OCR Text |
Show B rue karts Washington Digest Intelligent Political Opposition Results in Better Government Republican Party Is Beginning to Realize This Fact And Has Started a Move to Put Its House in Order. w ... an. &- : A - ' ... 44 1 vi $ k g ) i 9 Si . mt4 - y X : - K I : f 4 - 4 i' f: - v i V. a i I - f (l fw f f- - f.,- - i ocratic majority, the program of reBy WILLIAM BRUCKART WNU Service, National Press vived party activity will work. If, for example, the Democrats should mrnmmWM Bldg., Washington, D. C. control the house, there will be that WASHINGTON. Early in Mr. which Mr. Roosevelts first term as President, "intelligent opposition as necessary to Farley suggested Democratic Chairman Parley voiced good government; if, on the other a thought that his party, then prehand. Republicans win control of the ponderantly in control of the machinhouse, there will be ery of government, would be much men In the posts of leadership that better off if the opposition was are represented by chairmanships of stronger. Later, he amplified that important committees. thought with a statement to the This job, of course, is attributable general effect that intelligent oppodirectly to the brains and the politsition always made for good governical capacity of one man. He is ment. Joe Martin of The thing that Mr. Farley feared Representative leader of Massachusetts, Republican was that the overwhelming Demothe house. It has taken him quite cratic strength in the house and sen- awhile to accomplish the end that ate would run away with itself is now visible, because for some would get out of hand. That, hapthe months there were not enough ReAlthough many other pictures have appeared since that day, none tells more clearly than the aboveGerpened. Not exactly in the way, perpublicans in the house to form a which the Belgians welcomed the first appearance of British troops to combat the second with enthusiasm Mr. that had haps, Farley suggested, bucket brigade. But the fact reman invasion of their country in a quarter of a century.This picture was among the very first radioed on that but the majority did get out of mains that has laid his historic Martin Mr. day. hand to the extent that congress bewell, and I think the Washingcame known for at least six years plans ton writers almost without exception as a rubber stamp. Almost any sort him credit for a job well done. of legislation that was conceived give within the administration became Veteran Party Workers 'must legislation. The result was, Should Get Preference of course, that there has been a pile Back of these efforts of Mr. Marof laws passed and a good many of tin, however way back in the hinthem are so impossible and so unof Republisound that they will rise to haunt the terland, the prospects can or this partial victory, victory, political party that sponsored them fall, have brought out the usual as time goes on. number of seekers after the spoils this discussion whpn the sense of smell tells of posParadoxically, about lfr. Farley's views and the sible pie counter membership. Now, developments that followed is only a I dont care' whom voters may seprelude to some observations and re- lect but, being a believer in party ports of what is going on within the responsibility for governmental adRepublican party these days. The ministration, I always have felt facts that have come from the situathose fellows who have done the work tion of the last six or eight years in bad times, politically, should be allowed to have more voice in party affairs than the type when the harvest is to be reaped. To state a specific case as an illustration of many such instances, that have been reported in primaries, let me refer to an Indiana contest. Rep. Charles Halleck of Indr-"TV ianas second district had opposi's I tion for renomination. It is to be . assumed that his rival was a capable young man, but the thing struck me as rather sour because Halleck ' Jr f- ts. had fought through the days when a house in the Republican member could count on being nothing more . than a, piping voice in the wilderM ness. But when the prospects were such that many looked upon a house The family of Fred C. Bucholz, a Los Angeles, Calif., war veteran, gives thanks for the action of Presiseat as a plum, up jumps opposition dent Roosevelt in signing his name to a document which kept the family together. The bill which the President to a man who has learned much signed was introduced in congress by the American Legion, and legalized the entry of Mrs. Bucholz into the about handling legislation and who e Mrs. Bucholz was about to be separated from her famStates for permanent residence. Canadian-bor- n will a that in stands give, 1 position ' ' F f , him a strong say-s- o about national United ily deportation proceedings. by r ' politics in event the house is controlled by his party after election. REP. JOSEPH MART IS -lTo have upset Halleck in the priis getting credit for a job t veil mary would have gone entirely condone. trary to good politics. Mr. Farleys assertion applies