensive language (he never mentioned Russell by name...

...Ralph McGill, the well-known and influential editor of the Atlanta Constitution, published a signed column attacking unnamed "extremist groups" which were sabotaging American foreign policy...

...Where you find a Southern isolationist, there you are also likely to find a budget-cutter, a tax-cutter, an opponent of Federal aid to schools, a segregationist, and a highly articulate manipulator of "states' rights" and the myth of the Yankee "liberal-Communist-labor union" invasion of the South...

...Senator Talmadge has concentrated on foreign-policy issues instead of civil rights and race during his first two months in the Senate...

...This four-page sheet advocates the extreme segregationist position, reprints inflammatory speeches and literature, and during the past year has been one jump ahead of official circles in advocating segregationist moves...

...This is the time to do away with economic aid to other nations...

...Unsigned editorials in the papers have been much more outspoken, condemning the entire isolationist trend and even defending the President and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles...

...recently, however, they have spoken up on this issue, as forthrightly as they dared...

...Senator Russell earned considerable local praise by his amendment to the Eisenhower Doctrine that would have stripped all military- and economic-aid provisions from it...

...In contrast, Representative Henderson Lanham (Rome) has not only deplored reckless ("meat-ax") budget cutting but has taken a much more restrained position on foreign-policy and foreign-aid issues...

...Harris professes to find control of the Government divided among Henry Wallace, Eleanor Roosevelt and Walter Reuther...

...His "maiden speech" was given wide publicity here, complete with verbatim texts and TV film clips, and no one has been permitted to forget that it was an all-out assault on the whole concept of foreign aid—and, indeed, on the notion of a foreign policy itself...

...To get the voting support it needs on issues in which it is interested, it has had to barter on foreign-policy issues...

...He is also on record as saying that "one wing of the Strategic Air Command" would do more to pacify the Middle East than all the aid programs ever conceived...

...In fact, a new strain of particularly virulent isolationism can be spotted all through the South and is especially powerful in Georgia...

...Senators Richard B. Russell and Herman Talmadge, and—among others—James C. Davis (Atlanta) and "Jack" Flynt (Griffin) of the Congressional delegation...

...He is a co-founder of the Georgia States' Rights Council (the local version of the White Citizens Council), and publisher of the weekly Augusta Courier...

...It has found kindred spirits in the Middle West, in the Piockies and in some of the pockets of conservatives in California...

...One current example of a myth that still lingers on is the claim that "the South is the most internationally-minded section of the nation...

...There are strong economic interests which feel they have a stake in minimal foreign policy, of which the cotton-textile producers are only one example...

...Locally, considerable support is being given to this trend...

...Some Northern Democrats are discovering with dismay that there is very little difference today between Herman Talmadge and William Jenner...

...What is interesting about Southern isolationism is how it fits into what has become the standard equipment of a certain Southern political school...

...The powerful trend toward isolation in the South is one result of that exchange...

...A few weeks ago, in the course of an impassioned plea to Georgia's citizenry to take back control of the Government from the "race-mixers,'' "crackpots," "wildcats" and "Communists" who dominate Washington, Harris put in his oar for isolationism: "It seems to me that the time has come when we ought to realize that we are not strong enough, great enough and big enough to do the fighting for the whole damn world...

...Except for minor differences on the civil-rights issue, right-wing Republicans and many Southern Democrats are discovering more and more common ground...

...The Atlanta newspapers, operating a very profitable monopoly in the entire metropolitan area, are famous for their refusal to take a strong stand on any question that might offend influential circles...

...But even the newspaper opposition and the continuing (if not particularly well-organized) campaign by various pressure groups in Atlanta to slow down the drive toward withdrawal have not been especially effective...

...There also is some reason to believe that the Russell-Talmadge line is genuinely popular in Georgia and that this is in no sense a plot being put over on an innocent and unsuspecting citizenry...

...Congressmen Davis and Flynt were the only ones who went so far as to vote against the Eisenhower Doctrine, but several of the others have entered protests against the general line of the Administration's foreign policy...

...His high point was reached in a speech in which he admitted that he had changed his views about Washington's Farewell Address and was finding many virtues in it that had formerly escaped him...

...Southern sectionalism, despite the clamor about school and bus integration, is no longer a maverick...

...The Senator's reputation as the perfect "Senate type" (in William S. White's words) obscures the fact that he has voted against every foreign-aid bill since 1950 and has consistently favored massive military expenditures as an alternative to any kind of concerted foreign policy...