| OCR Text |
Show ,iatg,! -g Vi, --;- i i t nirM ' - Ji. - FDRMustTakeHelmAgain To Achieve National Unify lAdministration, Congress Must Get Tough In Throttling Various Pressure Groups Seeking Advantages for Few. By BAUKIIAGE Neivs Anulyst and Commentator. I f". WNU Service, Union Trust Building Washington, D. C. In the next few weeks decisions will be reached which will affect the length of the war and they will not be made on the military fronts. They will be made in small town offices, leaning across fences, down at the post office or the court house, on front stoops, at the Elks club, in the lodge rooms and after meetin's of one kind or another in every middlesex, village and farm in the country. They will result from conversations conversa-tions between the congressmen, home to mend their 1944 fences, and their constituents. The nation faces a crisis on the home front. .Unless It is solved in the common sense American way, it is going to prolong the war months, and perhaps per-haps longer. Its presence has already al-ready delayed the capitulation of Italy, It-aly, according to some of the more pessimistic pessimists around Washington. As success on the battlefront grows, the efforts of those trying to support a total war are being defeated de-feated on the home front. Two Events Two events mark the low In unified uni-fied effort for victory. One was when a reporter, with no evil u nuendo in his mind as far as I know (and I. know the man), asked the President if he would make any comment for background on the statement that although things were going well on the battlefront, they were not going so well on the administration ad-ministration front (meaning home front). The President replied with a castigation of the press and radio. Some of their representatives, he said, were encouraging governmental governmen-tal friction. He could have given a blasting, rip-roaring answer which would have encouraged the country. coun-try. As It was, he made some of the men whose job it is to interpret the news to the country, too mad to be objective. The second event which marked the nadir in shoulder-to-shoulder effort ef-fort on the home front was when congress came within an eyelash of killing the use of any and all subsidies subsi-dies which would have broken a wide hole in the anti-inflation dam. Let me state immediately that I do not believe that subsidies is the panacea pan-acea for our inflation ills, but to have wiped them out completely at that time would have meant jerking jerk-ing the one, wobbling support we did have right out from under the price-control structure. Since then the President has perked up and taken a positive stand and congress on second thought modified its berserk mood and evolved a compromise. Now it is up to the people. If the congressmen are convinced that they can afford to go national and not be defeated a year from November; No-vember; if they are convinced that the people will support their votes if they vote for what they think the country needs and not to suit the pressure groups that sit on their desks all day, the crisis will pass. Crack-Down Necessary The objectives are pretty clear. In the first place, the President has got to take the helm again. He has got to crack down. He has got to see that dissensions do not break out. He has got to see to it that the secretary of the treasury comes out with a clear-cut tax and savings program which will absorb the inflation in-flation dollars. Congress will have to support that program. The pressure groups whose purpose pur-pose it is to get their members more money for products or wages, will have to be throttled. This means that the administration has to be tough. Congress will have to have courage. The people will have to support their elected representatives. representa-tives. The vast majority of Americans are perfectly willing to carry their share of the load. They are not willing to make sacrifices if they believe someone else is getting the ' benefit and shirking their share. The farmer will work the skin off his hands and take a meager reward if it's for the good of the country and the boy he spared to join the army. But not if somebody tells him the workman is making all the money at an easy job. The workman will face higher living liv-ing costs and he certainly has to, without a wage raise, until somebody some-body comes along and tells him the farmer is getting rich and that is why his food costs go up. And so on. The reason why I believe this is because I receive letters like the following: "My husband is 67 years old. working and making $38.00 a week when tax is taken out. We are buying two war bonds each month but we have a son in the navy and one designing aviation tools in a plant in Atlanta. At-lanta. Perhaps he, too, will soon be in the service, though married he has no children yet. "We are like many trying to carry our end of the war effort but we have many friends and relatives who though making hundreds a month don't buy a bond. These same people went through the depression with jobs while we took it the hard way. Our two boys suffered from malnutrition during those years. "Don't you think this makes a difference in point of view? You see we suffered making us think. My boys bought war bonds right from the start. Their dad and I feel the need of a decent de-cent world to live in, too, for we had to live in a deprived world for several years. It gave us a different slant on life. We want a decent world for our children and grandchildren and other people's children. "Selfishness and greed will have to go if we are to have that decent world." If a congressman's constituents talk to him that way, we won't have much' more trouble on the home front.- Hitler will have to begin worrying wor-rying again. Diary of a Broadcaster The Washington atmosphere affects af-fects strangers who tarry long within with-in the shadow of the Washington monument or the Capitol dome. It affects not only the so-called higher species but the citizens of cat-and-dogdom as weD. Today, I came down town at an odd hour an interesting in-teresting hour. I was a little later than usual. The war workers and the boarding-house cats and the alley al-ley pups, which wait until the workers work-ers are out of the way, had vanished on their various duties; only an indolent in-dolent and disreputable Tom still paused to massage its hips against a garbage can, and a yellowish part-fox part-fox terrier, certainly part, and from his brush, certainly more fox than terrier, lay in the exact center of the alley where anything that ran down the middle gutter would eventually even-tually reach him. These creatures sniff at protocol and treat it as they do anything else they sniff at But that hour is also the hour of the pet parade, for the handsome creatures that strain at leashes. The most unhappy person per-son I meet at this bewitching hour is a thin little relic of a butler, who is literally torn between losing his dignity and his grip on one of the embassy great danes. No men like to walk dogs. All dogs like to walk men. But one gentleman dog nurse dared me to stare him down. He was being led by a stiff-legged aristocrat, a young wired-haired fox, as white and starched as if his proud mamma prepared him for a birthday party. Then there was the sad-eyed cocker, who dropped its eyes, sadder still when it realized I had noted that its mistress was wearing a far too informal house dress for polite street wear. And then, there was the little one-by-five, it undulated along with a rather forced smile. It was a dachshund dachs-hund and probably anti-Nazi. It was hustling along like a caterpillar in high gear, trotting with its hind legs, and hopping with its little turtle-paws in front I even met a feline on a leash, a great big tortoiseshell Thomas it looked as if it was safer that way for the rest of us all I could think of was "tiger, tiger, burning bright in the jungle of the night." |
