Tempting Target

Down South there was Winston Churchill, burrowing his toes in Florida's sand. In Washington there was the Pearl Harbor Investigating Committee, its Republican members eager to burrow into what pledges, if any, Franklin Roosevelt and Churchill had exchanged before Dec. 7, 1941. The temptation was too strong for Michigan's Senator Homer Ferguson to resist. Hopefully he moved, "in utter seriousness," that the committee ask the former Prime Minister to be a witness.

The Democratic explosion was awesome. Up jumped Pennsylvania's Congressman John W. Murphy, shouting: "It would ill behoove this committee. ... It would not be showing much courtesy." Illinois' Senator Scott W. Lucas cried: "Fishing expedition . . . ridiculous!"

Next day, when temptation and tempers had cooled, the motion was put to vote. Only one Republican--California's Congressman Bertrand W. Gearhart--joined Senator Ferguson. By a vote of 6-to-2, the committee let Winston Churchill relax.

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