Speed

The big news in Washington and all across the land was the astonishing speed with which the U.S. was returning to the ways of peace.

Wartime controls were lifted faster than the most hopeful had ever expected. War-born bureaus cut their staffs with vigor (WPB was down to 11,000 from a high of 23,000). Said WPBoss "Cap" Krug: ''The way to get going is to get going."

Throughout the capital it was the same. Businessmen and contractors hardly recognized the place. Some came to Washington expecting to stay weeks to tie up the loose ends of wartime business. Instead, they returned home in two or three days, their business completed.

The driving force behind this whirlwind was the plain man in the White House. He issued no long pronouncements. He merely passed word down the line that speed was the order of the day.

The President also:

P: Displaced a model gun on his desk with a model plough.

Invited himself to lunch on Capitol Hill with his old Senate cronies.

P: Put federal employes back on the 40-hour week.

P: Seized the $132,000,000 Illinois Central Railroad to avert the first big postwar strike.

P: Offered recently retired Supreme Court Justice Owen J. Roberts a job of international importance (details unannounced), got turned down.

P: Settled once & for all the fact that Interior Secretary Harold Ickes will stay in the Cabinet, dispatched him to London for a forthcoming conference on Middle East oil.

P: Announced that the War & Navy Secretaries were preparing a report on the responsibility for Pearl Harbor, indicated that the U.S. people might soon get some news on it.

P: Gave Spain's fat Francisco Franco another kick down the ladder (see INTERNATIONAL).

P:Urged Congress to continue Selective Service induction of men 18 to 25, cautioned it against a premature declaration of the end of the war. Said he: "Tragic conditions would result if we were to allow the period of military service to expire . . . while a substantial portion of our forces have not yet been returned from overseas."

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