| OCR Text |
Show News fix BEHINMjl theNews! By PaulMallon .Sfi' Released by Western Newspaper Union. FDR'S BLUE PRINT FOR POSTWAR ORDER WASHINGTON. Sly Mr. Roosevelt Roose-velt followed his usual course in evolving his announced blueprint for the postwar world order. He let the Wallaces, Willkies and Welles' fight out the issues in public while he sat back and said nothing. Then he worked out a common ground formula, discarding the ideas of all of them for a skeleton scheme first announced in public by Secretary Secre-tary of State Hull. It caused considerable grumbling among both Republican and Democratic Demo-cratic senators. Men like Senator Ball, who wanted an international police force and, in fact, an internationalized interna-tionalized .world, were disappointed, but the ex-isolationist Senator Van-denberg Van-denberg was fairly well pleased. He fcihiMlhiaMbi "i tlVlVlYii t YB Secretary Senator Bull Vandenberg whispered to newsmen behind his hand that it looked like the President was coming around to the mid-West position. But it was obvious such a scheme would pass the senate overwhelmingly over-whelmingly when it comes up, as it must, in the form of a treaty. It is in harmony with both the Smith-Connally Smith-Connally resolution, and the Mackinac Macki-nac Island declaration of the Republicans. Repub-licans. To that extent unity is probable, but actually the formula settles no more than the first point at issue. The details of how it is worked out will give the postwar world its character. char-acter. WE'RE THIRD IN ITALY For instance, congressmen have concluded that in the establishment of the Italian government so far, we have run third with Russia on top there, and friends of Great Britain Brit-ain in second position. Little has been said on the floor, but this has been a main topic in the cloakrooms since the speech of Senator Bridges, asking if Mr. Roosevelt had lost the initiative in Europe. Now it is clear that if Mr. Roosevelt does not do better In France than he did in Italy, we will in reality be third in all Europe, no matter how much equality we seem to enjoy in the blueprint formula presented. So also within the formula itself. The top council composed of the United States, Great Britain, Russia Rus-sia and China (the names are always al-ways used in that order) no doubt will dominate the assembly and seem to give control of the world jointly to the four great powers. The assembly of all the nations presumably pre-sumably will not meet often and may act only in an advisory capacity. But with Russia on top in Europe and Britain clinging to her empire, our influence in reality, no doubt, will be restricted to this hemisphere. Britain and Russia always have had more authority in the Far East than we had, and there is no noticeable change in that situation yet. These are the facts of life in the world beyond the formula and apt to be more important than it is. But there Is to be no super state, and no surrender of sovereignty, sov-ereignty, and all are to keep their aims individually. Thus it follows the same line advocated and predicted in this column from the beginning of the discussion. dis-cussion. Other particular agreements now in the negotiating mil are hardly within sight of political unity. In advance ad-vance of the Bretton Woods monetary mone-tary conference, the experts ol practically all the nations have been gathered together secretly. Harry White, director of monetary mone-tary research in the treasury assembled as-sembled them at Atlantic City in ar effort to get what was described as "an agreement at the expert level" in advance of the conference. But in this instance, too, the important im-portant thing will be the value oi gold and the dollar in relation with other currencies, rather than the formula devised for future international inter-national monetary negotiations. CONGRESS AND TAXES Congress is taking the beating! In publicity on taxes, but it saved Mr. Roosevelt from permanenl neuralgia on that last bill, which it passed over his veto. The treasurj had proposed 30 per cent excise taxes on many things, including theatre the-atre admissions, so-called amusement amuse-ment and luxury articles. Congress cut these generally to 20 per cenl or less, leaving only the cabaret tax at 30 per cent. Everyone forgot whal the treasury recommended, recallec only the action of congress. |
