| OCR Text |
Show " " Tinrrn Show Human Touch THREE DISTINGUISHED states men were on hand to greet the French Gratitude Train when it arrived In Washington Vice Pres ident Barkley and his former - colleagues, col-leagues, Senators Connally of Tex as, Democrat, and Vandenburg ol Michigan, Republican. These three have served in the senate together for more than a quarter of a century. Sometimes they have been on opposite sides of bitter political battles, but they have never let party politics interfere inter-fere with personal friendship. They know each other as well as they know the senate which is better tharv almost anyone else in Washington. Wash-ington. How much Senator Vandenburg Vanden-burg knows about the early boyhood boy-hood of Senator Connally of Texas is his secret. But at the very conclusion of the ceremonies welcoming the Gratitude Grati-tude Train, as the venerable Tom Connally took a pair of shears and snipped the red, white and blue ribbon rib-bon sealing the District of Columbia Colum-bia boxcar, his old friend, the senator sen-ator from Michigan, whispered to the Vice President of the United States: "I'll bet that's not the first time Tom has broken into a boxcar." Acheson Wary of Bevin It isn't being advertised outside the state department, but British foreign minister Bevin didn't put his best foot forward with the new U. S. Secretary of state just a few days after Dean Acheson took office. of-fice. Bevin sent what amounted to a frantic SOS to Acheson for help to get him enough votes to squeak by an attempted censure cen-sure of British foreign policy in the house of commons. But after Acheson helped to get him the votes, Bevin, in effect, bit the hand that fed him. Here is the inside story of what happened: Just before the debate on Palestine, Pales-tine, Bevin was worried sick that the Labor party might be defeated and have to resign. Part of the criticism was because Britain's policy in Palestine was upsetting American relations. Therefore Bevin hit on the idea of telling parliament par-liament that Britain and the United States had settled their differences and now agreed completly on Palestine. Bevin actually wrote out his remarks re-marks in advance and cabled them to the state department January 25 to make sure Secretary Acheson had no objection. Bevin also appealed ap-pealed to Acheson to issue an American Amer-ican statement backing up Bevin on Palestine. The state department depart-ment OK'd Bevin's remarks and gave him the go-ahead and that statement was the trump card which helped him win a vote of confidence by a margin of only 90. Otherwise the Labor government govern-ment might have been defeated. However, Bevin extemporaneously extemporaneous-ly inserted some other remarks in his speech, criticizing American policy. pol-icy. This made Acheson so irate he flatly refused to issue the subsequent sub-sequent statement on Palestine supporting Bevin. As a matter of fact, Acheson also considered protesting to Bevin about his American Amer-ican criticism, but finally decided to forget the wholtT thing. He decided, de-cided, however, that he would think twice before helping Bevin out ol a jam again. Probe Dodgers' Airfield It isn't often the government gets mixed up in big-league baseball, but for some time the civil aeronautics aero-nautics authority has been probing the Brooklyn Dodgers' spring training train-ing camp at Vero Beach, Florida. Actually, the Dodgers are not involved. in-volved. It's the city of Vero Beach, which the government is interested in, because of a complicated compli-cated transaction by which Vero Beach is suspected of leasing a government gov-ernment airfield to the Dodgers at a handsome profit. The airfield is being used by the Dodgers for their fair-weather training, for an official of-ficial charge of $5 per year plus the proceeds from an exhibition game. The airfield is owned by the government and leased to the city of Vero Beach for nothing, with the stipulation that any income is to be used for the airfield's upkeep and improvement. CAA officials now snspecf that a lot more than $5 a year is being paid by the Dodgers for the airfield. What makes them suspicious is a statement by Mayor Merrill P. Barber that the city had "entered into a five-year renewable lease with the Brooklyn baseball club at an estimated Income of $12,000 (annually)." Later, city officials began tc search for extra pillows upon whict he Dodgers' heads were to rest a' night. The government supposedl: .vas turning over a certain numbe f pillows with the airfield. An lirport manager Bud Holman, aj lealing for more pillows, corr ilained: "This is really putting u n a bad position, as we have a K ear contract with the Brookl-all Brookl-all club which should bring ur rom $20,000 a year upward." |
