Show truman purge aimed at restoring party machinery by news analyst and commentator service eye street NW washington D 0 washington D C before the P paris arts peace conference even got underway we learned that the rules committee which heard to so much heated oratory was as powerful as the powe powerful r ful rules committee of the house of r representatives senta tives I 1 it t until af after t er the primary returns were in n a and ind representative truman hater slaughter laughter of missouri a member of the rules comm committee attee was defeated that most laymen realized the importance of that battle and nd why the president stuck his neck deck out as far as he be did in helping to beat him I 1 ca can see the president now as he I 1 looked up with that pert birdlike glance he has just enough of i smile to make you try to listen empathetically pathetically tym ym and say that if slaughter aughter Bl was right he the president was wrong think what slaughter could have said aid if he had been elect elected edl but he was defeated and the day af after ter the P primary the real significance ance cance of the battle became clear never in Ame american amerlean plean history has any ny administration been up against the situation which developed when ahe roosevelt honeymoon ended I 1 km m not arguing how or why that came about but the fact Is we have had a situation where party lines meant little and the ige ge old principle of majority rule the theory on which congress as a working body Is organized has been violated outstanding example was the rules rule s committee there were five southerners louth erners administration anti democrats on that committee and with mth slaughters help they could lie ile up the vote and tie up any legislation truman asked for now maybe the fact that the ad ministration get its legislation before congress or let get it passed when it did was a good thing I 1 am not discussing that ahat I 1 merely say that what happened Is not a good thing for the wo two party system and as the situ kation grew more acute congress a working body let lets take the testimony of a barou ho roughly ehly loyal republican memer of the committee and acting minority leader representative Ui chener of michigan it if the dem krats retain control of the house Hi Vil chener said the absence of rep slaughter will permit he rules committee to function the fray ay it was intended t to 0 function lamely amely the legi legislation legislate 0 n of the arty in power will be sent to the loor that mean michener Ml chener want td id the rival legislation passed assed it simply meant he knew hat slaughter teaming up with he administration anti democrats ind the republicans was able to de the vote and stymie action and that 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 df the sea and the land it has een a time of reminiscence of recapitulation as well as forecast lud ind fore shadowing I 1 remember the interview I 1 had with a certain army official dur ng the war his impatience tm ashing the ordinary rules of cen lordship lor ship had revealed the secret f the bazooka kept confidential tong long after it was in use and the retails of which germans had long tince learned to their sorrow the bazooka functions on the rocket principle the officer pointed to an old print on his wall it was a picture tf df american soldiers discharging i 1 rocket projectile in the war of 1312 1812 why then if the rocket principle was known to us in those early days did we not develop it as the germans did I 1 asked the reason the rocket was neglected d in the civil war period t was told was because ordnance experts were concentrating on the development of 0 the breech loading firearm and the perfection of rifling the making of SP spiralled spiral ira 11 led d grooves inside the b barrel rr I 1 velch hith gave the bullet or projectile if a a twisting movement and kept it from tumbling head over heels this this increased range and accuracy 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 th e bayonet claimed many by 1014 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 definition ini tion 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 by planes or contained in the warhead war head of a rocket I 1 mention the effective effectiveness tess ot of artillery in the latter sense not to belittle the doughboy who is really the ultimo ratio but because the projectile either carried in a plane or by propulsion to 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 email arms and again the rocket was set aside by a decision arrived at before we engaged actively in world war II 11 when our experts both in the army and nd out of it including the great industrialists tria lists who could gauge our production capacity felt the airplane was a superior weapon we did not entirely neglect study and experimentation on the rocket during the war however and now we are probably farther advanced in this type of artillery than any other nation we also rny have learned arned to project our ur artillery by means of the drone airplane on august 7 the dores dones droned dronek 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 Is this the army mr jones in world war I 1 when YMCA 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 1 I recall that phrase in one of the letters and we were just softening the boys well it soften them too soft oft tor for chateau thierry and the arg argonne ime then came world war II 11 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 of beans salmon corn willy or nothing but soldier you aint heard n buttini when they say saly this Is the army mr jones to you future G I 1 s hardly believe it did you hear bear what field marshal bloid blood sand and green for the normandy hedges montgomery had to say ile he believes enlisted men in the british army ought to live like other folks bedrooms not barracks you had your our breakfast in bed before goes the warning song but you wont have it there any more maybe not but it if mon monty ty has his way british soldiers can read lead in bed and what about those tricky uniforms american soldiers are going to wear bluet bluel like the boys in blue who said good bleto blue bell and perhaps two note with a lighter shade for the trousers trouser sl and overcoats AND you arent in the army now mr jones youre in grand operal opera 1 and then there is that terminal leave pay bill passed by congress I 1 suppose to pacify the fellows who got out ot of the army without knowing what they were going to miss almost three billion dollars dumped into GI G I 1 pockets to even them up with what the officers received for furloughs furroughs they taken |