WASHINGTON CALLING
Washington Calling... Tne War Department, under aging Secretary Henry L. Stimson and able Undi i t>e<.rotary Robert Patterson and their coterie of brass hats, rules the roost m Washington. Its...
...The result is that the exact form in which the bill will go to the House still is uncertain and a report may be delayed for several weeks...
...Said the Tribune, a liberal-leftish journal: "What actually happened was that at the meeting of the Allied Foreign Secretaries some one proposed Apr...
...25, as that was his birthday...
...Hence, it is preparing to endorse, cautiously, of course, a program for reconversion which the Committee for Economic Development will bring out...
...Sen...
...The hard-plugging caterpillar that did such a splendid job exposing scandals on the home front has turned into a social butterfly since his elevation to the Vice Presidency...
...TRUMAN'S BEST FRIENDS ARE TALKING Even Vice President Harry Truman's best friends around Washington are wondering what's happened to the plain, homespun boy who'came out here from Missouri to make a great name for himself as head of the Senate War Investigating Committee...
...It is too early to judge whether this new playboy role has influenced his political thinking, but trends have appeared that alarm his friends...
...Kenneth McKellar, hard-boiled and hard-bitten Tennessee Tory, has been conducting a bitter feud against his home-state newspaper publisher, Silliman Evans, who runs the Nashville Tennessean...
...McKellar and Ed Crump, the political boss of Memphis, have accused Evans of acquiring the Tennessean through political pull and skulduggery...
...P.S...
...Plants for making the mortars won't be built for 6 months, and 30,000 workers will be needed at that time...
...can, first to prevent sending drafted youth into battle Nbefore 19 and then before 18 years 6 months, were defeated by votes of 6 to 3. Revercomb has announced he will carry the fight to the floor...
...1 as the date for the San Francisco conference...
...Uproar Over 18-Year Olds FROM talking to a number of Senators, this correspondent found that the sending of 18-year-olds into battle with 15 to 17 weeks training has brought more protests from mothers over the country than any one other thing in many months...
...Elmer Thomas, Oklahoma Democrat, chairman of the appropriations subcommittee on Army affairs, said that he has received more protests about this than any other one thing in months and that when the Army appropriation is before Ms sub-committee he will go into it...
...You've got to have a program of your own or the Republican Party is washed up," they told Brownell...
...It was objected that this would not give sufficient time for preparation...
...Democrats are frankly worried that his hob-nobbing with wealthy socialites, his obvious enjoyment of the company of celebrities (he was recently photographed at a piano on which screen siren Lauren Becall was langorously draped) will prove a handicap if he is called upon to assume more responsible duties than those he now has...
...George Norris...
...They know his Wall Street connections would be a liability, but they think this might be balanced by his record as head of the Navy...
...This was unanimously agreed upon, and millions of misled people believed it meant Russia and Japan would soon be at war...
...William Benton, vice chairman of the University of Chicago and vice chairman of the Committee for Economic Development, is in line to become Henry Wallace's Undersecretary of Commerce...
...Some Administration backers are becoming increasingly indignant over Secretary of the Interior Ickes' attitude in the regional authorities controversy...
...He has not said what he will do...
...This is how a manpower shortage begins: The Army comes to the conclusion, say, that it needs a lot more mortars...
...In the silence that ensued, a leading Foreign Office official jocularly suggested making it Apr...
...It was Milligan's hardhitting campaign that broke the Pendergast gang in that state...
...Robert Taft, Ohio Republican, who first raised the 18-year-old matter recently, said he had been studying whether or not to attempt to legislate...
...He stuck a knife deep into the plans for a Missouri Valley Authority when he sent it to the unfriendly Commerce Committee for hearings...
...The line-up in the House Banking and Currency Committee is still uncertain...
...Rumors are that Marshal Stalin is not sending the "varsity"—Foreign Commissar Molotov and associates—partly as a rebuke to Britain for the second-string military men dispatched to Moscow in 1939 just before the signing of the Soviet-Nazi pact, and partly because the Kremlin is cooling off somewhat toward the idea of collective security...
...George Aiken, Vermont, and Wayne Morse, Oregon, told Brownell the other day that mere opposition to New Deal proposals was no longer enough...
...Revercomb was urged to abandon amendments and bring in a separate bill...
...Guided by a bit of winking from the White House and No...
...Heard Over The Party Line Washington hears that both President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill are burned up over the "second team" which Russia is sending to the San Francisco conference of the United Nations...
...THE REAL MEANING OF APRIL 25 Newspaper columnists and radio commentators have passed off reams of learned dissertations on the significance of Apr...
...Chapman Revercomb, West Virginia Republi...
...SPINNING THE POLITICAL WHEEL Washington hears much of a big shakeup in Republican Party ranks...
...See how it works...
...Elbert Thomas, Utah Democrat, chairman, conceded that the Committee vote did not represent sentiment of members on the matter...
...Forrestal's appearances at Iwo Jima and other perilous spots (complete with newsreel photographers and radio microphones) have registered a favorable impression, especially as contrasted with many home-front administrators in safe, comfortable berths...
