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Show Washington j Comment With the bombing of the Panay superseding every other interest, the state department has been the liveliest place in town. The situa-1 tion grew graver hourly and it is admitted that if the secretary of state had been in possession of the' llict as now represented, the earlier notes to Japan would have been vastly different in character. Congress, of course, went into a brief hysteria over the aflfair and individual members of.Lred the usual crackpot advice about what the president ought to do all of it embarrassing to diplomacy but, fortunately, with Christmas so close at hand, the legislators were too interested in Santa Claus to do much actual damage. Aside from having voted themselves a Christmas bonus in a $225,000 milage appropriation, which J;w of them actually used; a $12,000 for the pages, and authorization of the loan ofl certain capitoi paintings to the constitution ses-quicentennial, ses-quicentennial, congress adjourned without having accomplished very little. Both house and senate passed a fiarm hill of sorts, but so differing in character that two separate bills must go to conference for a joint committee to iron out the divergences di-vergences and agree on a compromise compro-mise measure. This will not occur until the January session, alonp with regional planning and government govern-ment reorganization. Just why Mr. Roosevelt let this congress so severely alone after calling it together is a leading topic of conjecture around town. Some authorities put forth the suggestion that after the way congress con-gress treated his court reorganization reorgani-zation bill, he decided not to force another measure. Others think that perhaps Mr. Roosevelt adopts these Uctics to quell all shrieks about dicUtorships and "rubber stamp" congresses. Still others contend that, by leaving congress to its own devices, he gives it so much rope that it will hang itself in the eyes of the country and its own individual constituencies, I All this, however, is mere conjecture, con-jecture, as the White House is re-imarkably re-imarkably silent these days. The Jact remains glaringly apparent appar-ent that congress can scarcely be said to have earned from the taxpayers tax-payers the holiday mileage appropriation appro-priation or the $442,500 in monthly month-ly salaries which they drew on December De-cember 15, not to mention the $40,000 or $50,000 it has cost to put their "immortal" words into the congressional record. ! Former Governor Landon's public pub-lic renunciation of any presidential 'ambitions in 1940 has revived speculations on the third-term-, for-Roosevelt motif, with the sug-i sug-i gestion that it might be a good ex-; ex-; ample fr Mr. Roosevelt to follow, as well as Mr. Hoover, thus clari-ing clari-ing the political atmosphere. It aiso recalls Sherman's famous "I will not accept if nominated or serve if elected," announcement made to the Republican convention in 1880. Such ultimatums seem to emanate only from the Republican Repub-lican side of the political picture. There is no record of Democratic renunciations. Mr. Coolidge added to history with his immortal "I do not chcose to run" and Frank Lowden in 1924 refused to run after he had been nominated for I vice president by the Republicans at Cleveland. Economy has struck the White ! House to the extent that a $44,400 estimate for a newjack fence, tq, ' the rear grounds Jfy'tKr turned down the estirJ lewest su'q-mitted su'q-mitted being aoout 25 per cent more than the executive mansion had figured orv paving. |