Mrs. Roosevelt, & Others

Mississippi's splenetic Senator Theodore G. ("The Man") Bilbo addressed the chair as though he had just been stabbed with a hatpin. Eleanor Roosevelt's name was up for Senate confirmation as a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly. The Senator objected, guessed that 98% of his constituents would also object, and told his colleagues that he had written a book giving his reasons for objecting.* After that, North Dakota's Republican Senator William Langer reared up to announce that the whole United Nations setup was a square peg in a round hole, a phony and a lot of bunk.

The Senate, which had heard all this before, calmly went about confirming Mrs. Roosevelt's appointment. Quickly they approved the rest of the first-string team the President wanted to send to London--former Secretary of State Ed Stettinius, Democratic Senator Tom Connally, Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg, Secretary of State Jimmy Byrnes. But the debate had only begun. As the names of Harry Truman's five alternate delegates were read, Arkansas' liberal Democrat J. William Fulbright got up with a glitter in his eye.

Embarrassing Questions. Lawyer John Foster Dulles properly escaped his probing, and Fulbright questioned the qualifications of Congressmen Sol Bloom of New York and Charles Eaton of New Jersey only by implication. But he wanted to know why Delaware's John G. Townsend, chairman of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, rated the trip to London. Did Frank C. Walker, the former Democratic Postmaster General, have any experience in foreign affairs? The average age of the five, he mused, was over 65.

Cried Kentucky's 58-year-old Senator Alben Barkley: "That does not annoy me in the slightest. . . . Mr. Walker is by no means a doddering old man. . . ."

Montana's Democratic Burton K. Wheeler protested too: "Mr. Walker has just as much experience as any of the others mentioned. . . ."

Snapped Fulbright: "In other words, he knows just as little. . . ."

As the debate rumbled on, Fulbright fished out the fact that the names had been rushed through the Foreign Relations Committee with hardly a moment's consideration. Had anyone considered sending a physicist? A soldier of World War II? "I am not attacking the character of these gentlemen," he explained. "[But] we assume our representatives are being sent [to London] with a purpose--not to be good fellows, not to discuss Montana or whatever Mr. Walker is familiar with . . . or the strawberry crop in Delaware. . . ."

When Senator Fulbright was through, two Republican liberals, Minnesota's Joseph Ball and Oregon's Wayne Morse, commended him for his stand.

As everyone had expected, the Senate disregarded all this argument, voted for the men Harry Truman had appointed. If the President was leaning over backward to avoid Woodrow Wilson's great mistake--turning a cold shoulder to U.S. politicians during the peacemaking--the Senate was more than willing to copy the stance. But the debate had made it plain that a knot of young progressives would not stay quiet if they thought the success of world politics was being sacrificed to politics at home.

*For news of another Bilbo peeve, see THEATER.

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