again. In event of shows whqt things are engendered victory for Republicans, a man that ..Jjy success or prospects of success. is capable and informed is available Republican wheelhorses tell me to help in party leadership; in event with great enthusiasm that this is of. continued control by the Democertain to be a Republican year. crats, the needed intelligent oppo' The voters will determine the an. is provided. Mr. Halleck sition swer next November, of course, but won his primary battle and it is a it is only a reporting job to repeat tribute to his district's voters as K that the Republican leadership is ex- well as to him that he was victorious. i- A v i , j' ? pecting to control the house of repre- G.O.P. Presidential 3,:;.rc Aspirants sentatives after January 1, 1041. It sr . is only a joh of reporting to say also Are Using Wrong Tactics that w,ithin. the Republican party On the other hand, it begins to there are some factions that are appear that supporters of some of IS , snarling and baring their teeth at the candidates for the Republican T 4. each other because each side thinks presidential nomination are not tp will run' the show for their party be commended in the same fashion. the next' four years. Supporters of the three best known candidates Taft, Dewey and Home Committee Lists , are using some tactics , Are Being Renovated that do not make for und govern4 1 ; , One of the things that is happenment. That is to say, there are -v ' v. , . . aV v some tilings going on within the ing within the; Republican leadership,: however, displays none of the ranks of each candidates backers ' vx signs of the scrap for nominations that likely will rise up one of these " . y ' or places of control. It reflects probdays and smear somebody with a beautiful coat of tar. ably as nearly the true type of political intelligence as Mr. Farley had As these lines are written, it is Eleklro, the mechanical man, and in mind. scarcely a month until the RepubliAn animal that makes a habit of spring fever, regardless of the Sparko, the mechanical dog, get toIn the house of representatives cans hold their convention at Philagether in New York, where they season. Is the sloth, world's laziest animal. Here one of them "speeds these days, plans are going forward delphia. Chairman Haiiilton of the Its captor, A. VV. Anderson, who returned recently to are on display at the fair. Sparko a held up by pole for renovation of Republican lists national committee has called for barks, wags his tail and sits up. the United States from Nicaragua with two dozen of the on house committees.'- There have the delegates from the several Elcktro is equally versatile. creatures in his charge. serve to as made who members are states beemmany changes, usually of the convention committee on resosingly and without apparent relation to each other. But the shifts lutions to get together ahead of have been going on for several time. He has asked them to start months and they have attracted work so that the party platform will little attention, generally. Vet, they not be a clapboard housle through make a pattern. The pattern obvi- which the winds 6f opposition ously is predicated upon a desire of charges can sift snow. But there i tire mainstays of the house Repubhas been objection to that. I regard &jr t licans to see the best men they it as a good move. On the 'other ' will to serve have placed where they hand, there are those politicians who are shooting at Mr. Hamilton about V I ..guide their, party policies. i 11 it and they are stirring up quite a f Now. it may be that that repre ' ' . 1 ; restink. Thcifl attitude simply sents the peak of optimism. The , I explanation given me, however, was flects a greedy desire to get in on that whether the Republicans con- the backbone at trol the house or whether, after next when there had been no hog killing , January, there still will be a Dem- - to speak, of fbr several years. From conversations I have hod with politicians who know from exPOLITICAL INTELLIGENCE perience I have a feeling that the also are going to have Democa o William Bruckart explains in in propwling .'intelligent on trouble that dispatch 4 ! SXH-.position" if there. should bo a Repubpoliticians Tealize that intelligent ! I i for good govopposition-makelican, victory. There is. the same ernment. Democratic Mr. Fargreed, ,t)ie same Conviction of great ley voiced this idea at the begincapacity, on the part of many men Gen. Paul Rollct, 71, "fightingest now in official position, flint constining' of the present 'administratiman in France, has requested acon',- Now the Republicans,, who ' tutes the bone- of contention among tooking at a pteture of Wendell Ytillkie, his favorite presidential tive war duty. Rollct was retired In btlfeve they will be in the saddle the Republicans. It looks like a heccandidate. Is Russell W. Davenport, who recently resigned his position 1937, after 4G years of service. He Is come next January, are reorganone year younger than Gen. Maxiine as editor of Fortune magazine in order to