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Show Housing Bill Suffers m Rough Going in Congress yl Taf t Breaks With Conservatives in Backing ftf f Administration Measure; Long-Range lirHIn Building Policy Asked. il0$zaL By BAUKHAGE AVu j A mil y si and Commentator. WW Service, 1616 Eye street, N.W., Washington, 1). C. WASHINGTON. D. C. - It Is fully expected that what is left of the plan for settling America's number one problem the problem of finding find-ing a home will be cut up by congress con-gress and pasted together in some new, strange shape by now. If it is still in the works when you rend these lines there is a possibility that what finally emerges from the hopper hop-per will be more what the patient planners wanted, and less like what the various pressure groups wanted. The interesting thing to me about the debate on this measure In the beginning was this: although the administration ad-ministration features of the bill went squarely against the conservative grain of our conservatively Ingrained In-grained congresses, it had one champion who usually sits as far away as he can possibly edge from anything of even a pale pink hue. I refer to Sen. Robert Taft, Republican Re-publican of Ohio. What Mr. Taft says never falls on deaf ears in the senate even If the ears are doubting ones and sprout from the heads of those cruelly affronted members once referred to as "the sons of wild Jackasses." Vox Taft to the conservative conserv-ative is his master'! VOX. The two key features to the administration ad-ministration bill were the subsidy which would grease the way for quick construction of the lower-priced lower-priced type of homes, and the price ceiling which would make it cheaper to live in a house than re-sell for profit. That is, the present owner of a house could sell his property for any price he could get without restriction, but owner number two would have to re sell it for what he paid (plus, of course, reasonable cost for improvements). These two conditions may have been good or bad. Whether they were or not they were opposed for two main reasons: first, becuuse they were considered "government interference" and therefore radical, and second, because powerful lob bies, the profits of whose principals would have been curtailed, put all the pressure they could on congress In spite of the feeling that the spirit of the housing bills was "liberal," "lib-eral," if you prefer that word to "leftish" or "New Dealish," Senator Taft supported It. He had made a careful study of housing and come to the mature conclusion that the administration Idea, as embraced in the bills introduced by Senator Wagner Wag-ner in the senate and Representative Representa-tive Patman in the house, was as nearly the right sort of legislation as could be obtained. The CIO took the same view. Now when viewpoints as different as these two arrive at agreement, the simple citizen is inclined to think that their Joint approval is pretty sound sponsorship. Labor Wantt Planned Action The CIO has printed a very businesslike busi-nesslike booklet on the subject in which we are reminded that we have always had a housing shortage short-age because our cities Just grew tike Topsy, that the shortage is steadily growing and that estimates show that by the end of this year almost three and a half million families will be homeless unless they are taken In by relatives or double up with others as the President suggested they will have to do meanwhile. The reason that we always had a housing shortage, according to the CIO, is because we never had a housing policy. We have a public school educational policy; a police protection policy; a war and navy policy. As a result, we have a pretty good school system, our police give us reasonable protection to life and property; we have never lost a war nor suffered invasion. But we can't have roofs over our heads. That is what the current housing legislation is supposed to provide. One more factor may be Injected Into this controversy which could affect af-fect It materially: the veteran, chief sufferer from homelessness, is as yet unorganized. Once organized, he could outprcssure the other pressure groups. Since I heard forthright speeches of Senator Vnndenberg and Secretary Secre-tary of State Byrnes which sounded sharp warning to Russia that the United States was ready to carry out its international obligations and use force to cheek aggression, the following sentence has been before me: " . . the American people, now In the height of their might and majesty, are no longer a sovereign nation." That sentence is from Nathaniel PefTer's book, "America's Place in the World" which the Saturday Review Re-view of Literature calls a "stubbornly "stubborn-ly and trenchant discussion." I agree with that description of the book and believe that what Peffer says is true and that It is vital for Americans to understand why it is true. Peffer says that we have lost our Independence and our autonomy "in that which matters most in the life of the nation peace or war." And then he shows with his "stubborn realism" how this has come about, how in the beginning (before 177fi) America "had no control over its own destiny because it was so weak, now because it is so strong." And he shows clearly and convincingly con-vincingly that, no matter how anxious we may be to stay out of foreign broils, any major war In Europe Eu-rope or Asia will eventually involve the United States. Our sincere but romantically futile dream of splendid splen-did Isolation is forever broken. Mutt Lose Life To Gain It Many thinkers have pondered over this question. In tracing America's Amer-ica's international affairs, this authoritative au-thoritative and provocative writer traces our course through the great crises whose milestones are marked with the dates 1776. 1787. IBM and 1941. 1917 was the warning that was not heeded. We were drawn Into a war then, not of our own making, but we did nothing to shape world affairs which followed and whicn, inexorably, drew us for the second time Info a world conflict in which we had no direct concern. It may seem a far cry from diplomatic dip-lomatic Intrigue and the vicissitudes of human hatreds, organized mur-del mur-del and lust, to the world of the spirit but I could not help thinking as I considered the efforts I witnessed wit-nessed at Nuernberg of a certain text in the Bible; the words of Jesus as recorded in the gospel of St. Mark XVIII:35. "For whosoever shall save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it." I am well aware of the fact that the devil may quote the Scriptures with the best of us but I do not think one has to be charged with Mephistophelian tactics when he traces a parallel between the loss of our nation's sovereignty In the sense which Mr. Peffer expounds it and the loss of our spiritual life in the New Testament sense. It is needless to iterate here that the principles upon which this nation na-tion was founded derive directly from the Christian philosophy. However, How-ever, we have never fully lived up to that philosophy since we still feel It necessary to Indulge In that highly high-ly unchristian procedure which I once heard the late Lloyd George de-cribe de-cribe as "organized savagery" war. War has always been justified as a measure of defense defense of our citizens, our territory, our sovereignty. We have now lost our sovereignty In that we must be willing to die to save it. Let me replace the word "life" with the word "sovereignty" in the rest of the Biblical text, which would then read: "Whosoever (and that means a nation as well as a person) shall lose his sovereignty sovereign-ty for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it." Until America and all the nations are willing to sacrifice their sovereignty to a higher, high-er, world organization, whose tencls are four-square with the gospel's in proscripting war, we can never hope to win back a sovereignty In accord with the Christian principles which are the foundation of our nation. na-tion. A former American military government gov-ernment man says our state department depart-ment and Britain and Trance are keeping Russia from searching Nazi assets In foreign countries. It seems strange that if Russia has been slighted In any way we haven't heard about it in a loud voice before now. |