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Show ho in l It Washington, D. 0. DEMOCKACY STREAMLINING If the President and the country want to get a full realization of how democracy is streamlining for action ac-tion they should think back to the summer of 1941, Just one year ago, when, for what seemed like unending unend-ing weeks, the congress stewed over extension of the selective service act. Senate and house isolationists were haranguing the galleries on the iniq-uities iniq-uities of keeping the boys more than one year in camp; telling Uie public how the navy was already convoying convoy-ing ships; revealing in advance that Roosevelt had sent troops to Iceland. Ice-land. Finally by the thin margin of one vote, 203 to 202, and thanks to the sage generalship of Speaker Sam Rayburn, the selective service act was extended. Had it not been for that narrow victory, we should have had no army to rush to Australia, and the whole war effort would have received a tragic set-back. But last week, a war-geared house of representatives passed the 18-19 year draft extension act in three days; and it should be passed by the senate and signed by the President Presi-dent inside the week. Politically and personally, nobody wanted the 18-19 year draft extcn-sion. extcn-sion. It was the worst time to pass it, just before elections. But congress con-gress is doing a much better job than most people realize for streamlined stream-lined democracy. ATROCITY PICTURES A strong debate is raging among propaganda chiefs over the question of atrocity stories and pictures. The government has received a lot of such material from Allied sources, especially the Chinese and Poles, including in-cluding such horrible scenes as Japanese Jap-anese attacking Chinese women, and pouring oil on live bodies before setting the torch to them. Opponents of publication argue that the atrocity stories of the last war were largely invented, and when so exposed left the public disillusioned; dis-illusioned; thus the people might now react unfavorably and charge the government with pulling the same tricks. Other officials argue, however, that the material is authentic, that it is not posters and rumors, but actual ac-tual photographs, and the public should know what sort of enemies we are fighting. It is apparently a part of the Ger-man Ger-man psychological warfare to treat British and Americans with reasonable reason-able humaneness in order to keep us lulled in a state of moderate warfare. war-fare. They save their worst tricks for the conquered nations and the Russians. The Poles and Chinese are urging use of the material as a necessary means of fully arousing the American Ameri-can public to the menace. Elmer Davis' Office of War Information Infor-mation is set to go, once the debate is settled. DAIRY MANPOWER Forthright Sen. Berkeley Bunker of Nevada had a long talk with the President the other day on the war manpower problem, in which he emphasized em-phasized the need of swift action to meet the labor shortage on dairy farms. "I'm from a farm area myself and I know what these dairy people are up against," said Bunker. "Un-less "Un-less we move fast we will have a serious shortage next year. Already, many farmers are beginning to slaughter their dairy herds because they can't get help to tend them." The President admitted the problem prob-lem was serious, and assured Bunker Bunk-er that the War Manpower commission commis-sion was aware of it. He added, however, that he doubted any steps the government might take to relieve re-lieve the farm labor shortage would be a complete answer. "The government can't solve this alone," said Roosevelt. "We are going to have to depend on the farmers farm-ers themselves for individual initiative. initia-tive. I'll give you an example of what I mean." The President then told how a neighbor of his in New York state, owning a large dairy farm, had partly solved his labor shortage by employing students from a near-by high school to milk the cows. "Boys did the milking in the morning morn-ing and a group of girls from the same school took over in the afternoons," after-noons," he said. "That sounds like a good idea, Mr. President," observed Senator Bunker, Bunk-er, "but it isn't exactly a new one. When I was a boy on a Nevada farm, I used to milk 10 cows every morning before school and 10 at night. And I had to ride eight miles to school on a bus." MERRY-GO-ROUND Congressman Ed Izac of California, Califor-nia, who is crusading against army and navy "cellophane commissions," is the otlly sitting member of congress con-gress to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor in the last war. Taken Tak-en prisoner after his ship was sunk by a U-boat, Izac four times tried to escape, once jumping from a 40-miles-an-hour train. He still bears the scars of German prison camp beatings. -Boy War Bonds |