promote Willkie fur President. tic campaign, a year of ruffled izing their forces along more in-- , Si YVegand, allied army head in the of Southern the Commonwealth Willkie,' Utilities, some Irequentiy a when president perhaps, year tclhgent lines. Near East. has been mentioned as a Republican "dark horse. well known political heads will fall S. Legalized by President Johnny-come-late- -m V ll : 's.V v ' Slothful Ways Are Natural to Him ie Mechanical Mutt II 1 I ft 4 J vi'i' flJ,v -- S Van-denbe- w wux 'x v y r- - ;yv ' slow-movi- - Fightingcst Man He Boosts Willkie for G.O.P. Nomination .WW' C', : U C x . . f W IxV ' big-tim- e t f s -- featli-crs'nii- r . DANGERS PARADED YVashington, D. C. digest of those "thousands of drawn by the Presitelegrams speech on Hitdents lers latest blitzkrieg would be valuA Mothers Residence in U. IV. S. JOHNSON well-train- - HUGH H i ' GENERAL British Troops Hailed as Saviours of Belgium y able. Ninety per cent of them were ported by Secretary Early to approve and the other 10 per cent to An be from analysis would be valuable because, I cant see how you can approve a speech when you dont know what it means. I have discussed this speech with several informed people. They dont know what it means and I dont. From its condemnation of treacherous brutality of Hitler the approval should have been 100 per cent and also for its plea for unity in defense. This unity the President called our solution. But then he said: "Is this solution our solution permanent or safe if I it is solved for us alone? think not! re- "peace-at-any-pricer- s. ... What does that mean? It may seem a slight phrase to be quibbling about, but no utterance by a President of the United States on our future course in a world at war This one is a "slight phrase. wasnt Intended to be slight. It was coupled with an assertion that too many of us have been deceived by the "false teaching of geography into feeling safe, physically, ecofrom the nomically and socially, impacts of attacks on civilization elsewhere. Then followed statements that, from the point of view of conquest, Santiago, Chile, is closer to Europe than Alexander found Macedonia to be from Persia or than the distance Caesar traveled from Rome to Spain that is, four or five hours from Africa to South America as compared with four or five weeks it took the armies of Napoleon to go from Paris to Rome or Poland. I dont know what that means but it sounds like our frontier is in France." The statement identifying airplane timetables with the pace of conquering armies or from the point of view of conquest is utterly misleading almost as misleading as it would be to say that the speed of a race horse compares with that of a telegram. An airplane can go from Africa to South America in a few hours. But an army cant. It cant go at all if our navy and air force are efficient and afloat and not chasin the east Pacific. ing boogey-me- n This aspect of the speech was cryptic obscuration coupled with sensational and misleading terrorism. It creates an occasion to repeat the quotation from Lloyd Georges speech that upset Chamberlain. "The nation is ready as long as its leadership is right, as long as you say clearly what you are aiming at, as long as you give confidence to them that their leaders are doing their best for them. The President does the deliberate reverse of "saying clearly what he is aiming at His carefully guarded exterior seems to be full to the bursting point with some kind of interior content he doesnt often reveal but every time a new pressure comes, a little of it squirts out like "frontiers in France and quarantine the aggressors." The whole country is behind him at any cost or effort to prepare this country for defense of this continent. It is 90 per cent against any attempt at defending America by attacking in Europe or Asia with either men, money or materials. It would be a political as well as naval and- military catastrophe. For, even for the relative strategical ease of continental defense, Mr. Roosevelt has not prepared the mili-tar- y and naval weapons to make good his position and the whole of recent history proves that bluffing on a bobtail is suicide. FATS IN THE FIRE The fats in the fire and our navy is in Hawaii. Our miniature army is relatively equipped with bows and arrows. It is a pitiful Falstafllan We are quibbling Insufficiency. about the design of a rifle already adopted and in production after years of experiment It appears now that the navy has known the facts of its weakness against bombs from above, mines from below and secret foreign building programs for some time without admission before the crisis. Surely there was no ignorance in this government about the absolutely inefficient equipment of our army in almost everything needful for modern war and its own grotesque inadequacy. - ' Everybody is now squawking about our lack of tin and rubber and our failure of action in motorizing and mechanizing our army. This column has been squawking about it for five years. Seven years ago this writer had written