THE WEEK IN REVIEW
THE WEEK IN REVIEW ADRESS REHEARSAL of the momentous foreign policy debates to come occupied the Senate this week as it engaged in a bitter fight over President Roosevelt's appointments to the...
...James C. Dunn, reactionary career diplomat and socialite, named Assistant Secretary...
...A Senate committee inquiry found last week that the cigarette shortage is due to a shortage in cigarettes...
...Burton K. Wheeler, Montana Democrat, long an acid critic of the Administration, defended the President's right to make his own appointments, even if he decides on "incompetents" like Archibald MacLeish...
...Why should the old do all the dancing and the young pay the piper...
...Radcliffe Connally Kilgore Russell 'Downey Lucas Stewart Eastland Matoney Thomas (Okla.V Ellender Maybank Tunnell George McCarran Walsh Gerry McClellan Wheeler REPUBLICANS—20 Austin Danaher Smith Brewster Davis Taft Brooks Hawkes Weeks Buck Jenner Wherry Burton Millikin White Butler Revereomb Willis Cordon Robertson FDR...
...Nelson Rockefeller, member of the Standard Oil family and Co-ordinator of Inter-American Affairs, named Assistant Secretary...
...The resolution contended that the nominees "considered altogether" did not "reflect the attitude and point of view of the Senate with respect to the foreign policy of the United States...
...The War Department announced last week that the rapidly rising casualty rate on the Western Front had made it necessary to call on Selective Service to raise its draft quota for January and February by 40,000...
...Noting this as another step in the Administration appeasement of reactionaries, progressives wondered how far the President would go in scuttling reforms to win support for a world police force...
...Archibald MacLeish, poet and Librarian of the Library of Congress, named Assistant Secretary...
...Robert M. La Follette, Jr., Wisconsin Progressive, led the fight against the reactionary clique appointed by the President...
...Earnest A. Hooton, last week recommended that men over 45 be drafted to handle postwar military occupation and the young men be brought home to raise families...
...George Aiken, Vermont Republican, who, with Sen...
...was passed to freeze the social security tax at one per cent...
...Appointed to the REA post in 1939, Slattery has been in trouble with the Administration because of his resistance to alleged efforts to use REA for political purposes...
...THE WEEK IN REVIEW ADRESS REHEARSAL of the momentous foreign policy debates to come occupied the Senate this week as it engaged in a bitter fight over President Roosevelt's appointments to the reorganized State Department...
...A recent Senate investigation of the row resulted in a recommendation that REA again be made an independent agency...
...There can be no doubt of the feelings of the common people of England...
...Aiken charged on the floor that New Dealers were employing "shop worn arguments" against the proposal and were taking their stand "with the utilities," who opposed the power features of the measure...
...Bennett Clark, Missouri Democrat, who sought to show MacLeish's disqualifications by reading from some of the poetry he has written and by passing judgment on its literary value...
...Slattery, around whom a spirited battle has raged for the last two years, submitted his resignation to the President but warned that he was going "to carry his fight to the public...
...There probably won't be any globe-trotting for two years after the war ends, travel officials predicted last week, explaining that unprecedented devastation would render travel extremely difficult...
...Johnson (Colo...
...Plea...
...White House efforts to oust Harry Slattery Rural Electrification Administrator, finally succeeded last week...
...Although the amendment had the support of President Roosevelt, many of the Administration's strongest backers in the Senate opposed it...
...If we do not end Winston, Winston will end us...
...he asked...
...A Rich Man's Club' The State Department appointments submitted to the Senate would, according to charges hurled by progressive forces, make a "rich man's club" of the Department...
...Although Democratic Senators raised many unofficial objections to Clayton's business connections and policies, it was left to Sen...
...The Senate rang with repeated demands that the President speak up and take Congress and the country into his confidence...
...Thomas E. Dewey as titular leader of the Party...
...Lawrence project was being blocked by the same interests which are developing their own private power system with Government money...
...Supply cannot meet the demand, was the concensus, with prospects that worse days lie ahead...
...Thus for the fourth time and against the advice of experts, who predict that such action is seriously endangering the soundness of the whole social security program, the provisions of the act which would have automatically raised the rate from one to two per cent for both employes and employers have been set aside...
...Hooton...
...Holmes, 15 to 4; Rockefeller, 12 to 7; Dunn, 13 to 5. Previous to the balloting, however, a resolution was offered by the four liberal Senators calling on the President to reconsider the appointments...
...Lawrence Seaway proposal, which would open America's Great Lakes area to sea-going shipping and which has been in and out of Congress for more than, a decade, suffered another defeat this week when the Senate refused to include it in a $500,000,000 Rivers and Harbor bill...
...Harvard University's famed anthropologist, Dr...
...In his swan song to the House of Representatives last week, Rep...
...All six were recommended for appointment by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after a week of investigation into the qualifications of the candidates, following a Senate revolt last week which sent the panel back for further inquiry...
...He accused Dewey of "stupid and colossal" blunders...
...Although he expressed his disapproval of the Congressional action, the President signed the bill...
