In Session

The Senate Restaurant upped its 45-c-, 55-c- and 75-c- lunches to 50-c-, 60-c- and 85-c-. Overtaxed by the weight of newshawks and Representatives, a House elevator sagged down two floors, bumped to a stop in the basement. White-crested Bernard Mannes Baruch closeted himself with Senate Majority Leader Joseph Taylor Robinson for a long heart-to-heart. For the first time in four months, flags fluttered over the wings of the Capitol. Such phenomena, observable in Washington last week at noon on the third day of 1936, added up to the fact that the 74th Congress was in session for the second time.

In the House a fine new green carpet had been laid. Potted palms and photographers' lights were rigged around the rostrum. The hands of the clock (substituted for those stolen last summer) stood erect at 12 when gaunt, bushy-browed Speaker Byrns, a pink carnation in his lapel, whammed down his gavel, brought 366 magpie Members of the House to comparatively silent order. Democratic Floor Leader William Brockman ("Tallulah's Father") Bankhead, ill throughout the last session, uprose to request unanimous consent for the House to recess subject to the call of the Speaker so that President Roosevelt might deliver his address on the State of the Union to a joint session of Congress that night. That address was also to be broadcast at the best radio hour of the 24.

When the White House had announced that Franklin Roosevelt was to duplicate the unique performance of Woodrow Wilson in addressing a night session of Congress,* Republicans had sent up a terrific squawk. Shrieked Republican Chairman Henry Prather Fletcher: "Politics!" To secure unanimous consent to reconvene, the Democratic House leadership had to pay the Republicans a small price: a GOPhilippic by tubby, pudding-jowled Minority house Leader Bertrand Hollis ("Bert") Snell, which was also broadcast. Swelling with professional resentment at the President's extraordinary program, the New Yorker, who shepherds the forlorn 104 Republicans of the House, cried: "Why this departure from our former dignified practice? Does anyone maintain there is any special emergency whereby we should change the rules and precedents that have stood since the beginning of this Government? Is there going to be anything in that message that will not stand the light of the mid-day sun?" (Republican cheers, Democratic jeers.) Leader Snell, his duty done, sat down. A resolution to reconvene was then unanimously agreed to, and after sitting 67 min. the House recessed. The Senate sat for only 20 min. There was no broadcasting, no photography, no pother about recessing until time for the President's speech. Republican Senator Borah, 70, expressed his "congratulations and esteem" on the eve of Democratic Senator Glass's 78th birthday (see p. 47). Members felicitated dressy old James Hamilton Lewis of Illinois on his narrow escape from death from pneumonia in Moscow last autumn. There were even a good-natured few willing to listen to "The Man" Bilbo expatiate on his "Dream House" in Mississippi. With the introduction of just one bill, the Pittman Neutrality measure, the Senate decorously ended its first session. That Evening the President appeared promptly behind the lectern of the Speaker's rostrum. Police and Secret Servants had checked " double-checked invitations and guests as they had arrived. Mrs. Roosevelt and the Boettigers were snug in the executive gallery. The diplomatic corps was notably minus the Japanese and Italian envoys (see p. 18).

A Democratic claque was ready to whoop and holler for anything the President said. Representative J. Will Taylor of Tennessee hoisted his feet on top of the seat in front of him as a gesture of Republican intransigeance. Forty radio technicians were busy with 26 microphones. Out through the House Chamber, out through the U. S., out through the world rang the vibrant voice of Franklin Roosevelt as he began to speak: "Mr. President. Mr. Speaker. Members of the Senate and of the House of Representatives . . ." (see p. 9).

*On the night of April 2, 1917, President Wilson personally advised Congress to declare that the actions of the Imperial German Government constituted war against the United States.

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