into the Recovery act ample authority and appropriations to do all these things as a coir.blnation measure of re- employment, recovery and defense. That was the year Hitler started. It was tlie year that the adminis tration gave most of that $3,300,000, 000 to Hankins foi raking leaves. YVashington, Behind the Presidents speech fto the American Scientific conference was a very genuine worry over lie protection of the Western hemi D. Phere- - js n A th j vbe :M The President threw aside speech which had been prepared tor toe several days before, and during the ' tense hours just after Holland Belgium were invaded he dictate! new draft which emphasized the portance of unfr plus force, to protect these co,! nents. He even raised the question Whether the American nations coifld I. stand idly by while dictators ccq. quer the rest of the world. f Behind all this were some very careful studies which the President and his naval and military strategists have been making of Western (Irani hemisphere defense. It may sound like scare headlines, but it is no exaggeration to say A that to the strategists who take out Me, paper and pencil to figure on mi the U. S. A., Nazi activities in Norway, Denmark, Holland and ire aim Belgium have meant the very definite scrapping (for the first time la j'For iost our history) of George M t Washingtons Farewell Address j 3fpcd American isolation. Jirsiy Here is how the strategists figate !s tea it out. The keystone of American atee defense has been: 0j 1. A big navy in the Pacific. 2. Friendship with Great Britain, g Se which rules the waves of the 4i- - jms lantic. jj,a , Assuming that the British fleet ie, should disappear from the Atlantic, This the United States would then have se, , ' ;V if i. r i: x -- g 0 164-ye- ( to maintain two fleets one for ie jg fo Pacific and one for the AtlanticAnd it would take at least fuir years to build a new fleet for tje J Atlantic. g - yt r r( onc cess RIGHT ON FOREIGN FORECYST. cal No matter what they, may think .zkee of Roosevelts domestic, policies flr n m politics, some of his severest critics th give him credit for being absolutely mt f right on foreign strategy. ihis Prcitwo the ago years Exactly alon dent told his cabinet in categofle terms that he was convinced w!r,rI ' Jrja was inescapable in Europe, and that the results would be serious in the extreme for the democracies. i Last summer, also, he informed congressional leaders that war ws inevitable in the autumn and scoffed at for his warning. In view of the Presidents cegs? sistent record for ... accuracy things international, - his preset. views are very much worth record' e 3 i mg. By nature, Roosevelt is an But regarding the preset allied position he is not optimistic. In fact, he is inclined to think that the allies are to for a defeat, tot their situation is much more than the American public reI alizes. Naturally, the President is not expressing these views publicly. Aljo the they are subject to change. But the to is he close study giving the: Doctrine, the defense of American continent, and especialy to the possibility of enemy air bases in Iceland, Mexico, and around Panama, all indicate that !,! he is figuring on the distinct sibility of a crushing allied defeat. sefi-o- Mac-ro- e P' it, 1 f RED HERRING of the weapons of modep One f!en war is the red herring. Honor hp departed from warfare. The Na$s used subterfuge to get into Norway German aviators dressed in Duly w 1k uniforms to land In Holland. ( maneuvered in the Mediterranean to keep the British from sending ip ,,stji Mus-on many ships to Scandinavia. I lini was the red herring. ?,BS Therefore, it is not unreasonable wna ;ops to figure that if Germany ever Western the ed to land troops in the rW ,it hemisphere, Japan would beflee her jj send would herring, ward Hawaii. Probably she wo', ou not land in Hawaii, but merelyp' .(( neuver enough to keep the V. p- a pm fleet in the Pacific, prevent it f .:a protecting the Atlantic coast, At present only four cruisers, PllL u u - gi one small airplane carrier and a tie r guard decrepit destroyers, 1J lantic. Before the Pacific fleet c return through Panama to the At the lantic, Germany could land all W Trinidad, j".ch in troops she wanted Puerto Rico, or the northern tip jit f Nr South America. that CW- - by Military minds calculate landed p Whj man troops even could be at BS which has, Newfoundland, wood, one of the best airports p the world. And from Botwood, W could land in Maine about as i as U. S. forces could concentrate against them. like! Germany, however, is not ? , to bother with New England. a ! .e wealthier, far more important t the topi the oil fields of Venezuela, w cal plantations of Brazil, the fields of Argentina. Here'tcie Its large groups of German and settlers.. - i Important fact: The Lovj Hilhr tries now invaded by , among the most densely poptoP in the world, have no raw mati.ri.ii-i r i: Outside of Africa, the wealthiest also x world, In tire area material j least populated, lies under th ' roe Doctrine. " 1 - . , E . |