...The present would-be British fuehrer has served his purpose and it is high time that he retired upon his laurels before we forget the debt we owe him," Wells declared in an article in the London Weekly Tribune...
...Hamilton Fish, New York Republican, who was defeated for re-election this November, pleaded with Republicans to discard Gov...
...The measure was defeated 12 to 4, drawing only the votes of its sponsors...
...Four leading liberals, Sens...
...The debate on the appointments often took the form of debate on the Administration's foreign policies— or lack of them...
...By overwhelming votes in both houses legislation...
...Julius Holmes, a man of indifferent political views and now deputy chief of staff for civil affairs on the staff of Gen...
...At the conclusion of the hearings there was a flurry of confused balloting in which there was some uncertainty whether MacLeish's appointment would be recommended to the Senate...
...Claude Pepper, Florida, James Murray, Montana, and Joseph Guffey, Pennsylvania, all Democrats, and Sen...
...Will Clayton, millionaire Texas reactionary and former director of surplus property disposal, named Assistant Secretary...
...Here is the vote by which the Senate rejected Aiken's amendment: For the Seaway Amendment DEMOCRATS—8 Hayden' Pepper Truman Hill Reynolds Wagner Murray Thomas (Utah) REPUBLICANS—16 Aiken Holman Shipstead Ball Johnson (Calif...
...Eisenhower...
...Draft...
...Robert M. La Follette, Jr., to direct searching cross examination at the Tory-minded multi-millionaire on the practices and policies of his far-flung cotton empire...
...Pepper, a warm supporter of the Administration, vigorously fought the Roosevelt appointments, while Sen...
...Questioning of MacLeish, although lengthy, was of little importance...
...Waterway Plan Beaten The St...
...Thomas (Idaho) Bushfield Langer Vandenberg Capper Nye Wiley Ferguson Reed Wilson Gurney PROGRESSIVES—1 La Follette Against the Seaway Amendment DEMOCRATS—36 Bailey Gillette McFarland Bilbo Green McKellar Byrd...
...La Follette Grills Clayton The action of the committee followed a week of turbulent activity in weighing and voting on the qualifications of the Administration appointees...
...Of the six names submitted for confirmation, Clayton and MacLeish, representing the extreme right and left wings of what Secretary of State Edward Stettinius called his "team," were subjected to the most intense inquiries...
...It was conducted by Sen...
...Brig...
...We are dealing here with some of the most ruthless and powerful economic interests that have ever sought to intervene in the concerns of any government and to influence its domestic and international policies," he said...
...It has lost nothing from the standpoint of biological survival and not much from an economic standpoint...
...The sudden increase was also due to the failure of the Department to ask for enough draftees before November to meet the estimated requirements...
...Cigarettes...
...Consulting confidential documents obtained from key Government agencies, La Follette grilled Clayton at length on the business relations of his company with Germany and Japan and their satellites both before and after Pearl Harbor...
...Here are the men the Administration proposes to give far-ranging power in foreign relations: Joseph C. Grew, former ambassador to Japan and career diplomat, named Under Secretary of State...
...The amendment providing for the Seaway development was introduced by Sen...
...The final tally, however, disclosed that all appointees received committee approval...
...There were repeated warnings that many Senators, dismayed by the trend of affairs in Europe, were cooling off toward the Dumbarton Oaks security proposal, contending that the United States must not commit itself in advance to enforce an imperial grab for land, wealth, and power...
...In a blistering attack on the utilities and the American Aluminum Company, Aiken declared that the St...
...Signs Freeze With the nation's attention focussed on the uproar set-off by the State Department reorganization, Congress and the President, almost unnoticed, took action on a measure that may have far reaching effects on the soundness of the Federal Social Security system...
...The vote was as follows : Grew, 15 to 4; Clayton, 11 to 7; MacLeish, 11 to 10...
...Travel...
...Names And Notes In The News Quits...
...Must Go.' H. G. Wells, one of Britain's best known authors, last week called for the retirement of Prime Minister Churchill...
...Only eight Democratic votes were cast for it as compared to 16 Republican votes and one Progressive...
...Calling on Churchill "to go" and to take with him "all the royalties in the world," Wells said: "In the midst of a still uncertain war, this ineffable Prime Minister of ours has precipitated us into the class war—and on the wrong side...
...If a man of 50 falls in battle—or in trying to train for it— the country has only lost about one-sixth of a life, and not the best sixth at that...
...Guffey Mead Chandler Hall O'Daniel Chavez Hatch Overton Clark (Mo...
...At one stage of the questioning La Follette wrung from Clayton an admission that he had been informed that some of his company's subsidiaries in South America were employing Axis sympathizers in key positions...
...Robert M. La Follette, Jr., led the fight for its adoption...
...Charging that Secretary of Agriculture Claude Wickard, under whose Department REA is administered, had illegally replaced him as actual administrator, Slattery declared that the situation within REA had become "indefensible and increasingly intolerable...
Vol. 8 • December 1944 • No. 52
