Fill-in from Australia

Over a long breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast and coffee, President Roosevelt got a firsthand account of warfare in the Pacific from his young, trusted friend, Congressman Lyndon Baines Johnson of Texas. Tall Lyndon Johnson, a Navy lieutenant commander, had sought active duty one hour after voting for war against Japan. He had ranged as far as Perth, Melbourne, Sidney, Darwin and Port Moresby. Now he returned to Washington 28 Ib. lighter (from a pneumonia attack) but much wiser in the ways of war.

In their four-hour talk over the coffee cups, he must have told "the Boss" plenty about the Jap as a fighting man, about Japanese aerial tactics in operation, about the comparative merits of U.S. and Axis air and sea equipment. But outside the White House, Representative Johnson had only one comment: "There is one thing they are not short on out there, and that is courage and guts and fighting spirit. They've got plenty of that."

Also back in Washington last week were two other Congressmen newly returned from wartime service: shrewd, taciturn Francis Eugene Walter of Pennsylvania, after six months of offshore patrol out of Norfolk, Va., and short, blond Warren Grant Magnuson of Washington who served with Admiral Halsey on Pacific task-force expeditions. They will have to stay on land, under a new Presidential order, until Franklin Roosevelt decides they are needed on active duty again. Until then, Representatives Johnson, Walter and Magnuson can tell fellow-Congressmen what modern war is really like.

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