Arms & the Merchant Marine

Little, egg-bald Speaker Sam Rayburn, cello-mellow with satisfaction, last week saw one of his predictions come true.

After the conscription extension had squeaked through the House last August by a vote of 203-10-202, Rayburn had insisted on a month's recess, had predicted that the members, after listening to the, folks back home, would return to Washington with less isolationist notions. Sure enough, the chastened House had then passed the second Lend-Lease appropriation: 328-10-67.

Last week the House voted on the next move of the President's Thousand-and-One-Steps-to-War policy: repeal of the Neutrality Act's Section 6, which forbids U.S. merchant ships to have any armament greater than a captain's pistol or a harpoon gun. On the morning the bill came to a vote, Sam Rayburn got a further break: the U.S.S. Kearny was torpedoed.

After one day and one hour's debate, the House passed the bill: 259-18-138. For: 219 Democrats, 39 Republicans, one American Labor. Against: 21 Democrats, 113 Republicans, three Progressives, one Farmer-Labor.

In about eight weeks Speaker Rayburn had seen the recapture of 44 out of 65 Democrats who had opposed him in the conscription fight; he had gained 23 precious Republican votes. And he knew, as well as Republican Leader Joe Martin, that many a Republican vote against the present bill was a matter of party loyalty, since the G.O.P. in Congress had decided to make the measure an out-&-out partisan fight.

He had seen two especially remarkable, though perhaps temporary, conversions--of New York's gangling, muscle-bound Ham Fish, and excitable pinko Vito Marcantonio. Fish took the floor to condemn the bill unsparingly until his colleague, New Jersey's white-haired, red-faced Charles Aubrey Eaton, quietly asked him how he was going to vote. Representative Fish gulped heavily, admitted that he would vote for the bill, faded out of the debate. Same evening little pinko Marcantonio, who had firmly voted against all national-defense appropriations and foreign-policy moves, jumped up, shrieked:

"Up to the 22nd day of June*[I had regarded the war as] an imperialistic war . . . between two axes, the Wall Street-Downing Street Axis versus the Rome-Tokyo-Berlin Axis. The invasion of the Soviet Union by Hitler transformed that war, and the military defeat of Hitler is today America's only defense. . . . The United States [should] do everything possible to bring about the opening of a western front and thereby prevent the triumph of Hitler."

"I would like to ask the gentleman from New York whether he would favor sending an A.E.F.?" slyly asked isolationist South Dakota Republican Karl Mundt.

"I think it is necessary. . . ." said pinko Vito Marcantonio.

The bill ripped over to the Senate like the torpedo that smashed into the U.S.S. Kearny, in a wave of excited decision. After counseling with Wendell Willkie, Republican Senators Styles Bridges of New Hampshire, Warren Austin of Vermont and Chan Gurney of South Dakota introduced an amendment to repeal the Neutrality Act in its entirety. This clove the Senate G.O.P. down to its muddled brisket, completely took the play away from such Democratic fire-eaters as Carter Glass of Virginia, Claude Pepper of Florida, Josh Lee of Oklahoma, who were preparing to do the same thing.

Although this move meant a possible delay in the repeal of Section 6, and a probable knockdown, drag-out fight, it was also a stride toward honesty in facing the real issue: How much more is the U.S. going to do against Hitler?

* Date of the invasion of Holy Russia, when the zigzag Communist Party line zagged right.

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