THE WEEK IN REVIEW
THE WEEK IN REVIEW ONE OF THE strangest stories of the war broke in Washington during the past week. A "high military official," whose identity was concealed at first, summoned a select group of...
...Sens...
...Krueger said that candidates would be entered in some of the state legislative contests this year, but that no attempt would be made to choose a national ticket...
...But two years ago, after the patient had pretty well recovered, he had a very bad accident...
...A Reporter Gets 'Picayune' Four years ago, some months before the 1940 political conventions, Fred Perkins, a Washington correspondent for the Scripps-Howard papers, asked President Roosevelt if he intended to be a candidate for a third term...
...The Postoffice Department had previously accused Esquire of being "obscene, lewd, and lascivious," and the magazine had marshaled a number of prominent Americans to deny the charge...
...New Deal" didn't know anything about broken legs and arms, so he got his partner, who was an orthopedic surgeon, "Dr...
...Names And Notes In The News New Party...
...Sen...
...Green's position was shared in many quarters...
...Postmaster General Frank C. Walker overruled a 2 to 1 decision of his own hearing board last week to deny second-class mailing privileges to Esquire, the magazine for men which features color cartoons showing thinly-clad girls...
...The setting of a strike date was merely a device, he insisted, to expedite a settlement of a dispute that had dragged out for 15 months and had seriously upset rail workers' morale...
...The patient, the President's allegory continued, is all right now—he's all right internally now, if they will just leave him alone...
...No internal trouble this time...
...Sen...
...I am willing to join with any group interested in trying to work out a sane, sensible policy to maintain world peace and yet protect the postwar interests of the American people," Wheeler said...
...Establishment of an American Commonwealth Party on the principles of the Canadian Commonwealth Cooperative Federation was announced in Chicago this week by Maynard Krueger, University of Chicago economics professor who has been prominent in Socialist Party ranks and was that party's 1940 vice presidential candidate...
...New Deal...
...Applauding the suggestion that conflicting views on foreign policy be settled on a basis of "mutual trust" and in an atmosphere in which "no one's patriotism is questioned," Sen...
...Carl Hatch, New Mexico Democrat, and Joseph Ball, Minnesota Republican, issued a statement urging the State Department to submit to Congress an outline of plans for the immediate formation of a United Nations council to carry out the postwar pledges of the Moscow conference...
...Some thought at first that the statement contained implied criticism of the Roosevelt Administration for seizing the railroads just when a settlement seemed imminent, but an examination of the entire text showed that it was intended to be a savage attack on organized labor...
...wartime marriages and by prolonged separations, statisticians of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company predicted last week...
...And the result is, Mr...
...Officials of Esquire announced they would appeal Walker's ruling to the federal courts...
...Goebbels with great, propaganda ammunition to discourage elements in the Balkans from revolting...
...Divorces...
...Irons & Tubs...
...This matter was bungled by the Administration, as was the recent coal miners' controversy...
...The identity of the official became known shortly after the original story appeared when the United Press quoted two separate reports which agreed that Gen...
...The cure was a long, long process, but^ after a while, the patient was cured of his internal ills...
...Bert Andrews of the New York Herald-Tribune asked if he were preparing to run for a fourth term...
...Sen...
...Edwin C. Johnson, Colorado Democrat, contended that *'the responsibility for seizure of the railroads must be placed squarely where it belongs—on the shoulders of the Administration...
...The President's theory of what happened to the New Deal, and when it happened, was hotly disputed in many quarters...
...Win-the-War," to take care of this fellow who had been in this bad accident...
...The President told Perkins to put on a dunce cap and go stand in the corner...
...Burton K. Wheeler, Montana Democrat, also spoke out for cooperative efforts...
...A report on the brand-new wonder drug asserts that it is prepared from soil bacteria by a relatively simple process and owes its healing powers to the same general principle as penicillin...
...Hatch and Ball said that such action would force a showdown on foreign policy by getting "down to cases...
...A 'Me, Too' From The White House Even more astonishing, perhaps, than Marshall's statement was the disclosure by the White House that President Roosevelt "seemed to be thinking along the same lines...
...British railroad officials are puzzled by the theft each month of 10,000 light bulbs...
...That's a grand word to use...
...He had gotten into a pretty bad smash-up...
...ing that production records of American industry are "incontrovertible testimonials of labor's patriotic devotion and achievements...
...Green said there never was the faintest prospect of an actual rail strike...
...Walker's ruling does not bar Esquire from the mails, but does deprive it of the $500,-000-a-year subsidy provided by the second-class mailing permit...
...This amazing statement flabbergasted many a Washington observer...
...He has begun to strike back—on the offensive...
...The President had devoted most of the press conference to a long allegory in which he sought to justify his abandonment of the New Deal and his adoption of "Win the War" as his Administration's new slogan...
