BOYS BRAWLING ON THE PLAYGROUND. If anyone’s holding out hope that Congress and the White House would debate the "Lend-Lease" Bill in a thoughtful and respectful way, you can forget it. The Congressional isolationists and President Roosevelt seem equally bent on turning it into a brawl. In one corner you have the President, who threw a temper tantrum at his press conference Tuesday over Senator Wheeler’s vicious remark Sunday night that the Administration’s bill would "plow under every fourth American boy." Yes, the President has a right to take offense, but according to the press accounts, he completely flew off the handle, calling the Senator’s remarks "the most untruthful...the most dastardly, unpatriotic thing that has ever been said." He even broke his own rule about not allowing reporters to directly quote his press-conference remarks. According to Frank L. Kluckhohn in Wednesday’s New York Times, the President’s "voice rose as he spoke and he burst forth: ‘Quote me on that. That really is the rottenest thing that has been said in public life in my generation.’"
In the other corner you have men like Representative Hamilton Fish, who plan on dragging the Congressional debate as long as possible while filling the air with clouds of rhetorical smoke. The House Foreign Affairs Committee hearings on the bill were supposed to last only three days, but that was before Representative Fish announced he’d invited to testify (deep breath now) Alf Landon, President Hoover, Colonel Lindbergh, Thomas Dewey, Ambassador Kennedy, Ambassador Bullitt, Ambassador Wilson, Colonel McCormick of the Chicago Tribune, Vice President Dawes, General Wood (chair of the America First Committee), Hugh Johnson, the Socialist Party’s Norman Thomas, Hanford MacNider (former American Legion commander), Cardinal O’Connell, Henry MacCracken (president of Vassar), and...others. Not surprisingly, most of these men are arch opponents of giving the President emergency powers and tend to be careless in their use of the word "dictatorship" when talking about the Administration. Jack Beall estimates in the New York Herald Tribune that Fish’s guest list might drag out the committee's hearings for an extra ten days.
At least Representative Fish also invited Wendell Willkie, who is being a model of sober non-partisanship on "lend-lease." Mr. Willkie is going to Britain soon to look at conditions first-hand. He might do himself a favor by leaving immediately to insure he'll miss all the yelling and punching in the nation's capital..
THE "FIRSTERS" SAY A TIME LIMIT WON’T HELP. In a Wednesday editorial, the Chicago Tribune doesn’t buy Wendell Willkie’s suggestion for a time limit on the President's proposed emergency war powers --
"Speaker Sam Rayburn said he wouldn’t oppose a time limitation on Mr. Roosevelt’s war bill ‘if the time limit ran concurrently with the emergency.’ This concession is nothing but a trap, however it is intended. Emergency has been trap bait from the start of Mr. Roosevelt’s administration. He began his career in the White House by asking for extraordinary authority for limited periods. The acts passed by congress contained expiration dates for the near future. The chief executive was to be stripped of his excessive powers as soon as the country recovered. Mr. Roosevelt has never willingly relinquished any authority and he has steadily pressed forward with demands for more, culminating in this war bill with which he could seal the fate of the American republic, give it a war of incalculable duration, and set up a system of government which we are supposed to be opposing in Europe. No doubt he would accept a time limitation as vaguely phrased as Mr. Rayburn puts it if by that means opposition in congress could be soothed....The character of the bill will not be changed by any such pretenses. If the powers granted by it are to be used as its proponents intend them to be, the republican form of government will with difficulty if at all survive the dictatorship thus established."
The Tribune tops off this hysterical screed with a front-page cartoon that implicitly compares Congress’s consideration of the "Lend-Lease" Bill to the Reichstag’s passage in 1933 of an Enabling Law which granted Hitler dictatorial powers. Sheesh. Will somebody please explain to me, in plain language, just how this bill would turn America into a "dictatorship"? As far as I know the Bill of Rights will continue to function even if Congress were to pass the Administration’s bill unanimously with no changes whatsoever. Congressional elections will be held next year as usual. The America First folks will continue to agitate against increased aid to Britain. No doubt Congress will keep a close eye on how President Roosevelt makes use of his emergency powers, and the Supreme Court, which has limited his authority before, could do so again. Yes, the White House has been careless in the way it has gone about this, and hasn’t handled detractors with class or tact. But putting a President of the United States on par with Hitler is beneath contempt.
GERMANY’S NO. 1 TARGET IS STILL BRITAIN. Barnet Nover’s Washington Post column yesterday aptly summed up the state of the war right now as "a triangular race between German preparations for an all-out attack on Great Britain, British and Greek efforts to eliminate Italy as a combatant, and American production of planes and war material." There seems to be an emerging consensus in the press that Hitler’s focus has returned to his plans for the conquest of Britain, and that any forthcoming Nazi activity in the Balkans or the Mediterranean wouldn’t amount to more than a feint. And reporters increasingly believes an attack is coming any time now -- the current Time magazine and the New Republic both use the term "zero hour" in their assessment of the German threat. Mr. Nover explains why he believes Hitler won’t offer more than minimal help to the Duce in the coming critical days --
"With Italy staggering under the blows she has suffered in Albania and Africa, Hitler must now reckon with the possibility of Italy’s ultimate elimination from the war as an active combatant. It is obviously to Germany’s interest to prevent that from happening or, if it proves inevitable, to postpone it as long as possible. It is not to Germany’s interest to pull Mussolini’s chestnuts out of the fire if, in so doing, the Reich’s strength is depleted to the point where she could not hope to carry out a successful blitzkrieg against Great Britain....So long as Italy continues to have a nuisance value, so long as Italy remains a combatant, though a diminishingly effective one, and thus compels the British to divide their forces between the home sector and the Mediterranean front, Germany is in a position to round out her preparations for the assault on the British citadel in relative leisure. We can be sure that these preparations are being made with the greatest care and with full use of the resources of the nations Germany has conquered."
One hopes that in the debate over "lend-lease" Congress keeps in mind Mr. Nover’s warning -- "The balance in the war of attrition is not to Britain’s advantage. It may be that the destruction of military objectives in Great Britain has been far less in proportion to the total destruction produced by German bombers than anyone had a right to expect when the assault began. Nonetheless, there is no denying that the British are suffering, and suffering seriously, from that continuous attack. The deficit in British production...can only be made good from American sources. And if it is to be made good in time to help Great Britain fend off the German thrust the aid must come soon."
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