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Show KTT YjA OPfW PEARSON aXi aIt-J ''' .l ; yn PAT HURLEY ALWAYS A STORMY PETREL WASHINGTON. This town, dead ly afraid of peacetime boredom pricked up its ears and licked its , chops when Pat Hurley issued his j stentorian resignation as ambassa dor to China. It then settled dowr ! to enjoy a good show. Washington has known Pat evei . since 1912 when as a dashing young attorney from Oklahoma he usee , to appear before congressional com-, mittees for the Choctaw nation, j and they know he always puts or , a good show. Once in testifying be-; fore the senate insular affairs com-1 mittee as secretary of war, Pat j shouted: "You cannot call me s liar. You can run your star-cham- j ber sessions without me. I have i taken all I can stand." Whereupon he flounced out of the room. Some years earlier, Pat ap peared before the house Indian of fairs committee to oppose opening the tribal rolls of the Choctaw na tion to certain Indians who claimed they were euehered out of their tribal lands. And he was severelj criticized by Webster Ballinger, whe pointed out that just two years before, be-fore, Hurley had represented thi , Wards, an Indian family which sought to have the Choctaw triba" rolls opened. Thus Hurley was ir the position of arguing on both sides of the same question In the briel ( period of two years. Pat was not quite as ferocious ir those days, however, and for some unexplained reason did not threater to kick Ballinger out of the committee com-mittee room. PATRICK J. O'HLRLEY Pat Hurley has come a long waj from those days when Oklahoma was an Indian territory. Borr O'Hurley, he dropped the "O" and the Catholic religion of his fathci to become a Baptist, and aftet working his way through an Indiar college, he had the courage tc come to Washington, take a law degree de-gree at George Washington, and marry the daughter of Adm. Henry B. Wilson, then and now one of the most beautiful ladies In the capital. It is a long way from such lowly beginnings to his more recent interviews inter-views with Joe Stalin, his airplane flights through the Near East, and his powerful position as the right bower of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. Kai-shek. But Pat has staged a colorful personal row at almost every milestone mile-stone along the way. In Chungking, he first rowed with Gen. Al Wedemeyer over the question ques-tion of sending a mission to the so-called so-called Communist section of China to evaluate the importance of lti military strength. For a while he and Wedemeyer weren't speaking tc each other though they occupied ad-Joining ad-Joining bedrooms in the same house. Later at a Chungking cocktail party, Wedemeyer's chief of staff, MaJ. Gen. Robert B. McClure, chided Hurley for sending General Marshall a telegram of protest against Wedemeyer. "You pup," boiled the ex-cow-puncher from Oklahoma, "I've shot men for less than that." Guests had to separate the two men. The Chinese looked on, amused but not impressed. Ir China it brings severe loss of face to fight In public. "Pat Is Pat," mused FDR when Informed of the fuss, "and there's nothing you can do about him." CHRISTMAS CAROLS If you happen near the secondary office of Rep. Leslie Arends of Illinois, Illi-nois, house Republican whip, deep in the sub-basement of the capitol, you can hear strange sounds echoing echo-ing through the catacomb-like corridors. Arends and his five colleagues are getting their voices in trim for a special trans-Atlantic broadcast ot Christmas carols in which six members of the British parliament also will join to be aired by the Mutual network on December 20. Familiar carols, such as "Oh, Little Lit-tle Town of Bethlehem" and "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" will be rendered by the legislators. The Americans and Britons will do a joint rendition of "Silent Night.'" The other members of the Arends sextet are GOP Representatives Harve Tibbott of Pennsylvania, Paul Shafcr of Michigan, Harry Towe of New Jersey, Frank Fellows ol Maine and William Hill of Colorado. The singing congressmen occasionally occa-sionally vary their practice sessions with "Sweet Adeline," according tc Macon Reed, Mutual news reporter, report-er, a former army corporal who U helping to arrange the Christmas broadcast. However, Reed Insists there is no "liquid encouragement" at such times. CAPITAL CHAFF California's new young Republican Sen. William F. Knowland was the only member of the senate to chal-lenge chal-lenge Sen. Jim Eastland of Mississippi Missis-sippi recently when Eastland made a lengthy speech attacking U. S. poll-cy poll-cy in Germany as too severe. . . . General Marshall was slated to become be-come a director of the American Red Cross before Truman decided to send him to China. . . . Former GOP Congressman Mel Maas ol Minnesota, a colonel in the marine aviation reserve. It back in Washington. |