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Show Washington Comment When the "shouting and the tumult" died on Capitol hill last week, the "captains and the kings" departed with amazing speed, and the Battle of the Embargo Em-bargo went down in congressional historyvo rank with other famous engagements, like Bunker hill and Gettysburg. As a matter of tact, even while a feeble, faint-hearted attempt was being made by a few isolated legislators to hold the session ses-sion together until January, in the laudable belief that a few domestic domes-tic problems could well bear threshing out at this time, and their colleagues were roaring "No", nearly every man of them had his hat in his hand and his railroad ticket in his pocket. The special, extraordinary!, and most i wordy, session ended in a blaze cf glory and with more gallery spectators spec-tators than its beginning had called call-ed out. Crowds jammed the house galleries just as they had earlier jammed the senate; thousands were turned away, and at all times a great queue of the hopeful-waiting wound, down the marble stairway stair-way on the second floor well into statuary hall. The house, unlike the senate, had kept the diplomatic diploma-tic and White House galleries barred to the public. At times, the latter was empty and seldom had more than three or four occupants. oc-cupants. Nor was the diplomatic gallery any too well filled per-1 per-1 haps, because, by the time the neutrality neu-trality measure reached the house, its fate was pretty well defined. At any rate, now that the great-battle great-battle is over, a postmortem shows up some interesting sidelights: for instance it was revealed, during some of the oratory, for and against, that our dearly beloved' legislators are lamentably lacking in knowledge of geography. Without With-out naming names, we can report that one or more gentlemen gibly referred to certain countries as being "inland" whereas such countries coun-tries possess miles and miles of seafront, and references to the Baltic and North seas betrayed such amazing confusion that one wondered if the earnest orator really knew where and what they were as a matter of fact, sennte attendants, wearing very straight faces, on one tor two occasions, brought in world maps and unobtrusively unob-trusively hung them in front of tha haranging gentlemen. Other results of the battle, viewed in retrospect, include the unexpected teamwork of the Democrats, the surprising ; alignment of Republicans Republi-cans (former Gov. Landon, Col. Knox and Senator Taft) with the administration on this issue, and the teaming up of Senator Van-denberg Van-denberg with Senators Borah and' Johnson as they revived that other famous isolation fight of long ago 'the one against Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations. The controversy over the date of Thanksgiving which has long since reached the status of a vaudeville "gag" is still heard hereabouts, and there are still "complications" to be ironed out. For instance, postmen are going (Continued on last page) M Washington Comment (Continued from first page) to have their Thanksgiving this year the way the president wants it if the communities they serve will allow it. First Assistant Postmaster General Howes issued ail order lust week notifying all postofficcs that November '23 will be the legal Thanksgiving for postal employes. But, here's the rub: in some places, the Thanksgiving Thanks-giving turkey won't be served up until the traditional Thanksgiving day in which case, people will expect a working day's mail service ser-vice on November 23. Mr. Howes gets around this complication by suggesting that "necessary" postal service be rendered', and the men who render it be given another day off. Well, the federal debt soared again last week, going over the 541,000i,0OO,00O mark.. It thus brings the treasury within 4,000,-000,000 4,000,-000,000 of its borrowing limit. The treasury statement disclosed the debt total had reached $41,-023,S72,434 $41,-023,S72,434 as a result of av$51,-055, av$51,-055, S40 increase in one day due to borrowuig on short-term bills to, baby bend sales. A year ago the aebt was $38,424,932,'579.77. The new peak revives discussion of how and when the administration should ask congress to raise the limit from the present $45,000,-000,000 $45,000,-000,000 to $50,000,000,000. M |