...Progressive Republican Sen...
...On Tuesday morning the brass hats are already screaming about a manpower shortage for mortar production—a shortage of 30,000 workers...
...This, of course, 'tills all the autonomous features which have worked out so well in the TVA...
...The War Department has also throttled every move for intelligent planning for reconversion because it is fearful that such discussion might interfere with its plan for conscription of labor...
...He indicated that he probably would come to the belief that it would be futile to attempt to attach amendments to the draft bill...
...Dwight Green of Illinois agrees with the need of liberalizing the GOP and is currently shopping around for progressive causes and moving farther away from his old cronies in preparation for seeking the GOP Presidential nomination in 1948...
...The chances are that the Committee may demand some revision of the agreement, but several Republicans have not yet committed themselves...
...25, as he desired...
...25 is the day after the "deadline" for renewal of the Russo-Japanese non-aggression pact...
...25 as the date on which the United Nations will gather at San Francisco...
...Some Democrats are looking over Secretary of the Navy Forrestal as a possible 1948 Presidential candidate...
...In a recent speech in the historic Senate chamber, McKellar said: "If I were describing Evans, I would say he is a cross between a jumping bobtailed jerboa and a drunken alley cat with a large admixture of mangy and flea-bitten dog thrown in...
...This correspondent doesn't know much about the merits of the controversy, but only wants here to report the kind of language McKellar can use on the floor of the Senate when he's riled up...
...Ickes says he favors regional river authorities, but wants them in the Interior Department...
...The Army doesn't seem to realize that it is free American labor which has outproduced the rest of the world or that civilians feel at least as deeply about the war and the need for supplies as do the brass hats...
...The boys from Springfield, 111., report that Gov...
...And more recently he joined the drive to oust Maurice Milligan as U. S. District Attorney of the Western District of Missouri...
...Take the so-called manpower "shortage" and the demand for conscription of labor as an example...
...Sen...
...Recently, however, the Army has become worried that it may have swung the pendulum too far and may be blamed for the lack of natural planning...
...Spraying The Senate With Sulphurous Adjectives Sen...
...If he should die and appear at the gates of Hades, I am quite sure the devil would not let him in if he knew about his foul, filthy, lousy, lying, and corrupt record in the Nashville Tennessean...
...The Tennessean has been fighting the poll-tax...
...However, there is general talk that efforts may be made to attach amendments...
...10 Downing Street, London, most of the masterminds hailed the date as meaning that Soviet Russia would soon be in the war against Japan because Apr...
...The book was written during Norris' last few months with the help of an old friend, Jimmy Lawrence of the Lincoln, Nebr., Star, . . . Field Marshal Sir Henry Maitland Wilson, new British boss here in Washington, has rented a luxurious mansion far up the Potomac above Chain Bridge...
...When production schedules are met, the military always force...
...On Monday it announces a huge increase in mortar production...
...Showdown On Bretton Woods Pact A check-up on the Bretton Woods situation in the House discloses the following: House Administration leaders believe they can win approval of legislation to carry out the Bretton Woods monetary agreement, but they concede that they face a stiff fight...
...Insiders, whose confidential reports show no need for conscription of manpower, insist there is no shortage of any war material on any front...
...This the Army has confessed when pressed by those who know the facts, but it continues its demand for a labor draft...
...Speaking of Norris, Washington is waiting for the late Senator's autobiography, Fighting Liberal, to be published later this month...
...He made the plea that it was necessary to have the Draft Act extended promptly and said that uncertainty should not be caused by a fight on amendments...
...One informed official who has had a great deal of first hand experience put it this way the other day: "The so-called manpower crisis is nothing more than another drive to ¦whip up the civilians so that they will take the war more seriously...
...Both because of signs of opposition and the need for time for members to digest the world bank and rehabilitation proposals, the House leaders informed Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau that it would be impossible to get the bill through before the San Francisco conference which opens Apr...
...Poli-ticos wonder if Sir Henry will get the gas for this long junket each day and whether it will be "military necessity...
...ftot all New Dealers have forgotten that Ickes once tried to grab TVA itself for his Department, but was blocked by the late Sen...
...the schedules still higher, so that trying to satisfy their manpower needs is akin to Alice who had to run so fast to stay in the same place...
...When the Senate Military Affairs Committee reported out the bill for extension of the Selective Service Act, which had been passed by the House, amendments by Sen...
...Its word is law on issues which range far afield from the conduct of the war, and it cracks down, sometimes arrogantly and often with President Roosevelt's tacit approval, on just about every civilian agency which dares to do some independent thinking and planning...
...The real reason has now been published by the London Tribune, but is being suppressed in the press and on the radio—partly, of course, because their "experts" would become the laughing stock of the nation...
...Chairman Herbert Brownell is reported by insiders to be preparing a drastic new GOP program for the entire nation...
...His only reason was that Milligan "has been there long enough and appointive offices should be passed around...
Vol. 9 • April 1945 • No. 15
