State of Mind

The eyes of the world were on the House as the bill came finally to a vote. The 20 other American republics watched; the President watched from his sea conference with Winston Churchill; Adolf Hitler's representatives and Emperor Hirohito's observers waited. If the bill failed to pass, most of the half-trained U.S. Army would slowly dissolve as draftees and guardsmen went home. The nation would have to start again building and training another army.

All argument had ceased. Speaker Rayburn and his aides--tall, slack-jawed John McCormack of Massachusetts, the majority leader, and round-shouldered, wavy-haired Pat Boland of Pennsylvania, the whip--had done all they could. They had made frantic telephone calls to Democratic leaders in more than a dozen States, begging for additional pressure on reluctant members. Some Democratic State chairmen came to town, bringing plums and whips. In Vichy the Government had delivered itself to Hitler that afternoon. The U.S. Government had just renewed a warning to Japan. But against the bill to keep the U.S. Army under arms for another 18 months stood an imposing phalanx of opponents. They included:

> At least 17 Irish votes based on anti-Britain sentiment;

> Tammany Democrats voting against the Administration because the New Deal is tacitly backing Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia for reelection;

> Straight-out pacifists who oppose all war or defense measures;

> A big group of Democrats who had advised their draft-age constituents to enlist, because they might as well start their year's training early, and had pledged to get them out of the Army in a year;

> A big group in both parties who vote blindly against anything Franklin Roosevelt is for;

>Members alarmed by their mail who decided to vote for what they thought their constituents wanted;

>Republicans who hate Wendell Willkie almost as much as they hate the President, and who were willing to bet the nation's safety against their chances of reelection;

> Those who felt they were breaking faith by keeping draftees more than twelve months;

> Members--perhaps the biggest group of all--who merely thought that the emergency was much less urgent than when the Conscription Act was passed.

That so many votes could be mustered against a bill which the Administration felt was absolutely vital was no tribute to Franklin Roosevelt's ability as a popular leader. But the President's power to swing a following, marvelous as it has been at times, has striking ups & downs and this was a time when his leadership was at low ebb. How low it was the public did not guess in advance.

The roll call began; 45 minutes of grinding suspense as the clerk growled out the 432 names, listened for an answer, repeated the vote. The jammed galleries seemed hung over the rails. The little tally meter of Tally Clerk Hans Jorgensen registered 204 aye votes, 201 nay votes. (Twenty-seven were not voting.) Hubbub boiled about the rostrum.

Now lean, dyspeptic Democrat Andrew L. Somers of New York, hoping to beat the bill, changed his vote from Aye to No. Now sweating Leader John McCormack, pounding about the chamber, had forced, on a purely personal appeal, three of his No-Voting Democrat friends to sit in the front row, ready to change their votes to Aye if he so much as winked. But the Chair took hold. Whacking the gavel block like a smith at the forge, Speaker Rayburn announced the vote: 203-to-202.

The closeness of the vote was partly due to the fact that Minority Leader Joseph Martin had agreed with the most Isolationist hate-Roosevelters in his party to swing the Republicans almost solidly into opposition. His decision seemed dubious political wisdom. A large part of the press hammered at the 202 Congressmen; even the most Isolationist newspapers wasted no space and ink defending their vote, merely changed the subject.

But regardless of the part that party politics played, the size of the vote against draft extension looked very much like a vote of lack of Congressional confidence in Franklin Roosevelt. For in the 202 stood many a man whose decision had been poisoned by suspicions of the New Deal. For the whole Congress was in no happy state of mind.

Three days later, the Speaker, who is a smallish, shiny-bald, mellow gentleman, rose behind the marble rostrum and said: "The Chair desires at this time to make a short statement. . . . For something like three years the Chair has been very closely tied to Washington. . . .

"I am homesick. I want to go home tomorrow. . . . I live on a broad highway, in a white house, where everybody can find me; but I have another little place. . . . When I start toward that place--and it is about 13 miles from my home farm--the road gets narrower and narrower every mile I go; and when I get to the end of the narrowest part of the road, there is the gate, and there is no telephone out there."

The Chair gulped, glared about at the silent House of Representatives, whammed the gavel with unnecessary vigor. A few minutes later the House adjourned.

For the next month a watchdog squad will troop into the House every three days (longest one chamber may legally be inactive) and hold a token meeting. The Chair became not the august Speaker but merely Sam Rayburn of Bonham, Texas, cattle breeder; the members of the House relapsed their dignities, became a mass of sagging, middle-aged men with minds on far hills, quiet fishing holes, the shade-dappled country towns of Home.

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