Reds!

At precisely noon on Dec. 1, Vice President Curtis mounted the rostrum in the Senate chamber at Washington. Beneath him Senators were milling about, handshaking, ready after five months of vacation to take up the Nation's business again. All the Senators-elect (Hastings, Bulkley, McGill, Brock, Carey, Williamson) except James John Davis and Dwight Whitney Morrow were being introduced right & left by friends. Mr. Davis' right to his seat had been challenged by Senator Nye's committee for investigating excessive campaign expenditures. He refused to join the Senate until cleared. Mr. Morrow's credentials were late in arriving from New Jersey. The Vice President rapped smartly with his gavel; Chaplain ZeBarney Phillips began to pray: "May passion for the Commonwealth consume all dross of unworthy ambition. . . ."

Halfway down the Capitol corridor, the Supreme Court took up its reading of decisions. At the corridor's end, House members were still milling in their chamber, for Speaker Longworth was late. The women of the House, all in black or grey, most of them wearing orchids, held reception, surrounded by clamoring men.

Suddenly, a shot was fired in the vicinity of the Capitol steps. There was hoarse clamor out there, contrasting rudely with the goodfellow hilarity in the House. Down the broad stone stairway leading from the Capitol gates into the street the advance-guard of a crowd of 500 Communist demonstrators was rushing pellmell. Their jeers rose into the mild, noon air. Led by a giant Negro, they had marched up the steps bearing banners legended: DOWN WITH THE ADMINISTRATION! DOWN WITH DEPORTATION ! WE DEMAND . . . JUSTICE FOR THE FOREIGN BORN!

Police under Captain S. J. Gnash had been warned and were ready for them, drove them back in consternation with tear-gas pistols loaned for the occasion by the Army Chemical Warfare Service. Soon Washington from the Capitol to the Peace Monument (a quarter-mile) was the scene of seething struggles between Reds and policemen.

Senate, Supreme Court and House remained oblivious to all this. After 20 minutes the Senate, having sworn its new members and appointed a committee to notify the President it was in session, adjourned. In the House, however, a rush of proposed legislation kept many a member in his seat. Evidence of inter-party truce (TIME, Nov. 17) was the presentation of an administration-backed $60,000,000 drought-relief appropriation bill by Democrat James Benjamin Aswell of Louisiana. Roy Orchard Woodruff of Michigan offered a bill to give the Federal Government jurisdiction over gangster murders resulting from illicit interstate negotiations. He said: "It is repeatedly charged that gunmen from one State are . . . imported into another State to 'put on the spot' . . . rival gangsters." Charles R. Crisp of Georgia introduced an entirely new, voluminous tariff bill.

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