OCR Text |
Show Truman Purge Aimed at Restoring Party Machinery By BAUKIIAGE Netn Anaty$t and Commentator. WNU Service, 1616 Eye Street. N.W., Washington, D. C. WASHINGTON, D. C.-Before the Paris Peace conference even got underway we learned that the rules committee, which heard so much heated or- "551 ,tory w" 88 mr Powerful as the , :ff ' 'J Y powerful rules S ' committee of the : v7 V house of repre- 7g It wasn't until JI mary returns uc : if were In, and - Representative 'i (Truman hater) ' Slaughter of Mis- ""j tourl, mem-3 mem-3 ber of the rules committee, was defeated, that most laymen realized real-ized the Importance of that battle, ind why the President stuck his oeck out as far as he did in helping help-ing to beat him. I can see the President now as he looked up with that pert, bird-like bird-like glance he has just enough of i smile to make you try to listen sympathetically and say that If Slaughter was right, he (the President) Presi-dent) was wrong. Think what Slaughter could have laid If he had been elected! But he was defeated and the lay after the primary, the real significance sig-nificance of the battle became dear. Never In American history has my administration been up against the situation which developed when Ihe Roosevelt honeymoon ended. I im not arguing how or why that lituation came about But the fact Is we have had a situation where party lines meant little, and the ige-old principle of majority rule, Ihe theory on which congress, as a working body. Is organized, has Oeen violated. Outstanding example was the rules committee. There were five loutherners anil-administration Democrats on that committee, and with Slaughter's help, they could tie up the vote and tie up any legislation legis-lation Truman asked (or. Now maybe the fact that the ad-. ad-. ministration couldn't get its legislation legis-lation before congress, or couldn't et it passed when it did, was a food thing. I am not discussing that. I merely say that what happened hap-pened Is not a good thing for the two-party system. And as the situation situ-ation grew more acute, congress sasn't a working body. Let's take the testimony of a BioroughJy loyal Republican mem-per mem-per of the committee and acting minority leader, Representative Uichener of Michigan. If the Dcm-Krats Dcm-Krats retain control of the house, Uichener said, the absence of Representative Rep-resentative Slaughter will permit Ihe rules committee to function the vay it was Intended to function; tamely, the legislation of the party in power will be sent to the loor. That didn't mean Michener want-id want-id the rival party's legislation passed. It simply meant he knew ;hat Slaughter, teaming up with lie anti-administration Democrats ind the Republicans, was able to de the vote and stymie action. And that isn't two-party government. Air-Power Big Killer in War This has been an aviation year. The first peacetime year that America has been acknowledged is mistress of the air as well as of the sea and the land. It has een a time of reminiscence, of recapitulation, as well as forecast ind foreshadowing. I remember the Interview I had srith a certain army official during dur-ing the war. His Impatience, imashing the ordinary rules of cen-lorship, cen-lorship, had revealed the secret f the bazooka kept "confidential" eng after it was In use, and the letaila of which Germans had long ilnce learned to their sorrow. (The oazooka functions on the rocket principle.) The officer pointed to an old print on his wall. It was a picture if American soldiers discharging i rocket projectile in the War of 1812. Why, then, if the rocket principle princi-ple was known to us In those early lays, did we not develop it as the Germans did, I asked. The reason the rocket was Deglectcd In the Civil war period, t was told, was because ordnance experts were concentrating on the development of the breech-loading breech-loading firearm, and the perfection of rifling the making of spiralled grooves Inside the barrel which gave the bullet or projectile a twisting movement, and kept it from tumbling "head over heels." This Increased range and accuracy. accu-racy. The emphasis was still on the rifleman rather than the artillery, and such statistics as we have indicate that the Infantry in the Franco Prussian war of 1870 wounded 10 times as many men as the artillery did. Undoubtedly the bayonet claimed many. By 1914-15, however, artillery produced one-half the wounded, showing the rapid advance which, in part, made experts forget the rocket again. Artillery, according to the old def-Inition, def-Inition, is "group-served, mounted firearms of caliber greater than that of small arms." This definition could easily be made to Include the firearms, shells, or bombs carried car-ried by planes, or contained in the war-head of a rocket. I mention the effectiveness of "artillery", in the latter sense, not to belittle the doughboy who is really the "ultimo ratio," but because be-cause the projectile, either carried in a plane or by propulsion In a rocket, is what might be called the definitive weapon. The point is we did not develop the rocket in the Civil war because we felt we had something better (breech-loading rifled artillery and small arms). And again the rocket was set aside by a decision arrived at before we engaged actively in World War II when our experts, both in the army and out of it, including the great industrialists indus-trialists who could gauge our production pro-duction capacity, felt the airplane was a superior weapon. We did not entirely neglect study and experimentation on the rocket rock-et during the war, however, and now we are probably farther advanced ad-vanced in this type of "artillery" than any other nation. We also huve learned to project our "artillery" "artil-lery" by means of the "drone" (pilotlcss airplane). On August 7, the dones droned their way from Honolulu to California. One of them dropped a bomb. The rest landed successfully. A plane with no pilot can bomb a nation that far distant without risking human life. Thi$ the Army, Mr. Jonet? In World War I when VMCA and Red Cross canteens were established right up into the zone of the advance, and even nearer the front, some of the "old timers" of those days wrote to the editors insisting that the Civil war was won on "salt horse and likker" (I recall that phrase in one of the letters) and we were just softening the boys. Well, it didn't soften them too soft for Chateau Thierry and the Argonne. Then came World War II. and some of the veterans of the earlier war raised their eyebrows at the USO, turkey dinners at the front on Thanksgiving, ice cream (instead (in-stead of beans, salmon, corn willy or nothing). But, soldier, you ain't heard nuttinl When they say "This is the army, Mr. Jones." to you future G.I s, you'll hardly believe it. Did you hear what Field Marshal (blood, sand, and green for the Normandy hedges) Montgomery had t. say? He believes enlisted men In the British army ought to live like other folks. Bedrooms, not barracks. "You had your breakfast in bed before." goes the warning song, "but you won't have it there any more." Maybe not. But if Monty has his way, British soldiers can read in bed. And what about those tricky uniforms uni-forms American soldiers are going to wear? Blue! (like the boys in blue who said good bye to Blue Bell). And perhaps "two-note," with a lighter light-er shade for the trousers! And overcoats AND CAPES! You aren't In the army now. Mr. Jones. You're in grand opera! And then there Is that terminal leave pay bill passed by congress, I suppose, to pacify the fellows who got out of the army without knowing what they were going to miss. Almost three billion dollars dumped into G.I. pockets to even them up with what the officers received re-ceived for furloughs they hadn't taken. |