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Show Washington - poShfera y!,Lr OUT OF A MAZE of more or less dramatic developments comes a bona tide and serious contender lor the Democratic presidential nomination in Averell Harriman, director of the mutual security administration. ad-ministration. While he is little known among the rank and file of voters. Is rather shy and retiring in disposition, disposi-tion, Is lacking soma of the color deemed necessary in a presidential candidate, and comes from a wealthy family of Wall Street bankers bank-ers and railroad builders, Harriman Harri-man hat a record of service in government over the past 20 years which marks him as a real contender con-tender for the nomination backed as he will be by an almost solid New York delegation at the convention. conven-tion. Karrlman's governmental service dates back to the early days of the Roosevelt New Deal when he was named by President Roosevelt as a special assistant to Administrator Administra-tor Hugh S. Johnson of NRA. Since that time, he has served In several capacities such as a trouble shooter In the lend lease administration, the war shipping administration, the war production board, the munitions mu-nitions assignment board and chairman chair-man of a special mission to the USSR. He has served as ambassador ambassa-dor to Moscow, ambassador to Great Britain, secretary of commerce, com-merce, as President Truman's roving ambassador in Europe In the European economic cooperation administration and has attended all but one of the bi-lateral meetings meet-ings of President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill including includ-ing the Atlantic conference, the Washington and Quebec conferences, confer-ences, Tehran, Yalta, Potsdam, and the Casablanca conferences. Among the dramatic events during dur-ing the past week comes the threat by Republican house member George Bender to attempt to Impeach Im-peach President Truman as a result re-sult of his steel mill seizure; an attempt at-tempt In the senate headed by Senators Sen-ators Ferguson of Michigan and Knowland of California to shut off any money for use by the President Presi-dent In the seizure of the steel mills; threat of the President that he would hold congress in special session until January 1 If necessary to get the money to carry out the defense program and the money necessary to bolster NATO in Europe Eu-rope headed by General Elsenhower; Elsenhow-er; continued and deeper friction between the forces in the Republican Repub-lican party supporting Senator Taft and General Elsenhower for the presidency, which some political observers declare Is rapidly working work-ing up to a wide-open party split which could be fatal to the party's chances of winning In November. In a speech to the Amerloan Veterans Vet-erans of World War II (AMVETS) President Truman let go both 'barrels at the house for what be termed a "take economy wave" In . an election year over slashes in military and mutual security appropriations. appro-priations. The President said, "If I haye to call a special turnip day session every day from now until the first of January, we're going to get this thing done, and it's going to be done -right." "Slashing appropriations is fine," the President said, "until the day comes when we find that we don't have the tanks, we don't have the planes, we don't have the guns that we heed to meet the situation with which we are faced. And we have to pay for those headlines not in money, but in lives, the lives of our soldiers, sailors and marines." The President declared that it may be an election year over here, but the Kremlin won't take a vacation vaca-tion simply because of the political situation here . . . there is only one real language they understand. That Is this. (And the president held up his clenched fist.) President Truman pointed to the disaster in the Missouri river basin as an indication that many times our Democracy cannot make up its mind until some such disaster strikes. , "I spent all day Wednesday looking look-ing over a terrible disaster on the upper Missouri river that could have been prevented If we could only have gotten people to appreciate appre-ciate that it might come . . . we should not have to have that kind of disaster if wt make up our minds and spend the money to make the effort to do the things which are necessary to prevent it. And that's what I'm pleading for." |