THE WEEK IN REVIEW
THE WEEK IN REVIEW THE American Institute of Public Opinion released Inching Ahead the results of a significant Gallup Poll on Ameri- can foreign policy last week. Gallup interviewers swarmed...
...Smear...
...The tabulation showed 72 per cent in the Middle West believing in active participation, as compared with 73 per cent for the entire nation...
...Execution, he said, is "one of the quickest ways a convicted criminal may be converted to the service of mankind...
...GI Bill GI Bill of Rights Passes The House of Representatives passed, 387 to 0, a modified version of the "GI Bill of Rights" which had previously won unanimous approval in the Senate...
...He advocated this for Rudolf Hess and Gen...
...Names And Notes In Th e News Insurance Probe...
...4-Fs...
...Avery charged that he was being smeared by a series of articles called "Sewell Avery vs...
...Dies announced he would defy doctor's orders to return to Congress for an investigation of Sidney Hillman and his CIO Political Action Committee...
...Joseph C. O'Mahoney, Wyoming Democrat, demanded of the Senate Judiciary Committee last week that it launch an investigation of the "insurance monopoly" before it approves pending legislation to exempt insurance from the operation of the anti-trust laws...
...Major Action In Congress Both Houses of Congress took final action last week on major legislation...
...Similarly, a poll of public opinion in the Middle West would doubtless show strong opposition to American participation in a system of military alliances designed to police the peace...
...Extension...
...Earl Browder, general secretary of-the Communist Party, made the motion to abandon the party prior to delivering a keynote address in which he called on Communists to support the reelection of President Roosevelt for a fourth term...
...The President's retirement now, he said, "would be a disaster for our country...
...The Fuehrer, he said, should be put away in an insane asylum and forgotten...
...Warning From Welles The Gallup Poll results thus confirmed a conclusion long argued in The Progressive—that the rank-and-file in the Middle West believe in genuine American cooperation with other nations in world affairs...
...John Costello, California, both Democrats, have been defeated for renomination partly as a result of CIO activity...
...Passage of the bill was held up for a time by Sen...
...Our enemies in the war would be encouraged to new efforts, our Allies in the war would have deep misgivings, and our own country would be launched upon an uncharted sea of uncontrolled factionalism," Browder declared...
...Gallup interviewers swarmed through the Middle West to determine how the so-called "isolationist belt"—Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, North and South Dakota— felt about America's role in the postwar world...
...School Lunches...
...The People...
...Welles pointed out that a policy of military alliances of the great powers would result in "the indefinite piling up of armaments and their inevitable adjunct, stark imperialism...
...Poll Tax Amendment Senate refusal to flash the green light for prompt action on legislation banning the poll tax as a requirement for voting was followed last week by the introduction of a constitutional amendment by 33 Republicans...
...Walter White, secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, denounced the action of GOP Senators as a political maneuver to protect themselves in the 1944 elections and mislead Negro voters...
...Rivalry...
...Neither gave any, clue to those who toyed with the riddle...
...Dies Threatens Angered by the joyful response to the announcement of his impending retirement from Congress, Rep...
...Riddle...
...O'Mahoney contended that there is ample evidence which "demonstrates the existence of huge, self-established interstate and international combinations which regulate and regiment the insurance business in the utmost detail in the interest of the companies...
...The U. S. Senate won a round of applause from the nation's progressives this week by restoring the $50,000,000 for the school lunch program deleted from the Department of Agriculture's appropriation bill by the House...
...O'Mahoney cited reports of the Insurance Department of New York which charged that the Interstate Underwriters Board is operated in such a way as to discriminate against small business and in favor of big interstate business by allowing the latter discounts ranging from 19 to 61 per cent below the rates paid by small business...
...The Senate also increased Farm Security Administration and REA funds...
...Communists Abandon Party The Communist Party of the United States, in line with its policy of taking over and working through other organizations, voted at its national convention last week to dissolve as a political group and form a new non-party organization...
...We should be making a present to the real evil spirits in Germany—we should be giving them just the national martyr behind whose legend they can shelter from the wrath to come...
...Denouncing the failure of the "Big Three" to permit smaller members of the United Nations to share in the making of political decisions, Welles warned that the freedom-loving peoples who have been fighting Hitlerism would not willingly accept "some other kind of dictatorship over their destinies, even though that be exercised by the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain...
...However, the intelligensia on the East bank of Hudson River who insist on...
...Martyr...
...In the three years that Lend-Lease has been in operation it has cost the United States $24,224,806,000...
...The entire tax of the 30,000,000 persons freed of the necessity of making tax returns will be withheld by their employers, under the bill which has now been returned to the House for concurrence in technical amendments...
...Wells advised that other Nazi war criminals be tried and executed as rapidly as they fall into Allied hands...