...Roosevelt said, that the pa- . tient is back on his feet...
...One of the strongest attacks appeared in the United Mine Workers Journal, official organ of the John L. Lewis group, which said that the New Deal died 6V2 years ago, during the Little Steel strikes, when labor leaders learned that the President feared the growth of organized labor...
...After calling the newsmen together, Marshall is supposed to have talked to them in language stronger "than any of the reporters had ever heard from America's leading general," and to have demanded that his name be withheld in news stories carrying his astonishing remarks...
...Sales...
...Roosevelt boast of the achievements of his Administration...
...La Follette declared, add...
...Officers of the new group included a large number of CIO officials...
...Mystery...
...The current divorce rate of one in five will be increased because of the large number of hasty...
...Old Dr...
...Francis Heisler, Chicago attorney who was elected chairman of the city unit, said the American Commonwealth Party is not opposed to the capitalist system so long as the system "does not foment wars, and can find a solution for ever-recurring unemployment...
...Even before penicillin, the miracle drug, reaches the market, it has a strong rival in gramaci-din, according to University of California medical scientists...
...The Journal denounced the President's "audacity in adopting as a new political slogan the one thing which all Americans are agreed upon—'Win the War.'" t Foreign Policy Discussed Although Congress was not in session during the past week, a number of leading Senators spoke out on the need for early action in shaping an American foreign policy which would guide the nation in cooperating with other countries in writing the peace...
...Americans bought $63,000,000,000 worth of retail goods during 1943, an all-time record, and paid about one-third more for the stuff than they would have in peace years, the U. S. Department of Commerce reported last week...
...He has given up his crutches...
...I hereby charge that the responsibility for the prolongation of these disputes rests entirely upon bungling, fumbling, and incompetent handling by government officials and agencies...
...Whether the word was "grand" or not, correspondents could not help remembering the 1940 incident as they trooped out of the President's office last week...
...Gen...
...Ban...
...Marshall apparently sought to create the impression that labor disturbances in the United States had stiffened morale not only in Germany, but in Balkan countries as well, and had provided Dr...
...But he> isn't wholly well yet, and he won't be until he wins the war...
...Last week, at another press conference, correspondents heard Mr...
...The President's Allegory Here's how the allegory went: The New Deal came into existence in 1932 because there was an awfully sick patient, the United States, suffering from severe internal ailments...
...One of the sharpest of all the indignant replies which greeted Marshall's outburst came from William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor, who characterized the charges as "irrational, uninformed, and inflammatory...
...Robert M. La Follette, Jr., Wisconsin Progressive, demanded that the high military official be compelled to reveal his identity and "to back up his charges or recant publicly...
...Marshall's comments were reportedly provoked by the 'threats' of a railroad and steel strike...
...Curiously enough, while Marshall was resorting to his strange explanation of why Nazi morale might have stiffened—if it has stiffened—dispatches from Berne, Switzerland, reported that whatever boost there may have been in Nazi morale during the past few months was the result of the slowing down of the Allied advance in Italy and the German recovery of the Dodecanese Islands in the Aegean Sea—¦ two purely military developments for which neither labor nor any other part of the civilian economy could have had the slightest responsibility...
...Robert M. La Follette, Jr., Wisconsin Progressive, asserted that the Administration might aveit a bitter Senate debate over postwar treaties "by taking Congress into its confidence...
...La Follette said: "Every one recognizes that we must cooperate in the future with other nations, but it must be on a basis under which United States interests are not subordinated to those of other countries...
...The President replied: "Oh, now, we are not talking about things like that now...
...So a doctor was summoned—"Dr...
...You are getting picayune...
...Walker revoked the second class mailing privileges on the ground that the magazine failed to disseminate information "of a public character or devoted to literature, the science, arts, or some special industry...
...The WPB last week relaxed war restrictions and authorized the construction of two million electric irons and 50,000 cast iron bathtubs during 1944...
...There were certain specific remedies given the patient, the President said, and here he listed most of the major enactments of the New Deal and challenged his critics to tell which "remedies" they would have omitted...
...George C. Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, was responsible for the statement...
...A "high military official," whose identity was concealed at first, summoned a select group of two dozen news and radio reporters to an "off-the-record" session and told them that government "seizure" of the railroads had given the Germans a "psychological lift" that would prolong the war in Europe many months and increase ultimate casualties by hundreds of thousands...
...The unidentified spokesman should have the courage and common decency to step forward voluntarily and identify himself," Sen...
...Described as cheaper and easier to produce than penicillin, gramacidin was reported to be more than 1,000 times as active in germ killing as the sulfonamide drugs...
...Rival...
...The bulbs filched from railroad cars cannot be used in homes, as they operate on 20 to 24 volts...
Vol. 8 • January 1944 • No. 2
