"Clear Everything with Sidney"

Tide, an advertising magazine, reported last week that G.O.P. state committees plan to spend $1,000,000 on radio time during the next seven weeks, spreading the phrase: "Clear everything with Sidney."

The slogan seemed to be catching on. It had traveled from mouth to mouth from the moment Candidate John Bricker, cracking at the P.A.C.'s Sidney Hillman, used it fortnight ago. Delighted GOPsters played it to a fare-ye-well; perhaps they had hold of a really damaging weapon, a phrase that would turn out to be as telling as "Rum, Romanism and Rebellion" proved to be in 1884, or "Turn the rascals out!" in 1872.

Both the New York Times's well-informed Arthur Krock and the New York Sun's frankly GOPartisan George Van Slyke insisted last week that the phrase had a solid basis in fact. According to the story, Democratic National Chairman Bob Hannegan had gone for instructions to the President's private car as it sat on a Chicago siding just before the July convention officially began. The President, closely following the vice-presidential race, had decided to dump both Jimmy Byrnes and Henry Wallace. Worried over the dissension, he allegedly said: "Go on down there and nominate Truman before there's any more trouble. And clear everything with Sidney." Pundit Krock, flatly guaranteeing the truth of the quotation, observed sadly: "Not until the time has come for some of the insiders at the convention to write their memoirs will the true history of the quotation be known."

The phrase especially hurt Chairman Bob Hannegan, who has no affection for Sidney Hillman. Trying to clear things up, Hannegan called in the press to say the President had never instructed him to "clear everything with Sidney."

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