...Martin Dies, Texas Democrat, hurled a series of threats from his Texas retreat last week...
...THE WEEK IN REVIEW THE American Institute of Public Opinion released Inching Ahead the results of a significant Gallup Poll on American foreign policy last week...
...On May 1, the total of the number of draft age men in the 4-F category of physically and mentally unfit, had reached 4,048,914—the highest total of the war...
...Joe Starnes, Alabama, and Rep...
...The Allies were warned by H. G. Wells, famed British historian and author, not to execute Adolf Hitler...
...calling the Middle West isolationist are 100 per cent right, in the eyes of most observers, if by "isolationism" they mean an unwillingness to commit the United States now to enforce any peace treaty, regardless of how harsh, imperialistic, and reactionary it might be...
...Among the more newsworthy developments of the week in Congress were these: Simplified Taxes Approved The Senate voted unanimous approval of the new Federal income tax simplification bill designed to relieve the 30,000,000 taxpayers who get less than $5,000 a year of the necessity of computing what taxes they owe and to simplify that task for the remaining 20,000,000 taxpayers...
...Vigorously endorsing a consolidation of the two forces, Daniels said that "history is replete with the squabbles between the Army and Navy which prolong wars...
...Dies also announced that he had prepared an "expose" of the Roosevelt Administration which would involve "Cabinet officers and high Government officials...
...There must be no killing of Hitler," he writes in a recent book...
...George Gallup announced that "the rank and file of voters in the area are just about as much in favor of the principle of international cooperation as the voters elsewhere in the country...
...Ritter von Thoma, who was captured in North Africa, but not for "this poor, crazy Austrian imbecile," Hitler...
...Roosevelt's most intimate advisers, paid a call on Wheeler and spent the better part of an afternoon with the Montanan...
...The amendment would write into the Constitution a specific prohibition against the poll-tax requirement for voting...
...The perils of such a position were outlined in New York last week in a notable address on foreign policy by Sumner Welles, former Undersecretary of State...
...An attempt to amend the bill to prohibit unions from requiring veterans to hold a union card to work in a "closed shop" was rebuffed in the House...
...Reporting the results, Dr...
...The question asked was this: "Do you agree with those people who think that the United States should take an active part in world affairs after the war, or with those people who think we should stay out of world affairs...
...The Communists, in dropping the word "party," will adopt instead a title like "American Communist Association" or "American Communist Political Association," Browder pointed out...
...William Langer, North Dakota Republican, who insisted that the Senate be given more time to study the measure before voting basic tax changes...
...The House raised from $1,500 to $2,500 the maximum of Government-guaranteed loans to veterans, refused to increase the period of unemployment compensation coverage from 26 to 52 weeks, and rejected amendments to reduce loan interest rates from 6 to 4 per cent...
...Jealousy and friction between the Army and Navy in the Hawaiian Islands was responsible for the Pearl Harbor disaster, Josephus Daniels, Secretary of Navy in World War I, told the House Postwar Policy Committee this week...
...Eyebrows went up again eight days later when Samuel I. Rosenman, one of Mr...
...We will participate in political life as independents, through the established party organizations of our progressive associates, without committing ourselves to any party label...
...Langer spoke for three and a half hours one day and an hour the next day before abandoning his fight for more time...
...Asserting that the Communists could not adopt a "free enterprise" ideology, nor successfully advocate its repudiation, Browder said: " 'It must be accepted as one of the political facts of life that the program of the democratic progressive majority to which we adhere includes the defense of 'free enterprise,' and that we do not challenge this program...
...18 per cent urging the United States to stay out, exactly the same percentage as prevailed in the country as a whole, while 10 per cent in the Middle West were undecided, as compared with nine per cent in the nation...
...For if the people of the United States pin their faith to a four-power military alliance as the sole cure for the ills from which the world is today suffering, they will find themselves compelled to adopt as their - national policy, after a few uneasy years, a course of unremitting armaments-building and of territorial aggrandizement as the only method by which they can achieve physical security...
...Dies was especially infuriated because two members of his Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities, Rep...
...Burton K. Wheeler, bitter critic of the Administration, conferred with President Roosevelt for 45 minutes...
...The omnibus measure, providing a wide variety of benefits for World War II veterans, was returned to the Senate for action on House amendments...
...Mr...
...Charging that he has been defamed by an article in the Chicago Sun, Sewell Avery, embattled chairman of the board of Montgomery, Ward and Co., filed a $1,000,000 libel suit against Marshall Field, owner and publisher of the Chicago paper...
...The third extension of the Lend-Lease Act was signed this week by President Roosevelt, who hailed it as a symbol of Allied unity...
...There was a many a raised eyebrow in Washington last week when Sen...
Vol. 8 • May 1944 • No. 22
