OCR Text |
Show Washington Comment By the middle of last week the ; rankest amateur could have fore-j fore-j told the pa.-sage of the lend-lease : bill by two unvarying signs: Con-' Con-' gressional mail had fallen off and ', the senate had gone into night j sessions! The senate just hasn't I the taste for night sessions. It ! loves to dilly-dally during day-1 day-1 time hours, but when niyht falls i it wants to go home or to a ' party. The falling-ofT of the del-I del-I uge of mail signifies that consti- tuents have had their say on any ! given bill, and, impatient with : their pets, are sitting back, grimly grim-ly waiting for action, j It is a curious phenomenon that the passage of controversial mea-I mea-I sures- is generally accompanied in Washington by plenty of "wea-j "wea-j ther". Though it may prove an unhappy analogy, old-timers re-i re-i call that Woodrow Wilson asked congress for a declaration of war against Germany in 1917 during a torrential rainstorm a n d the lend-lease bill went through on Saturday night to the accompaniment accompani-ment of the worst snowstorm Washington has experienced since February of 1899; in fact, the worst March snowstorm the city has ever experienced. The previous pre-vious record was held by the famous fa-mous Taft inaugural blizzard away back in 1909. Washington doesn't react easily" to snow; it invariably in-variably catches us unprepared and traffic is soon brought to a standstill. We are only, at this writing, beginning to dig ourselves our-selves out, which isn't too good a CCcntinued or. last page) M M W ashington Comment (Continued from first page) commentary on the city fathers, or whatever one may call this nebulous body which guides the destinies of the nation's capital. However, one thing which neither snow, nor rain, nor sleet could dampen was the supervised entertainment for the army lads in our midst on Saturday night, and the first of the army post dances went through according to schedule, with our pretty "draft-ettes" "draft-ettes" in there, doing their bit. The "draftettes", in case you haven't guess.-a, are young iades I of unimpeachable reputation all employed in Uncle Sam's government govern-ment departments, who have gallantly gal-lantly voluntiicTetl their services to ko?p draftees from being homesick. home-sick. The army called for volunteers volun-teers a few weeks ago, stipulating that tbey must be from federal agencies, and the army got 'em, by gosh! Hundreds and hundreds of them! The idea is practically a matrimonial bid to Washington girls who suffer from our five-girls-to-everv-man ratio. More and more girls are pouring pour-ing into the city every day, too; looking for jobs in defense agencies agen-cies of course. The war department depart-ment is hiring around 50 new clerks a day all under civil service ser-vice as yet, so the boom employment employ-ment days of World war No. 1 have not been topped. Approximately Approxi-mately 394,000 employee are to be added to the fed?ral government govern-ment during this fiscal year and, right here in Washington it is estimated that the population will j be increased about 200,000. The civil service commission has ask- ed for an additional $725,000 to ! aid it in investigating new em-j em-j ployes. It now has a staff of 250 j investigators but will need many ; more in its effort to weed out fifth columnists, or persons with j suspicious backgrounds, or subversive sub-versive sympathies. The civil ser-vio? ser-vio? commission spends a lot. Its 1941 appropriation was 54,975,000 j and it received $3,150,000 from t the president's emergency fund j and still it n;eds that extra $725,-! $725,-! 000! Among the outstanding events j of last week, we find Mr. Roose- velt a little grayer, a little more wrinkled of brow, but with his l customary air of confidence I tackling his ninth year in the I White House, with eight monien-, monien-, tous years behind him. Three cabinet members, Hull, Ickes, and j Perkins the sole survivors of tbe I cabinet of March 1933 began i th?ir ninth year in the official 'family. On March 17, Mr. Roosevelt Roose-velt plans his annual spring cruise j in the Gulf of Mexico. Latest Republican news is that ' Representative Joe Martin will j positively submit his resignation ! as chairman of the Republican ! national committee, but, just as i positively, the committee will refuse re-fuse to accept it and he will be ! prevailed upon to remain at his I post. Addressing 200 high school boys and girls on Sunday night, . Representative Martin said, of his j resignation: "I hope that it is accepted!" ac-cepted!" , |