"An American Attitude"

New Mexico's lean, wiry Senator Carl Hatch, a Term IV Democrat, has held his statesmanlike peace for two days. He can keep quiet no longer. No Republican Senator has risen to insert Wendell Willkie's new series of newspaper articles (see Republicans) into the Congressional Record. Senator Hatch rises to repair this omission, and to spill a little G.O.P. gore.

SENATOR HATCH: "Mr. President, it is time for men who seek high office to tell the people and the delegates to their own conventions just where they stand. . . . As a boy we had a saying, 'Say what you mean and mean what you say.'"

SENATOR STYLES BRIDGES (Republican): "Will the Senator apply that saying and send it as a special message to Mr. Roosevelt in the White House?"

HATCH: "I naturally thought someone would ask that. . . . I will answer him in the language of Scripture: 'By their fruits ye shall know them.'"

BRIDGES: "Will the Senator include in that record how Mr. Roosevelt, in 1932, repudiated the League of Nations?"

HATCH (ignoring the question, and instead reading a portion of the 1020 G.O.P. platform, with the implication that the G.O.P. scuttled the peace after World War I): "Experience has proved that we cannot rely upon platform declarations!"

BRIDGES: "I wonder if the Senator can indicate at what time, approximately, he will tell where Roosevelt stands . . .?"

HATCH (testily): "I wish to conclude these remarks."

BRIDGES: "But I should like to hear where Roosevelt stands."

HATCH: "Very well." (He refers to the 1020 Democratic platform which supported the League of Nations.) "At that time Franklin D. Roosevelt was a candidate for Vice President. It would have furthered his political aims if he had equivocated . . . but he said 'On this plank I stand.' "

BRIDGES: "The Senator has been speaking of the very courageous manner in which President Roosevelt stood [in 1920]. I should like to have him explain why he repudiated that stand in 1932."

HATCH: (appealing to the Chair): "Mr. President, the Senator crowds me too much; I will go along to 1932. I am also coming to 1936, and 1940, and 1944." (He reads a portion of the 1920 Democratic platform. Suddenly he spies his opponent in conversation.) "Mr. President, I thought the Senator was interested in what I was saying."

(Senator Bridges explains that he was just sending a page boy to his office for more ammunition.)

HATCH: "President Roosevelt believes this world is too small for any nation to isolate itself. ... And to achieve the ends to which I have referred, I am sure Franklin D. Roosevelt is today ready to sacrifice, if necessary, his political life. . . ."

BRIDGES : "I wonder if it is the Senator's opinion that Mr. Roosevelt feels so strongly in his convictions that in order to have unity in this country he would be willing to announce . . . that he is through with public office?"

HATCH: "I personally believe that Mr. Roosevelt would be willing to make that sacrifice. . . . But I would not be willing, and neither would the Democratic Party."

BRIDGES (innocently): "Why?"

HATCH (thundering): "Because we remember that 20 years ago the American people were led out on a limb. . . . We shall not be caught there again."

Michigan's Senator Arthur Vandenberg, the chief Senatorial architect of G.O.P. foreign policy, cannot bear the Hatch digs at the G.O.P. any longer. He rises.

VANDENBERG: . "Mr. President, I have yet to make my first partisan address in the Senate respecting foreign affairs. . . . I do not intend to do so now.

"[But] I remind the Senator [Hatch] that it is exceedingly dangerous to go back into the yesterdays and take ancient words from their place in history and give them isolated interpretation as of today. . . . I give him the example of the statement made by President Roosevelt on the eve of the 1940 election: 'I tell you fathers and mothers of America again and again and again that your sons will not be sent into foreign wars. . . .'

"It is the first time I have ever mentioned this matter in public. I do not intend to mention it again, unless it shall be unavoidable. . . . But I cannot sit silent in the face of less restraint across the aisle. . . . I cannot allow the suggestion to pass that there is any less devotion to the ideals of the Republic among Republicans than among Democrats."

The listening Senators are sobered; Texas' "Long Tom" Connolly, who has but recently entered the chamber, is now pacing back & forth, waving a copy of the Connolly Resolution (TIME, Oct. 25) in his hand.

CONNALLY: "Mr. President, I very much hope that the effort of our country to take a leading part in the establishment of machinery for the preservation of the peace will not take on any partisan tinge. . . . The Senator [Bridges], it seems to me, would inject a little partisanship. . . ."

BRIDGES: "I wish to say that. I think it is a sad story for America . . . that we cannot today frankly discuss what we are fighting this war for."

Senator Connally (growing impatient); "In looking into his private crystal ball, the Senator may be able to see the solutions to all problems. . . . The Senator from Texas does not profess any such vision or any such knowledge. . . . Mr. President, this question is greater than political parties. It is greater than the Democratic Party. It is greater than even the Republican Party. This is a great world problem and I do not wish to treat it from a 'peanut' attitude. . . . There ought to be an American attitude."

The debate has gone on for nearly two hours. Nebraska's Senator Wherry, who technically has had the floor for the last half hour, finally gets his word in. It turns out that he desires to address himself to the evils of the War Manpower Commission, which he does for ten minutes. The question of whether Senate partisan politics will enter into the writing of the peace remains unsettled.

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