Sacrificial Mood

By democratic design, the lower house of Congress is bound close to the U. S.

people. Senators with six-year terms enjoy a certain insulation from popular sentiment, but two-year Representatives are never farther than the next election from the horny, hovering hands at home. And Representatives, who alone may initiate tax bills, have traditionally refused even to think about new taxes in an election year.

But last week,'a bare five months before the 1940 elections, Republican Bruce Barton informed his colleagues in the House: "Our people today are in a mood for self-sacrifice. The desire to do something, to give something is well-nigh universal." Recognizing this spirit, Chairman Robert L. Doughton's Ways & Means Committee proposed to give about 8,336,000 more U. S. citizens the opportunity of filing a Federal income tax return, to give some 2,000,000 of them an opportunity actually to pay. "Muley" Doughton & colleagues proposed to lower the minimum taxable income from $1,000 to $800, reducing the exemption for married citizens from $2,500 to $2.000. Effect of these and other changes in the Rearmament revenue measure which Chairman Doughton introduced last fortnight was to up its prospective annual yield (for the next five years) from $656,000,000 to $1,004,000,000-a little more than a fifth of the total Army-Navy estimates which House and Senate last week rushed toward passage.

Equally significant was the Republican minority's strategy. Nine of the ten G. 0. P. Ways & Means committeemen abstained from voting-but not because they opposed new taxes. The Republicans thought the House should go much further in overhauling and broadening the tax structure. Democrat Doughton agreed in principle, promised to attempt a major overhaul (including additional taxes on excess Defense profits) at the next session of Congress.

The prevailing U. S. mood affected Congress in other ways. Compulsory military training, partial peacetime conscription to hurry expansion of the Regular Army from 280,000 to 400.000 men-these drastic departures from U. S. tradition were gravely discussed, raising hardly a ripple of the horror which would have surged in waves six months ago. About the means of Defense (appropriations, taxes, man power) there was no hesitancy, no serious question in Congress last week.

What hesitancies and questions there were came mostly from the Senate. There Florida's young Claude Pepper, fresh from a chat with President Roosevelt, heard so much bumbling that he cried in despair: ". . . This is one of those peculiar instances in which the people of the United States are in the front, imploring the Congress to catch up with them."Senator Pepper referred to the cold shoulder which the Foreign Relations Committee turned on a second version of his resolution empowering the President to sell Army-Navy planes, guns, other munitions to the Allies. President Roosevelt last week managed to send some Navy planes anyhow, getting around the difficulty by invoking existing statutes (see pg. 13). Claude Pepper hammered away nevertheless, with special attention to Benito Mussolini. Cried Florida's Pepper: "Mussolini! Well, I am sure that Mussolini has been addressed by the President of this country in sentiments he should not have misunderstood. . . . Let him [Mussolini] think he will strike down civilization when it is prostrate and I tell him that ... he will feel the sting of America's lash . . .

and he will crawl like a scourged slave.

?)

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee's contradictory, don't-go-near-the-water attitude so annoyed Columnist Walter Lippmann that he proposed a wholesale (and practically impossible) removal of the present committee from its potent position in determining foreign policy. But events were fast reshaping Senate attitudes.

At week's end none other than Michigan's once isolationist Arthur Vandenberg took to the air to say: "We are no longer neutrals. . . ."We are non-belligerents on the Allied side."

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